This past Saturday, my wife, Jammie and I were driving to Redding, a little town north of where we live in Northern California. We were listening to a radio station that is popular locally and on came a “thought of the day” type of segment.  The host said that as a newly wed she had despaired because she didn’t feel she could be the perfect wife.  She had finally gone to her husband and asked him to list the top three things that she should do to be a good wife.  I was shocked at how old school the list sounded.  It was something like:

1)  Be nice

2)  Look presentable

3)  Keep the house tidy

It sounded like the kind of checklist that the post war housewife obsessed over in those vintage ads for extra-efficient vacuum cleaners… “anything to have the house ready for my hubby when he comes home!!”  But there was not a hint of irony in this little radio segment. If anything, the wife presenter agreed to the list and pledged her level best to making it happen.  I couldn’t believe it!

“That couple is straight out of the ’50s!” I said to Jammie.  She agreed.  We started dissecting the man’s list for his wife.  We live in a rural and very Evangelical corner of California with fairly traditional values so, as shocking as the list of requests was from an urban gender politics standpoint, it made sense given our cultural context.  THEN, Jammie turned to me and said, “You know his list for her is basically my list for you!”

I wasn’t sure how to react.  I come from Sweden, a bastion of trendy gender equality and Jammie from a pretty progressive pocket of Southern California.  In these parts of the world the tables have turned.  Whereas men should never articulate any of the above demands if they value their own lives, increasingly, women can.  Jammie looked over at me and said in no uncertain terms, “I am a 1950s husband.”

And so it is.  In future posts, look for my favorite recipes, home ec tips and other gems of savvy, domestic housekeeping.

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Bjorn Karlman

“Bjorn, you and I are victims of age discrimination!”  I was chatting with a young doctor friend of mine recently and he was fuming.  No matter how much time he had spent in school and no matter how successful he had been so far in life, he was still getting patronizing jabs from fuddy duddies with nothing better to do than critique a young up-and-comer.

We have all experienced it.  It seems like regardless of your abilities, older people always bring up your age as though it were a weakness.  “She’s got talent but she’s sooo young.”  Consciously or just out of habit, well-meaning plodders refer to you as “the kid” and make snide remarks about your “youthful exuberance”.  I recently heard one of my younger colleagues being referred to as “such a good boy”.  It was meant as a compliment.  I wanted to throw up.

A CEO friend of mine told me that because he worked in a professional white collar environment he had been very inpatient to turn 30 so the comments about his age would fade away.  When he finally turned 30 nothing stopped.  “You’re only 30!” people would exclaim.  He realized that nothing would change in a hurry.

The frustrating thing is that age-based discrimination can actually hurt you on your mission of savvy, global do-gooding.  Age discrimination actually changes people’s perception of you.  It is not just a case of having to endure patronizing comments and attitudes.  Youth can actually hold you back when the wrong people decide to make age an issue.

I have brought this up with several business execs to get their opinion.  All of them empathized.  One of them claimed that the “too young” label was the story of his life.  In one job he had been the boss of an older man who came from a culture where it was culturally inappropriate to have a boss that was younger than you.  My exec friend had to walk around on egg shells even if he was boss.

The best advice I ever got was from the first hospital CEO I ever worked for.  “Calm down Bjorn.  Enjoy your life.  There will come a time when you are no longer young.”  And there you have it.  You are too young until you are too old.

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Bjorn Karlman

A few posts ago a friend and loyal CultureMutt reader, Tristan complained about overseas travelers that are in a phase where they refuse to talk to any other foreigner.  If you’ve tried to socialize with fellow travelers abroad at hostels or elsewhere, you’ve probably come across some of these types.  They somehow think that if they ignore all the other obviously foreign people and focus on being super “local”, they will somehow transcend the ranks of the mere tourist and become honorary citizens of the host country.  It’s gross.  And it only gets worse with long-term relocation expat types.  They are convinced that their three years and counting automatically qualify them as connoisseur insiders and that you have to spend at least as long as they have in the country before they will fraternize with you.

