Friday, March 18, 2005

Why "Old Europe" Stings

Davids Medienkritik make a prescient point which might be mistitled. It may not be so much about hurt feelings, but about a public temperament.

«Germans revere Saint Florian as the patron saint of firefighters and offer a prayer to him that goes “Holy Saint Florian, spare my house and burn my neighbor's.” This prayer is an accurate description of Chancellor’s Schroeder’s foreign policy and is held by most Germans as a valid approach to the war on terror.»

«Germans are no longer keen to point out that their sentiments are just anti-Bush, not anti-American. The steady diet of television documentaries and news articles over alleged American wrong doing from World War II to Iraq is a sign of a new German attitude. German media use every opportunity to remind the country there is a global scapegoat for the future while proclaiming moral equivalence for its past. The German media have spoken - GM is responsible for the decline of Opel - Dresden was the same as the holocaust. And Chancellor Schroeder remains silent.»

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