What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
Mikkel Danielsen had a big article about Donald Trump and QAnon at the top of Berlingske’s website this morning. Big image, big headline, big story: The headline says: “A particular song got underway. Suddenly Trump supporters reached one finger into the air—what just happened?” I don’t know what happened. Neither does Mikkel Danielsen. Nor do…
The phrase “virtue signalling” entered the lexicon several decades ago as a critical description of moral valor being asserted without being demonstrated. The phrase is used often enough these days that everyone knows what it means. The earliest example I can recall of such posturing was probably the “nuclear free zones” declared by liberal municipalities…
Surely we live on the best of all possible worlds. Surely: Nobody at the age of zero will get a legal sex change, so it makes sense anyway, says expertStine Hansen, TV2 News, August 17 Persons as young as zero must be able to perform legal gender reassignment. The government presented this on Monday in…
Herself and I watched Matt Walsh’s documentary What Is a Woman last night. It’s mostly a polemic against our increasing willingness to let our children be irreversibly chemically and surgically altered to bring their physical bodies into harmony with their identities. That may not sound like a subject that would lend itself to a light,…
Berlingske published their most superfluous and redundant editorial of the decade this morning: Berlingske believes: Everything and everyone is better than TrumpBirgitte Borup, Berlingske.dk Leader, August 1 There’s no need to parse through the whole thing because there’s very little in it that’s new or novel. The headline alone is just a condensation of the…
I posted just about everything I have to say about the Dobbs decision back when the decision leaked a few months ago. None of my opinions have changed. There’s no point in hashing over all that again. I’m not surprised by the Danish coverage, the general tenor of which can be deduced from the screenshots…
It’s Sankt Hans Aften tonight—St. John’s Eve, in English. It’s the Danish (and Scandinavian) celebration of the summer solstice. All across the land, tonight, Danes will gather around bonfires, enjoying picnic dinners with friends and neighbors, singing songs, and simply enjoying the long and beautiful evening. It’s an enchanting tradition. In many cases, the bonfires…
There’s an interesting article on DR’s website right now: EU wants more equality: “We’re lagging far behind”Simone Nielsen, DR.dk, Jun 21 The article itself isn’t especially interesting—the EU is implementing what amounts to gender quotas (but don’t you ever call them that!) for the boards of European companies with at least 250 employees. Pretty stupid…
This is a tough post to write for two reasons. First, it’s just one more example of something I’ve chronicled many times already. Second, it makes me so angry I have to fall back on my Clemens quote: “A man can’t write successful satire unless he be in a calm judicial good humor,” [Clemens] remarked…
The World Health Organization (WHO) is worried about words again. WHO wants to give monkey pox new name to avoid discriminationRitzau, TV2 News, Jun 15 According to researchers, it is discriminatory to continue to keep referring to monkeypox as “African.” The World Health Organization (WHO) is collaborating with experts to find a new name for…
Yesterday’s post was about the stupid prizes we’re winning for the stupid games we’re playing with language. That theme continues today. We’re going to start with a recent decision of the Danish bakery chain Lagkagehuset (the name translates to “The Layer Cake House”) to replace two of their popular cakes, the so-called kagemand (“cake man”) and kagekone (“cake wife”) with the…
The richest person in the world is always going to be the person in whom the most people are interested, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the richest person in the world is always going to be the most interesting person in the world. But Elon Musk certainly is. Flamboyant, eccentric, iconoclastic, mischievous, and a master…
An opinion piece in Berlingske asks an interesting question: Should there be room for “well-coiffed hatred and cheeky fascism” at the Popular Assembly?Esben Vest Billingsøe (Opinion), Berlingske.dk, May 20 What I’m translating as the “Popular Assembly” could also be translated as the “People’s Meeting.” It’s an annual summer event (held in the 24th week of…
Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday Night. To nobody’s surprise, they racked up the most points of any country in the history of the competition. To my own surprise, however, the Danish media have been very transparent about the fact that the Ukrainian song wasn’t very good and that this was obviously a…
Tom Jensen is the editor in chief of Berlingske Tidende, and after years of coddling the American left he seems to be waking up to the fact that something is rotten in America: I’m not “cisgendered.” I’m a man.Tom Jensen, Berlingske.dk, May 1 Jensen is apparently trying to bring his newspaper’s Danish readers up to…
Mikkel Danielsen has another big story about Trump out today, but that’s about as noteworthy as a rainy day in Denmark. He’s billed as Berlingske’s USA Correspondent, but for all practicaly purposes Danielsen is now their Trump correspondent. It gets tedious. There’s an actual American president out there right now who’s even less popular than…
This was the top story on Berlingske.dk this afternoon: Everything going on in the world, and on Easter weekend, that’s Berlinge’s big splashy headline. The headline says, “Rei is a nonbinary transsexual and has a question everyone could “benefit” by asking themselves.” I won’t bother with a spoiler alert, I’ll give you Rei’s question straight…
