Posted on 11/04/2004 5:44:29 PM PST by GulliverSwift
Brits to America: You're Idiots!
Well, 51 percent of you, anyway.
Americans who think post-election anti-red-state recrimination is a U.S.-only phenomenon should check out the cover of Thursday's Daily Mirror: Over a picture of President George W. Bush, the paper asked, "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" Inside, the left-leaning British tabloid headlined its editorial, "WAR MORE YEARS." In a clear demonstration of the trans-Atlantic culture gap, the paper's description of the president's beliefs—clearly intended to strike Mirror readers as a radical agenda—is simply an accurate, if crude, précis of his platform: "Mr Bush opposes abortion and gay marriage, doesn't give a stuff about the environment, is against gun control and believes troops should stay in Iraq for as long as it takes."
The Mirror wasn't the only British paper with a striking cover. The Guardian's "G2" section was fronted by a page of solid black containing just two small words: "Oh, God." Meanwhile, the Independent ran the headline "Four More Years" along with iconic images from the first Bush term: kneeling prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, soldiers fighting in Iraq, oil-drilling machinery, sign-wielding religious extremists, and a smirking Dubya. In France, Libération ran a picture of the president under the headline, "L'Empire empire"—"The empire declines."
Many of the British commentaries followed a consistent formula: We wish the other guy had won, but Bush scored a convincing mandate this time around, so we have to live with it. As the Guardian put it: "We may not like it. In fact … we don't like it one bit. But if it isn't a mandate, then the word has no meaning. Mr. Bush has won fair … and square. He and his country—and the rest of the world—now have to deal with it." In a fit of double-negativity, the Independent's editorial added: "This does not mean, however, that we do not contemplate the second Bush term with considerable trepidation. Another four years of a president in thrall to the religious right and the neo-conservatives is another four years in which the United States risks sliding back into an earlier age of bigotry and social injustice." Writing in the Times of London, Simon Jenkins' condescending sigh of disappointment typified the genre:
Mr Bush's election will give the rest of the world a collective heart attack. It expected a Kerry win. At the very least it expected Americans to somehow rein in a man it sees as naïve and dangerously belligerent. … Americans declined to rein him in. They legitimised him. The rest of the world has been roundly snubbed.
An op-ed in the Guardian went to great lengths to describe negative stereotypes of the American electorate, then rejected them much less convincingly: "Americans are seen as unsophisticated, wilfully ignorant, obsessed with such issues as abortion, guns and gay marriage, and wedded to a device which seems calculated to impede the wishes of the majority—the electoral college. … Americans are far more complicated and unpredictable than we understand them to be."
The conservative press cheered Bush's victory. Rupert Murdoch's Sun said: "The world is a safer place today with George W Bush back in the Oval Office. His re-election is bad news for terrorists everywhere." The Daily Telegraph agreed: "The triumph of his Churchillian conservatism will … strike fear into all enemies of America and the west." The Telegraph's version of the "get used to it" theme was more positive: "[America] is diverging from Europe: it is younger, more self-confident, more prosperous, more devout, more diligent, more democratic and, in short, more conservative. Europe must come to terms, not only with Mr Bush, but with the nation that has elected him." The Times encouraged Bush to let recalcitrant foreigners woo him: "The President should not waste time trying to appease or win over those who have no time for him. There is the chance, perhaps, that with the passage of time the qualities which Americans see in this politician will become more obvious to others."
In Spain, leftist El País urged Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero to "accommodate the new reality, even though the result isn't what he hoped for" and fix the country's strained relationship with the United States. "This doesn't mean turning the page or starting over from the beginning, but leaving behind the unfortunate declarative politics on both sides." Conservative ABC—in what may have been a subtle dig at the Spanish voters who elected the Socialist Party, which had pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq, after the March 11 attacks—praised Americans for their steadfastness: "[Bush is] a president firm in his convictions and ready to fight to the end, until victory, against the threats that hang over America (and over all of us, even if we don't want to see it)."
Elsewhere in Europe, France's leftist Libération got with the program: "A new reactionary majority … has cemented its hold on American democracy. The rest of the world may deplore it, but it will have to adapt to this reality." Turkey's Hurriyet also echoed the familiar grin-and-bear-it theme: "American voters have once more brought someone they deserved to the presidency. In this case, what is left for us is to bear it and to protect our own interests with maximum sensitivity." But Sovietskaya Rossiya defaulted to quaintly archaic Cold War rhetoric: "Bearing in mind that Bush's policies are prompting increasingly powerful rejection in the entire world, mankind will inevitably unite against the common evil—American imperialism."
But please vote your leftist swine out of office before you completely collapse.
No, that is what caused us to get this undeserving resentment from all over the world. We must start a charm offensive. We must stop insulting our allies. We must recognize that these are leftist publications very similar to our own leftist publications that is calling Bush win a dark day in America.
Sounds like the leftists and they still don't get it. Wonder if they noticed we left a long time ago?
I've been waiting for this day for a long time. I love the smell of liberal whining in the morning!
Earth to left-wing Brits. You have lost your empire, so I understand why you lost your mind.
Hitler would have kept them quiet.
LOL!
The prince of darkness. Why brits drink warm beer. etc...
Pull out of the UN, we will be happy to support those who support us. We should be helping out the people who really need our help, the Sudanese and the rest of the African Nations.
Cut off all of the support to these Socialist Failures. They are ready to cave.
It's OK. No response is needed to the scum at the Mirror. What's going on around them is that within a reasonably short period of time they'll all be bowing down 5 times a day to Mecca ~ and loving it!
We're CITIZENS!
Who are the DUMB ONES?!
These filthy grease-eaters live on fish and chips, can't spell, drive on the LEFT side of the road, have the highest taxes on the planet, drink beer at piss-warm temperatures, voted Churchill out of office after he saved their sorry asses from Hitler, produced both inferior steel & an incompetent captain that sunk the f-ing Titanic, drowning some of America's greatest capitialists in the process; have nasty teeth, think "faggots" are cigarettes, and can't make a functioning car heater or convertible top, or build an engine with less than 16 carbuerators that will start w/out hours of tinkering.
Screw you left-wing lame-ass limey bastards! (Except Tony Blair and Derb!)
Well, we've done alright since then, it seems to me. At least well enough to stand with them as allies in a couple of world wars. I guess we weren't idiots then. Nor were we idiots when he had all of Europe under the umbrella of our protection against the Soviet threat during those long, weary, dark years of the Cold War. In view of all of that shared history, now they throw a hissy fit just because we selected, of our own free will, the leader we feel is best fit for the job and who will best serve our interests? What is wrong with these people anyway?
...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
Mark Twain
Thank goodness for Lexington and Concord!
Gentlemen Don't Drive After Dark!
Europeans need to call the WAAAAAHmulance!
No use in your calling upon Him now. :)
Ya know I am getting quite sick of people saying they were "tortured" they were made uncomfortable and humiliated but they were not tortured.
Words have meanings. Perhaps I should send the Brits a dictionary.
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