What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
(I’m back after a week off including a few glorious days in Tallinn, Estonia. There’ll be an article about that trip over on Nagan of Copenhagen soon, if it’s not already there.) We begin (as one must) with disclaimers, disclosures, confessions, and context. I’m grateful for a lot of the things Donald Trump was able…
Everyone knows that Joe Biden isn’t up for another full term in office. A majority of Democratic primary voters want someone other than Biden. Establishment news outlets regularly feature items on the back-room chatter of Democratic muckety-mucks still supporting Biden publicly but scrambling behind the scenes for a viable alternative. Those Democrats don’t oppose Biden…
For more than three decades (from 1976 to 2009), legendary American radio newsman Paul Harvey used to have a feature called “The Rest of the Story” in which he’d present short stories on every manner of subject, with one key element left out—usually the well-known name of the person at the center of the usually…
Anyone who’s followed the news this week, in American or in Denmark, knows about the Chinese Balloon spotted drifting over Montana a few days ago. “Spy balloon!” cried America. “Weather balloon!” shouted the CCP. I didn’t follow the story very closely because it seemed awfully trivial and stupid, but that just goes to show how…
Rasmus Paludan is back in the international spotlight. I’ll just cite the lede from Danmarks Radio (DR): Rasmus Paludan burned a Koran in Stockholm on Saturday. Now Turkey will not support Swedish membership in NATO. Danmark’s Foreign Minister called that both shaming and shameful—the buring of the Koran, obviously, not a sovereign nation responding to…
First, a quick reminder of Michael Crichton’s Gell-Mann Amnesia phenomenon: Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or…
The poor darlings don’t know what to do. Here are screencaps of actual news searches I performed on “Biden” on Berlingske.dk and DR.dk at about noon (CET) on Tuesday, January 17, 2023: Berlingske: Danmarks Radio (DR.dk): Berlingske’s most recent news item that’s actually about the American president is already three days old (“Another five classified…
Danmarks Radio (DR) ran an interesting article over the weekend: You’re being cheated more than you think: here’s how to see through companies’ green liesKasper Madsbøll Christensen, DR.dk, January 14 The ostensible purpose of the article is to help readers recognize when to be skeptical about product claims of climate friendliness. The answer is always,…
(No audio for this because it’s just a quick observation. An expression of annoyance.) As anyone with any interest in the fate of free speech in the western world surely knows, on Friday night Matt Taibbi began releasing “the Twitter Files”—mostly internal corporate communications from Twitter that provide irrefutable evidence of the social medium’s interference…
AUDIO NOTE: The audio experiment continues, and there’s always lots of bonus content in the audio—also a lot of fun mispronunciations, word bobbles, and the occassional unexpected background noise. That’s what makes it an experiment rather than a smooth and polished production. Today, for example, keen listeners may detect the occasional background shriek from youngest—even…
This post is mostly (but not entirely) about small things. Trivial, even. I subscribe to the “Morning Briefing” email of the New York Times. It hits my inbox at around 7:00 weekday mornings, which I find impressive—that’s 1:00 in the morning, New York time. That’s the only impressive thing about it. Otherwise, its only real…
AUDIO NOTE: It’s a long post, today, and therefore a long audio. To save myself some time I did most of it in one take. It’s therefore bubbling over with mispronunciations, self-corrections, improvised riffs, and random musings that aren’t found in the text below. So it’s messy but fun. All you lurkers who come around…
Advisory: This post contains frank and uncensored sexual terms because the weight of such language is its topic. If you’re uncomfortable with informal sexual terminology—words that in the English language are typically disguised with asterisks in written form and bleeped out when spoken—then this post is not for you. Let us concede from the start…
There’s a small but telling news item in DR today: Social Democrats propose CO2 tax on agricultureOlivia High, DR.dk, October 16 “Denmark must be an agricultural country—also in the future. But we have to do it in a different way than we do today. There is the primary and most effective tool we can use,…
DR is taking a long, hard look at election swag. Chewing gum, pens, and roses are important in the election campaignMads Juhl, DR.dk, October 13, 2022 The lede elaborates: “Parliamentary candidates hand out thousands of gifts during the election campaign. And ‘the crap works,’ says the expert.” You can hardly avoid bumping into a parliamentary…
In reading this DR article about Giorgia Meloni, the woman who may well be Italy’s next premiere, I was struck by how freely they referred to her and her party and their allies as neo-fasicsts (nyfascister). I don’t know what to think when I encounter such adjectives in the western press, because when the president…
Two Quick Notes First, the Martha’s Vineyard immigrant story is all I want to write about. It’s the most perfect distillation of everything that’s wrong with the modern American left, and it just keeps getting better: yesterday, the Governor of Massachusetts requested 125 National Guard members to assist with the transportation of those migrants off…
