What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
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…
The Little Mermaid was among my daughters’ favorite movies when they were very young. They knew it was a Danish story—they’d been riding “The Flying Trunk” at Tivoli since before they could walk or talk. That’s a very slow, very gentle indoor ride through various semi-animatronic scenes from the works of Hans Christian Andersen, including…
My core political beliefs can’t be stated any more succinctly than they’re stated in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That…
There’ve been a lot of international headlines the past couple of days about the British Home Secretary’s having put forward a bill to punish Britons expressing racism online toward soccer players by depriving offenders of the right to attend matches in person for up to ten years. For example: British minister tightens grip: Online hatred…
Joe Biden on Twitter in February 2020, responding to Donald Trump’s travel restrictions on China: “We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through…
Most of the posts on this blog relate to Danish misrepresentations of America and Americans. But the Highway of Misunderstandings has always been a two-way street. With multiple lanes in each direction. And heavy traffic. Case in point, a tweet from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from a few weeks ago (which came to my attention via…
Berlingske has a spectacularly wrong headline up right now: Biden said the N-word. Then Twitter went amok: “Where are the woke?”Kalinka Aaman Agger, Berlingske.dk, Nov 12 Biden used the word “negro.” He used it by mistake. He made the mistake because, to quote a Stephen Miller tweet cited in Agger’s article, his brain is applesauce….
On Sunday, Berlingske published the first in a series of three interviews with Danish authors on the subject of racism in Denmark: Author Sofie Jama got shit smeared on her front door: The aggressiveracists are the most sincere in their communication Kristian Lindberg, AOK, Berlingske.dk, August 1 Sofie Jama is a Somali-born Dane who came…
Good news, everybody! Turns out it’s not racist to require voters to provide identification after all. Not only that, but it turns out Critical Race Theory is no big deal: it’s just about teaching kids about the history of slavery and race relations in the United States. These revelations are brought to us courtesy of…
An article published on Berlingske.dk this afternoon doesn’t have much “news value” at first glance, but I’m glad to see it because I so desperately want Denmark not to follow America down the road to hell. The headline is “American elite university drops Latin and Greek to fight racism,” and that’s a straightforward summary of…
If you believe in communism—that is, if you understand and adhere to its tenets—you’re a communist. If you believe in socialism, you’re a socialist. If you believe in capitalism, you’re a capitalist. If you believe in nudity, you’re a nudist. If you believe in race, you’re a racist. That is, if you first of all…
This is not an ordinary blog post. It’s a reference post: one that I will post once, reference frequently, and update periodically. The stats are presented without commentary of any kind; my own observations can be found at the bottom. U.S. Population, 2019Source: The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, via Kaiser Family Foundation Americans (2019)…
Everyone called it the Wuhan virus because that’s where we saw it start. Saying “Wuhan virus” was just shorthand for saying, “that virus that’s spreading like crazy in that city called Wuhan.” That’s what we thought. It’s what we told ourselves. We didn’t know any better. Fortunately there were people who did. People with eyes…
