[quote]
It's not surprising to see what sort of harsh or bizarre views are aired by the subjects in this documentary.
I'm about as critical of my own nation as anyone (though at the same time I'm a heartfelt patriot and proud of those things America is right to be proud of) (q)
Before we go further, I will point out that I am not an Anti-American (I didn't see the TV proggy you've watched) - but that is a tag I get labelled with when posting my opinion on blogs or wherever (I dig the notion of freedom of speech - something emasculated by Fox et al...when Dan Rather thinks the US media is lazy, or there is such a gulf between The West Wing and that turd getting voted in via Florida Fraud that has an effect on the rest of the world...we have problems). I think less of my neighbours, or the people I visited when working for a housing association a few years ago who came out with racism/stereotypes/anti-asylum seeker style rhetoric etc. It had nothing to do with race - so I don't hate Americans who got 'wood' as Shock and Awe dropped or they pretended they knew all the victims of 9/11 and could speak for them by watching Fox News.
I live in the UK and was reered under Thatcher - I didn't remember a leader before - and the tangent she put this country on - leading directly to Major and Blair (probably Brown too)...the notion of patriotism is a joke and I always felt the flag of Engerland is something I'd rather wipe my arse on and try and transcend the racist notions the BNP and their French pen friend Le Pen try and cook up over a Mosley-style bout of masturbation. I live in a country that was once the British Empire, I guess America will soon be the country that was once the American Empire. Heck, Jim Kerr sang about that in 1980, so it's not an unrealistic notion: Empires Fall, America will fall. Dealing with things after is probably the harder thing - then you will not treat the rich twat bankrolled by corporations as some sort of pope. That ain't patriotism.
I have been trying to say: there's an America I love. My record collection, my book shelves and my DVD/VHS collection are testament to that. Liking them doesn't make me think everything America does is dandy; conversely, the acts of the Bush-Neo-Con cabal don't make me want to burn most of the things I own. But if reminders are needed, & to demonstrate I'm not a commy Anti-American [something I was accused of after penning a letter to Uncut shortly after 9/11...why do some Americans still sound like they're in the McCarthy era?] , I love/like/have time for: John Sinclair, The MC5, Iggy Pop, The Make Up/Make Up, Fugazi, Henry Rollins [despite once comparing him to Morrissey and getting an abusive email from him/one of his friends], James Agee, Lester Bangs, Sonic Youth, John Reed, Warren Beatty, Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan in Don't Look Back, John Dos Passos, Richard Brautigan, Chrome, Suicide, Melvins, Royal Trux...and on and on and on...Even the US version of Girls Aloud - Nine Inch Nails - has much good in. I always thought a lot of US punk inspired stuff was truly out there - few UK bands managed to get so wigged out...so many great films/the greatest films...so, I don't hate America. I'm not anti-IT. I am opposed to its foreign policy/policies and criticise it in the same way I would my own country/leader. There is no flag-waving around these parts; though I did almost have a physical fight with my father over the first hour of Fahrenheit 9-11...neither of us would flag-wave or absolve ourselves to our masters.
The US, or its compliant media and compliant masses (how many US folk thought Saddam had something to do with 9/11??????) comes up with harsh and bizarre views: Abu Graib, the Patriot Act, lying about an American Football player shot by his colleagues, pissing over the 9/11 widows, having someone like Anne Coulter spouting anti-Muslim wank in the bestseller lists, GITMO [that's Guantanamo Bay, the Gulag down in Cuba that Stalin would have creamed over, though would have thought was a bit lightweight], co-opting countries like Bulgaria into UN security council votes, the friendly countries that helped the US/are friends with the US who have appalling human rights records/are dictatorships [Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Israel, Turkey, China, Russia etc] ...and that's before we get to the fact the 2004 US election was won due to (1) Republican backed lies in media ads about Kerry, (2) Gay Marriage...a severe threat!!, & (3) Abortion - the right-wing Christian masses turned out to vote and realised their power....all actions at odds with the quagmire that Iraq was, as the US dropped cluster bombs, rebranded napalm & white phosphorous for freedom/democracy....
(q)Much of what I'm seeing is clichéd stereotypes... and there is a core of truth to them, but a uniform colony of gun-toting, hamburger eating, semi-educated lowbrows? It's way more complicated and far less melodramatic than all that. (q) I'd agree with that...
(q) The fear that the American 'way' will overtake Europe is somewhat amusing to me... insomuch as America is by it's very nature a stew of cultures originating in Europe, but also coming from everywhere, including the people who were here before. Isn't this what is happening all over the world? America has embraced culture from everywhere on the planet and incorporated it into it's own blend. We don't see this as a threat, but a welcome infusion. (I do sympathize with anxieties about corporate power- I'm uncomfortable with any power that seeks to muscle out the local economy). (q)
It already has. Listen to the lyrics to Model Worker by Magazine, either the studio or Play-version, and you will hear the hegemony thang. [anyway must go, as a foxy Scottish chick is talking to me and it was my birthday and I cried cos I wanted to...]
(q)England is probably the next most popular destination for immigrants, I believe, and probably the most like the US (or visa-versa) in its open attitude towards the mixing of peoples and ways. (q)
Maybe. Though a former (American) professor of mine at Birmingham Uni on Radio 2 regarding the Mississippi Burning-case pointed out the segregation in much of the US (Stuart Lucas). You must also recall, even if just reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, that there was apartheid-style segregation against African-Americans and Jews. If you look at UK culture in the 50s/60s/70s there are things like that one novel by Colin McInnes or Made in Britain or the recent This is England that remind you that we didn't all live in seperate ghettoes. As flawed as Michael Moore is, the case of the African-American woman on benefits working for that showbiz cunt in his arcade couldn't happen here (...thus far).
and there's more...
....The Have Your Say section on the BBC, around anything Iraq related (the execution as a result of the US show trial of Saddam Hussein, a former employee/ally of the US; THE SURGE; the many ways the Iraq abortion has become the Iraq Abortion etc), often gets overwhelmed with the kind of Americans who do a disservice to their country. Then again, the times I've heard Jeremy Vine on Radio 2, it's the Daily Mail types going on about Princess Di, how Asylum Seekers are given palaces and feast on swans, etc = so maybe it's the type of media coverage we have these days [cue graphic] ? We're the fattest fuckers in Europe, our cinemas are predominantly American, and I could be in America when I go down to the shoppies...so maybe we shouldn't slate the US so stereotypically. Cos we're already them? The sole difference might be the fact that they are #1 and we were #1 ...
I did have someone on that BBC website accuse me of disassociating myself from the Iraq war - I guess he/she assumed I backed up Blair no problems. The reality was I was against Blair, marched in London, commented shedloads on certain websites (Ch4 News at the time), and didn't consider volunteer army members who come from the same island that I live in, more important that unvolunteer civilians in the country we decided to shock et awe for the Project for the New American Century/Neo-Con paranoia/invisible WMD. In the UK, we always seem to slag off the government and the royal family, even people that like some politicians and some royal family...you get the idea in the US, that people just comply. With someone like George Bush Jr! I mean, at least Hitler could give speeches, that dude can't form a sentence...but you doff the cap/wave the Stars *& Stripes/Sieg Heil regardless? Anyway, back to my Jello Biafra & Melvins album...Kalifornia Uber Alles 21st Century: Oh Yes!!!
