What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
Danmarks Radio (DR) published a multimedia presentation on their website this weekend. The teaser text on their homepage was “Carl was a top executive—and changed sex. As Caroline, she now knows that women have it much harder in the workplace.” Preach, Caroline! Or rather: mansplain! This guy literally went home from work as a man…
Wait, what? The 8:00 radio news update from ABC News, delivered by the insufferably biased Richard Cantu, included an audio clip of someone lamenting that mass shootings have become so widespread in America that even women are getting in on the act. I found that remarkable. I did a quick search online and found the…
Denmark has until now been spared the worst excesses of the culture war underway in America, but the Rubicon has been crossed. Fort Sumter has been fired upon. The Archduke has been assassinated. It’s here. I had actually thought Denmark had a stronger immune system. I thought we might have some kind of natural immunity…
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…
News of the collected works of Roald Dahl having been edited for sensitivity came to my attention at some point over the weekend. It was impossible to miss on the anglophonic internet. As culture war stories go, it’s a good one, but it seemed less significant to me than the one that was bobbing around…
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…