Here are my tips for how to deal with these types if and when you run into them:

Avoid them

This might be the easiest option.  If you are only visiting for a short time and you want to dodge the patronizing looks and condescending comments of expat know-it-alls, learn to spot them and then avoid them.  Expat snobs will name-drop, speak pejoratively about the US and a lot of the other typical tourist home bases and constantly act surprised at your lack of knowledge of some quirky local custom or hot spot.  As soon as you get these comments or as soon as you hear them being dished at someone else, get away from the source.  They are seeking some kind of complex validation and are never satisfied.  Better to actually talk to a real local, they are more likely to be receptive to honest questions and interest in their culture and way of life.

Speak the local language to them

But suppose you do want to engage the snobs, how do you do it?  One thing I noticed about “localer than thou” language students was that if you speak to them in the local language, you automatically win points in their book.  I remember a guy I met in France.  He ignored or rolled his eyes at most of his fellow language school students.  I came to the school on a recruiting trip and during my down time I started to speak French to him.  That seemed to be the magic switch that turned him into an engaging, enthusiastic conversation partner.  He was apparently sick of language students that he felt were holding back his progress by speaking English to him.  A lot of people disliked him for his seeming arrogance.  But he finished his year in France speaking superb French, something 90% of his classmates did not.  The key to engaging him was to help him achieve his goals by speaking French to him – simple as that.

Talk local

Going with the same logic, if you want to neutralize the snootiness of the localer than thou, get local with them.  If you ask them the right questions and show respect for their feel for the lay of the land, they will typically be willing to share.  However the will NOT want to hear about how expensive/cheap, big/small, quaint or ordinary local products and attractions seem to you compared to what they are at home.  A lot of American expats especially, are sick of being associated with American tourists that come bumbling into town with their potbellies, fanny packs and constant comparisons to how things are in Texas.  DO NOT embarrass or harass them with such observations, it does not help you or your bid for acceptance.

Traveling or working abroad is an art and you learn as you go.  Take the above into consideration, remember to respect and learn from the local way and you will set yourself up for success.

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Bjorn Karlman

So, in my last post I started to talk about the marriage of convenience and how, in my bachelor days, I was either worried of being accused of this kind of immigration/marriage fraud or being duped by some international golddigger who married me for the wrong reasons.  I promised a list or red flags to look out for if you are trying to avoid someone scamming you like this.  A complete list would stretch for miles but here are a few (and yes, forgive the obviously tongue-in-cheek entries):

You found her on any kind of mail order bride service. I’m not kidding.  These sites/catalogs are WAY to common.  I met a guy in a northern Philippine town and we struck up a conversation over mango pie at Jollibee.  He was from Utah, was missing teeth and seemed to drive his wife crazy with almost everything he said.  When she left to go to the rest room he told me she was a mail order bride.  Classy.
She his hot, young and from a developing country and you are old, fat and from a developed country. We have all seen this and it is easy to spot in others but not always as easy to see when you are the aging chubster.  Not to be looks-obsessed but be wary of model types climbing all over you on vacation, they’ll divorce you just as quick when they have grown enough roots stateside.
He or she asked you if you were a citizen of the US, any EU country or other rich country before taking the time to flirt with you further. This happened to ME a few years ago and since I was hyper-sensitive about this I immediately was suspicious of what otherwise seemed an innocent enough encounter.
His family was too eager to encourage the romance. Gold diggers can work as families.  When I worked in a Filipino fishing village I had a father implore me to marry his daughter.  I was 16 and clueless but even then it seemed a little too obvious.  I was the entire family’s ticket to a wealthier life.
Conversation always shifts to leaving country of origin. Pay attention to how often conversation shifts to border hopping.  It can be a veritable obsession for some.
He pushes for a speedy marriage. This may seem flattering but recognize it for what it is.  He may not be as head over heels for you as he is with the idea of a one-way ticket to your country.
Your romance has been brokered by someone who you met on vacation who promises to introduce you to someone, “beautiful’, “sexy”, etc. It happens all the time and this can be exciting.  Often the broker delivers too.  He or she is hot.  But make not mistake.  The broker will get a cut of the winnings one way or another.  And you will be paying.
Too much emphasis on filling out those immigration forms. Refuse to talk about embassies, consulates, immigrations papers or anything of the sort until you are convinced that this tropical romance is the real deal.
In all seriousness, if it is too late and you are already married to the fraudster, check out this site and get help:  http://www.immigrationfraudvictims.com/index.html
By the same token, it IS possible to over-think all of this.  I don’t work for the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services)  These posts were not intended to make you paranoid or xenophobic in your approach to international relationships.  International romance is a good thing.  Do not let the mere fact that you and your potential spouse are from different countries prevent you from finding and growing real love.  That would be a tragedy.  Just be savvy.  One more thing.  Here’s a list of the questions that may come up if you are in a US Citizen / foreign immigrant marriage.  It doesn’t hurt to be prepared:)
A list of likely questions that an immigration officer will ask you if you are suspected of immigration fraud
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Bjorn Karlman

