Transatlantic tensions, cont.
Quite a bit of correspondence generated by the recent transatlantic blog salvos. Well, not really transatlantic. All the best Euros are over here. Glenn Reynolds suggested that the US should devastate Europe by promoting immigration; it's already happened. It's the US substitute for domestic public education; let the Euros pay for all that decent high-school education, and just lure them over here once they've finished college. Cunning.
Anyway, I digress. Some people wrote in to complain about the American arrogance typified by Glenn Reynolds. That's not the point at all. The current criticism of Europe is far from arrogance; it's chippy cultural cringe, more akin to the way Australians thought of England last century. Embarrassing, coming from the superpower. Here's an email from Francesco Vitelli, another transplant, who blames Middle America, always a good strategy.
nice chiding for reynolds there. ever note many of the more outspoken europhobes live in the "heartland", removed from any concentrations of real, live, US-resident euros who might enlighten their perceptions? even lileks, who can think and write so darned reasonably, is guilty of this wilful tribalism.
their sweeping indictment of european behaviour (which they presumably arrive at by parsing Le Monde, the Guardian and the Mirror from the comfort of suburban tennessee) is as wrongheaded as any of those snobby europeans whose scathing opinion of american cultural and civic emptiness is founded on "Dallas" and "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns alone.
makes you wonder if reynolds is one of those folk who dismissed "la femme nikita" as euro-garbage, only to wax ecstatic over "point of no return" a couple of years later.
