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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, September 12, 2002
Ugly Americanism Strikes Again
No matter how riled up I have ever become after reading the morning paper, I always respected its right to say what it had to say. I never crumpled up an entire section and tossed it across the room. Not until this morning, that is. The San Francisco Chronicle's Bay Area section was the recipient of a three-point drop into the wastepaper basket after I perused this smug little piece of isolationism from the underinformed and overfed Mark Simon. The headline should give you a taste. "America at its worst is still best," it reads. "Many who hate us would love to be us." And how did Simon reach this conclusion? Did he travel abroad for many months, conducting soul-searching conversations with people of all tribes, creeds and opinions? Er, no. He hung out at San Francisco Airport for a day and talked to a skycap, a security officer, a policeman and one guy who moved here from El Salvador 20 years ago.
Let me tell you something, Simon. And let me get one thing straight for any other Ugly Americanistas out there. The rest of the world does not want to be America. Why should it? You do not have a monopoly on freedom of speech or freedom of worship. There are half a dozen nations with better standards of living than the U.S. More than a dozen countries where the poor don't die for want of universal health care. Where free college education for everyone was a given tenet of basic civilization fifty years ago. And most importantly, where children have a less than one in five chance of being born into poverty. There are a lot of great things about being American, but there are also a lot of shameful things. So why do you persist in strutting around like the school quarterback at the prom? "I'm the best even when I'm at my worst. All you kids hate me because you want to be me." No. All the kids hate you precisely because you think they want to be you.
Do Norwegians, to pick one example, strut around and pat themselves on the back because they happen to have the world's highest standard of living (which they do)? No. Are they aware that they also have problems, like the western world's highest suicide rate? Yes. Does the rest of the world even begin to look like it hates and envies the wealth and freedom of Norway? No. Starting to see a connection? To puff yourself up like this, especially on such a sad anniversary, is the most unthinking, ostrich-like response possible. It is the flawed logic of solipsism that refutes the evidence of your eyes and robs you of that most vital of social skills: humility. And before you know it, the President is swaggering around in front of the U.N. -- in front of the nations of the world in congress -- presenting a unilateral diktat on what they should do about Iraq. Whatever happened to the ancient art of diplomacy? Discussion? Debate? Nah, putting together a coalition is too much trouble. Being a responsible player on the world stage is too much trouble. We'll just tell the world how to conduct its affairs, then go stick our heads in the sand and pretend we're the greatest, even when we're at our worst. Yeah, that's the way to behave after 9-11.
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