“I like Americans, but they tend to be simple-minded,” Ichiro Ozawa, a key figure in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, said recently in a speech to Japanese lawmakers.  To be specific, he used a Japanese idiom that, taken literally, means “monocellular”.  “I don’t think (Americans) are very wise… but I highly rate their ability to put their choices into practice, “ he said, including the helpful tidbit: “They chose a black president for the first time in U.S. history,” adding that he once thought that would never be possible.

If you thought this a bit of a strange bout of pontification, consider this:  Last November, Ozawa graced the world with his view of Christianity – “exclusive and self-righteous” – and shared that U.S. and European societies were at a “dead end”.  Charming guy, huh?

A review of chipper Japanese commentary on the US would not be complete without input from former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, who referenced Y2K panic to illustrate the differences between Japan and the US.

“When there was a Y2K problem, the Japanese bought water and noodles. Americans bought pistols and guns,” Mr. Mori said. “If a blackout happens, gangsters and murderers will come out. It is that kind of society.”

As a Swede who now calls America home, I’m conflicted about how to react to this kind of commentary.  Accusations of American simple-mindedness and overall dumbness are obviously launched by more than just the Japanese. Most of my life (with the exception of the last decade), has been spent outside the United States.  I will admit to frequently agreeing with worldwide sentiment regarding the “dumb American”.  Whenever treated to the sight of portly American tourists with their fanny packs and white sneakers, bumbling onto the wrong train on the London Underground, butchering orders in French restaurants or offering unsolicited political opinions at Filipino dinner parties, I would shake my head in disbelief and wonder why they didn’t just stay at home.

Stateside we’ve all heard some variation of the stats that say the same thing: the quality of American education is slipping and much of the American population is spectacularly uninformed. In Just How Stupid Are We, Historian Rick Shenkman looked at how American ignorance affects the health of American democracy.  Some of his findings: Only 2 of 5 voters could list the three branches of the federal government. Forty-nine percent of Americans thought the president had the authority to suspend the Constitution.  And only a third of Americans realized that much of the rest of the world was against Bush’s invasion of Iraq.  Quite apart from the oft-cited stats on slipping science scores and math ability, the above stats directly affect the health of the American democracy and how its citizens interact with the rest of the world.

The flipside is of course, that for every worrying smear of damning statistics, there is an equally bold sign that American world dominance is not going away in a hurry.  As Barack Obama frequently reminds us, despite the need for educational reform, American schools and universities are still the envy of the world.  No place draws as many international students as do the American shores.  I know it is anecdotal but I have personally experienced the draw of American tertiary education.  I left the UK (where – by the way – everyone is convinced the UK has the best schools) to come to the US to earn my degree.

A real look at the strength of the “dumb American” epithet has to look at the duality that defines American society.  The fittest and the most sickly obese human beings are Americans.  The worst polluters and the most ardent tree huggers find their home here.  And, circling back to our opening thought from Mr. Ozawa, while the average American may have troubling deficiencies, there is something damn impressive about American can-do-it-ness.  For all the refinement and world knowledge citizens of other countries may have, some of the largest leaps of progress in civil rights, personal prosperity and world influence (military, economic, cultural) have been American.  As embarrassing an image as extreme American idiots create for this country, America is still defined by extraordinary opportunity and this makes up for a multitude of sins.

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Bjorn Karlman

Here’s a tip:  If even Pat Buchanan (yes, the same crazy geezer who called Hitler “an individual of great courage” and said America was built by white folks) thinks you “went too far” with your comments on any given subject, chances are you did.  The comments that sparked the disapproving words? Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called the backers of the Cordoba House “Ground Zero Mosque”, “radical Islamists” and helpfully offered: “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington.”

Despite Pat Buchanan’s rebuke, Gingrich hasn’t completely won the prize for “Most Ridiculous Republican” in the Ground Zero Mosque debate. Sarah Palin has done her level best in pontificating on the question of whether the moderate Iman, Feisal Abdul Rauf, should be allowed to proceed with plans to build the community center (which includes meeting rooms, a pool, a fitness center, a basketball court, a restaurant and culinary school, a library, a 500-seat auditorium, a mosque and a Sept. 11 memorial.)  Wordsmith that she is, Palin fired off a flock of tweets on July 16th, starting with a call, directed specifically at the “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the Ground Zero Mosque efforts.  Her use of the (admittedly helpful) non-existent word must have touched a raw nerve with someone on Team Palin who still had not gotten over her demand that the Obamas “refudiate” the NAACP for claims that the Tea Party is racist.  The tweet was deleted and this time, the “Peaceful New Yorkers” of the twitosphere were awkwardly exhorted to “refute” the construction project.  As if this wasn’t enough punishment, we were all then treated to this tweet: “Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”  The tipping point had been reached and the flood of tweets that ensued sent #ShakesPalin to Twitter’s trending topics and created a brand new Twitter account, @ShakesPalin.

And the Republican bluster didn’t stop there.  Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty who has a significant Muslim population in his state, would not back down from this claim that the building of the Ground Zero Mosque would “degrade and disrespect” Ground Zero. Mitt Romney chimed in via a spokesperson about “the wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda” in opposing it.  Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threw in his two cents with this question:  ”Is it just that we can offend Americans and Christians, but not foreigners and Muslims?”

I never thought I would miss Bush but, to his credit, he always stressed that Islam was a religion of peace.  In fact, following Obama’s defending the rights of the backers of the disputed construction to the right to “build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” former Bush aides were some of the only visible Republicans to support him in the midst of huge conservative criticism.  To replace Bush-era Republican courting of Muslims, we now have conservative leaders like Gingrich who also said: “There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”

If the current Republican leadership wants to abandon the party’s formerly peaceful stance and continue stoking anti-Islamic sentiment among their ranks, perhaps they could turn against their own sensitivities and take a lesson from a Frenchman. Far right politician Jean-Marie Le Penn has peddled his on-crack Islamophobia in France for years. Gingrich could arrange for an American version of Le Penn’s propaganda on handy posters like this one (created by Le Penn’s National Front party) that features a fully-veiled woman standing next to a map of France with the pattern of the Algerian flag on it and the words: “Non à “l’Islamisme” (No to Islamism).  The posters have drawn furious debate in France and the Algerian government has voiced its displeasure.
But then, the lippy contingent in American conservativism has never needed the French to draw international haters.  ”We are handing al Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup,” with the Islamic-center controversy, said Evan Kohlmann, an independent terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners who monitors jihadist websites. (The Wall Street Journal).  The article claims that Islamic radicals are justifying their violent threats by citing the American anti-Muslim rhetoric over the Cordoba Project and, other anti-Islamic rhetoric that has been building stateside.  A prime example is Pastor Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center (a mega-church in Gainesville, Fla.) who is planning a Sept. 11 “International Burn a Koran Day” where he plans to defy even his local fire department (who refused to issue him a permit for his event) in the act of intolerant stupidity that has elicited comments like this one on radical Islamic sites:

“Now, I wish to bomb myself in this church as revenge for the sake of Allah’s talk. And here I register my name here that I want to be an intended-martyr.”

Stay tuned for more of these friendly messages as American conservative leaders continue the downward spiral of anti-Islamic rhetoric stateside.

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Bjorn Karlman

She is a contender for “Most Infuriating American on the Planet”. After George W. Bush’s departure, the world needed a figurehead on which to direct frustrations with the ignorant American.  The beauty of the gift that arrived was that not only was she innocent of any real background in world affairs, gun-loving and prone to delightfully unfortunate colloquialisms in her adorable Alaskan accent, she was also incestuously aligned with pro-life evangelicals, the worst of studied, American scientific know-nothings and small town, hell-raising future Tea Partiers.  More importantly, she had the most photogenic gossip fodder for family since the Kennedys.  The world had found the new American it could love to hate, the very personification of all that was wrong with America.  AND she was hot.

Most of the international reaction to Palin was predictable.  Her (albeit downplayed) evangelical allegiance was bound to draw sneers from left-leaning journalists the world over. On April 9, 2008, French weekly Le Point called Palin “the fanatic of the American heartland”.  Her literalistic approach to religious narrative was enough to push some Europeans over the edge: “Who literally believes that Jonah made his home in a whale’s abdomen? Nobody really, apart from the US president – and the woman who was recently added to the 2008 Republican ticket.” said John Gibbons of the Irish Times in the heat of the 2008 election.

Unlike countless Americans with knickers-a-twist about Bristol Palin’s very obvious pre-marital knocking-up or Palin’s sister’s messy divorce, much of the world barely shrugged at these moral inconsistencies in candidate Palin’s family.  A Huffington Post piece on Buenos Aires residents’ reactions to the Palin nomination contained this reaction from architect Augusto Stigol, “I just wouldn’t consider the personal situation of a candidate. That’s related to his or her private life.”  This sentiment echoed the views of many continental Europeans that are almost disappointed if their leaders are not at least tangentially implicated in a saucy bedroom romp.

But while many were forgiving of and indeed, grateful for the soap opera drama that Palin et family brought to world political gossip, the less pardonable sin the world community pinned on the Alaskan had to do with one of the reasons she was so popular with much of the red-state electorate: her folksy, small-town, conservative, hopelessly-insular-yet-oh-so-patriotic-straight-shooting.  As reassuring as her dialect was to millions of Americans, she was jaw-droppingly alienating to much of the world community.

Take the East Asian commentary that erupted after Palin’s trip to Hong Kong to speak to those gathered for the annual investment forum for the Hong Kong-based investment bank, CLSA.  The Asia Sentinel rants that the standing-room-only crowd was treated to “90 minutes of boredom which had half the audience fiddling endlessly with their Blackberries. Ninety percent of her speech could have been – and probably was – written for a domestic US audience receptive to her ‘mom and pop’ populism.”  The speech was mostly an assault on US politicians she disagreed with, Obama’s health care overhaul and “the very notion of income redistribution” (Asia Sentinel).

The narrowness of Palin’s heartland rhetoric and her overall lack of world knowledge was annoying but hardly surprising. Palin’s 2008 vice-presidential run had unearthed precious gems such as her infamous claim to knowledge of Russia because you can see it from Alaska.  Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron claimed that Palin thought that Africa was a country and she didn’t know which countries were in NAFTA.  Her international travel was practically non-existent as she got her first passport ever in 2006.

Yet paired with global amazement at her lack of international savvy was fearful admiration of Palin’s political potential and raw popularity that, in more recent days, have cemented her undeniable status as Republican kingmaker. Conservative candidates are scrambling for her endorsement ahead of mid-term elections in the US.

As blogger Sarah Britten in South Africa’s Thought Leader put it, Palin is “a huntin’, shootin’, fishin’, Creationist, anti-abortion hockey mom who — to make that mouthful even more distasteful to Prius-driving pinko-liberal Obama-supporters — also has sex appeal and the apparent ability to connect with ordinary middle Americans”.

Palin is recognized worldwide as a force to be reckoned with.  And there are those that don’t share the left-leaning tendencies of much of world thought leaders.  “There are few sights more bloodcurdling than the liberal pack in full cry,” writes Janet Daley in an article titled “Sarah Palin gets the spiteful Margaret Thatcher treatment” in Britain’s Telegraph.

The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin is a testimony to the degree of panic … in Leftist circles… She is a renegade, the gender equivalent of an Uncle Tom…. Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Mrs Palin is coming in for both barrels of Left-wing contempt: misogyny and snobbery. Where Lady Thatcher was dismissed as a “grocer’s daughter” by people who called themselves egalitarian, Mrs Palin is regarded as a small-town nobody by those who claim to represent “ordinary people”.

What the metropolitan sophisticates failed to understand in the 1980s when Thatcher won election after election is even more the case in the US: most (and I do mean most) ordinary people actually believe in the basic decencies, the “small-town values”, of family, marital fidelity, and personal responsibility. They believe in and honour them – even if they do not manage to uphold them.

The life of small-town USA is based on the principles of those Protestant colonial settlers who founded the nation: hard work, self-improvement, personal faith and family devotion. Mrs Palin speaks to and for them in a way that patronising “liberal” elitists find infuriating.

As much as liberal commentators may find comparisons between Palin and Margaret Thatcher laughable, they are not completely unfounded.  Before the bulk of the Thatcher/Palin talk – way back in December 2008 – long-time Thatcher Aide, John O’Sullivan wrote a Wall Street Journal article titled Conservative Snobs Are Wrong About Palin / I know Maggie Thatcher. The two women have a lot in common. O’Sullivan speculates about the future:

She has plenty of time, probably eight years, to analyze America’s problems, recruit her own expert advice, and develop conservative solutions to them. She has obvious intelligence, drive, serious moral character, and a Reaganesque likability… she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter’s speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That’s the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

And that is why this folksy fighter can’t be written off.  She may turn off the urban elite along with huge swaths of the blue states.  But this scrappy pit bull always comes back, usually connects and never forgets her lipstick.  Under the liberal sneer of disdain lies fear and trembling.

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Bjorn Karlman

Remember John McCain’s “Obama fame” epiphany during the 2008 presidential elections? His negative ad pegged Obama as out of touch and the “world’s biggest celebrity”, pejoratively splicing in clips of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton with crowd shots of Obama rallies as the Democratic contender drew record numbers both at home and internationally.  Reactions abounded. Paris Hilton struck back with this parody ad about the “wrinkly white haired guy”, the “oldest celebrity in the world”.  The media was abuzz as, at least temporarily, the message of Obama’s supposedly counterproductive celebrity seemed to stick with some voters. But ultimately the roadblock proved incapable of doing any real damage and the young Democrat rode his wave of popularity all the way to a very decisive November 4th win.  The raw celebratory energy worldwide was palpable.  Gone was the bumbling, trigger-happy Texan who had infuriated world citizenry with his failure of a foreign policy and the near-sighted disaster of an economic policy that had brought the world to its knees. Impossibly high expectations and desperate hopes for something far better were pinned on the new guy. Conservatives prayed for the bubble to burst while liberals crossed themselves, willing global patience with the new administration.

Skip to the present.  As fickle as the American electorate can be, and despite his substantial drop in domestic popularity, Obama’s international celebrity and popularity have remained high.  While American memory of the blunders of his predecessor may be fading, international scars are still keenly felt and there’s still much hope in the new president.  Cracks are appearing though.  Take recent daggers thrown in the UK over the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Conservative UK commentator, Norman Tebbit, recently called Obama’s approach to the BP disaster a “crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance.”

The source of UK anger against Obama stems from what is seen as an overly aggressive stance against BP.  Tebbit’s rant finds at least partial backing in some of Obama’s BP-related posturing:

“crude” = “I don’t sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar… we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.” (Obama’s June 8 NBC interview)

“bigoted” = The relentless attacks on Obama’s attacks on BP as the disaster spirals completely out of control and Obama plays into British accusations of of “‘buck passing’ and ‘beating up’ the British-based company” (Daily Mail) instead of problem-solving.

“xenophobic” – Obama’s occasional use of the name “British Petroleum” that BP dropped years ago and therefore (it can be argued), playing this up as an issue with Britain when really this is the mistake of a multinational, a large stake of which is American.

“Winding up a hate campaign against the British is not a terribly smart policy. It may win Mr. Obama political support amongst the less well-informed voters right now, but the long-term effects are less sure. BP is also a major US company. Busting it might not be a very smart idea and not just on economic grounds. The message that non-US companies are likely to be treated as political punchbags would be a profoundly political message, too.”  (Tebbit)

Joining the ranks of political malcontents, Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, said that he was concerned about “anti-British rhetoric” and “name-calling” from American leaders.   And it’s not just a few oversensitive conservative politicos that are pissy: the UK’s Sunday Times quoted a survey that stated 64% of Brits and 47% of US residents claim Obama’s handling of the BP crisis hurt the relationship between the two countries and that in both countries, 22% of respondents went as far as calling Obama anti-British.

As exciting as this rift-rhetoric can be, much of the Anglo-American hand-wringing about it took place before a June 12 conversation in which Obama tried to soften the perceived attack on Britain over the disaster by saying that his unhappiness with BP had nothing to do with its British identity. Following the conversation, The Times‘s journalist Giles Whittel wrote: “The notion that American attacks on BP are anti-British is embarrassing. It is a fiction incubated by the thin-skinned, solipsistic and broadly anti- American world view that bubbles up like warm bitter in the best-kept villages of Little England whenever anyone in Washington has the temerity to break with the tradition of referring to the Old Country and its pretensions with anything other than awed admiration.”

Further evidence that Obama wanted to make peace?  He put beer on the table.  The trick worked a year ago when Obama invited black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and white Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley to the White House for a beer after causing an uproar by saying the police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates, Jr. for disorderly conduct. This time around, Obama and Cameron wagered a beer over who would win the June 12 US/England World Cup game.  When the teams tied, the politicos presented each other with their respective beers and gushed about the special relationship between the two countries.

There’s even a chance that the Anglo-American relationship will improve after the BP fiasco.  The evidence? Obama’s gift-giving is improving.  A beer far outshines his last gift to a British PM.  In exchange for an ornate pen holder from former PM Gordon Brown, Obama presented the British leader with a set of DVDs that don’t even work in British players.

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Bjorn Karlman

It was one of those victories that nobody could make any real sense of.  Twenty-four-year-old Rima Fakih from Dearborn, Mich. won the 2010 Miss USA Pageant on May 16 in Vegas and automatically, the blogosphere erupted with the combined firepower of ideologues on various sides of the US culture wars spouting pronouncements and journalists in the Middle East suddenly interested in an event that ordinarily would have been ignored as trivial, carnal and Western.  Why the fuss?  Fakih comes from an immigrant Shiite family with roots in Lebanon, specifically, the southern village of Srifa, near the port-city of Tyre.

One of the loudest voices was the blogger Debbie Schlussel who immediately dubbed the Michigander, “Miss Hezbollah” and started her article by trying to write off the win as affirmative action by PC judges: “It’s a sad day in America but a very predictable one, given the politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate in which we’re mired.”  It was hard to know what was more delightful about Schlussel’s statements: the predictability of her claim that the win was predictable, or the crazed, jumping-up-and-down desperate, “I-said-it-first” garbage she blurted out next: “The Hezbollah-supporting Shi’ite Muslim, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih –- whose bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist and immigration fraud perpetrator –- won the Miss USA contest. I was on top of this story before anyone, telling you about who Fakih is and her extremist and deadly ties.”

What were these extremist, deadly ties?  Well, apparently her last name, Fakih, is shared with Hezbollah members and, according to Schlussel, this makes the Midwesterner a “Lebanese Muslim Hezbollah supporter with relatives who are top terrorists and ‘martyrs’ in the group.”  Schlussel helpfully offers:  “If you don’t have relatives that have died killing some Jews and relatives who’ve murdered hundreds of Americans, you really don’t deserve to be Miss USA.”

Hmmm….  If we want to find out about what Hezbollah thinks of Fakih, why not go to the actual source.  Here’s a statement from a Hezbollah spokesperson, Hassan Fadlallah: “The criteria through which we evaluate women are different from those of the West.” What an endorsement.  She’s got to be working for them.

Beirut Online quotes Swedish political scientist Magnus Ranstorp who calls the suggestion of terrorist ties “ludicrous” says, “She would be flogged if she showed up in any of Hizbullah’s neighborhoods in Beirut.”

“My family comes from a Muslim background, and we’re not defined by religion,” said Fakih in an interview with HLN’s “The Joy Behar Show”. “I would like to say we’re a spiritual liberal family.”  What does she mean?  In an article titled “The Not-So-Radical Roots of Miss USA“, Foreign Policy‘s Hanin Ghaddar says that in Lebanon, claims that Fakih has connections to Hezbollah are seen as slander.  Both her American family and Lebanese relatives celebrate Christian and Muslim holidays, right next to each other.  In the entrance of her relative’s home in Lebanon, a Quran and the Bible are placed next to each other and the family is riddled with marriages between Christians and Muslims.  So far things are sounding very extremist.  It gets better:  “Their house is distinguished from the neighbor’s by a big U.S. flag hung from its balcony, surrounded by ribbons and flowers … Fakih’s 62-year-old aunt, Afifa Fakih — the only woman in the household wearing a veil — explained, ‘We love America … without the USA, Rima wouldn’t have fulfilled her dreams. She made us all proud, and for that, we thank the Americans.’ ”

Although there is certainly discontent about her bikini and pictures that surfaced of her fully-clothed in a Detroit pole dancing competition, many Lebanese are proud of Fakih’s win.   The Lebanese President Michel Sleiman congratulated Fakih on his Facebook page. “This is none of their business,” said Aunt Afifa about the Hezbollah snub, “Who cares about what Hezbollah thinks? She is our daughter, not theirs, and Lebanon is proud of her.” (Foreign Policy)

Before her Miss USA win, Fakih said in an interview with Global Arab Network that she hoped a win “would prove that Arabs don’t always try to separate themselves, but instead are integrated into American culture … There are Arabs that are caring, that are good people, and who love the country they live in. I think it would make the Arab image a more positive one.”

And that is perhaps the best outcome possible for the Miss USA pageant that both liberals and conservatives love to hate: a case has been made for looking at Arab culture outside of the context of religious extremism.  Just as Fakih’s family transcends sectarianism and embraces both Muslim and Christian traditions, wins of this nature speak to a more human side of us.  It proves that whether we are from Dearborn or Beirut, we can all come together in praise of superficial beauty and tacky tiaras.

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Bjorn Karlman