lovely america!

threefates wrote: Pertinent now:  The American Red Cross/ Doctors Without Borders and all other American help organizations that are the leaders when natural disasters happen worldwide Here's 10 other things... http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dsouza070203.a sp

I agree with all those points,America has many great qualities,probably mostly great qualities,actually. But all those points are socio/economic/political,not cultural and that's the area I care about. We have tv channels over here now that broadcast 90% American programs,and if you walk into a video/dvd store 90% of the selection is American,switch on the radio and 90% of the music is American and that's just in Norway with a puny 4 million inhabitants,even big countries like France and Germany are getting worried about this,so what chance does a tiny place like Norway have to stem this tide? You Americans really have no idea what this feels like from the perspective of a small country. I couldn't care less about what a great place the US is to live in,it's probably true,but what does that matter when every day I walk down the street I see advertising billboards without a single Norwegian word on them? We have Hollywood movies about baseball on tv here now. Baseball movies?! We don't even have baseball in this country! A few years ago we didn't have Halloween,now we do. A typical American tradition like prom night was completely unknown here until a few years ago,now we have it, complete with limousines and awkard teenage boys in ill fitting tuxedos. American football has just started here,so I guess baseball is probably just around the corner. And I have no doubt thanksgiving will be next. It has absolutely no place in Norwegian culture or history,but what the hell?,it's American so we must have it. You see,that's the attitude of so many people over here now: If it's American,we must have it,no matter what it is. This only extends as far as culture,but unfortunately that's the area I care about.,and it could be the thin edge of the wedge.

But please,lets' just leave this,shall we? There's nothing anyone can do about this anyway,a language professor even said recently that in a hundred years all the Scandinavian languages will have disappeared entirely,and I guess it's no great secret what language will have taken over. I accept the overtaking of European culture by the American as something inevitable,but it's just such an impotently helpless feeling for someone in love with European culture and history and who was probably born in the wrong century.

gdub411 wrote: Pixel Pirate wrote: Most of the things you mention would be on my list of negative items,rather than positive,Arcer which goes to show just how different people can be.  Am I breaking my new year's resolution already?! I must try harder. Are you related in any way to the Uni-Bomber Pixie?-just curious.

I thought no one knew that! No,no I stop way short of violence to anyone,and actually I'm not as anti America as some,well,all of my America bashing posts may indicate. It's just that being very much a European classicist,someone who actually loves Shakespeare,Ibsen,Haydn,Shelley blah,blah,blah,you get the picture,it's downright painful to see my beloved classical European culture being thrown on the scrap heap of history by Britney Spears,Ricki Lake,Disney,McDonalds and all of the others of the most reprehensible parts of American junk culture. I shouldn't be upset with the US really because you haven't forced any of this on us,you have simply offered them to us and most of my fellow Europeans have said: Yes please!! It's them I'm pissed off at actually for wanting this garbage,it's not your fault,you haven't put a shotgun to anyone's head and forced them to watch Jim Carrey movies,people have made the choice to do so. And that's the terrible thing,since by doing so they're slowly killing European culture. And believe me,this is not delusional rantings. Classical music is dying in the concert halls over here and so is classical theater. No one under 30 seems remotely interested in our European cultural heritage anymore,even Financial Times had an article about it a couple of years ago and The Spectator writes of further signs of the decline of classical European culture constantly. It seems that Shakespeare might be removed from the curriculum of the University here in Oslo because students just aren't interested anymore.Hamlet replaced by Donald Duck . It's not really America's fault,and I guess it was probably inevitable but it's still very sad.

Pixel Pirate wrote: Most of the things you mention would be on my list of negative items,rather than positive,Arcer which goes to show just how different people can be.  Am I breaking my new year's resolution already?! I must try harder.

Are you related in any way to the Uni-Bomber Pixie?-just curious.

Yank-bashing continues unabated and mostly happy
to partake (on certain issues) but i think it's time to
give the americans some temporary respite.
Let's celebrate the great things the US has given us!!
so here goes....

errrrrm

only joking...

how about

movies (the major development of the 20th century's
major art form)

rock and roll (the perfect distillation of a variety of
european and african musical forms)

the hamburger (when done well - the world's top
junk food)

cars with fins (who can argue with that)

soul music (music you CAN dance to as opposed to
European techno which is impossible to dance to)

HBO (television for adults - and don't give me the old
BBC drama rubbish - I'll take The Sopranos over
Brideshead Revisited any hour of any day)

New York - the world's greatest city, bar none (even if
it is a little bit of Europe grafted onto the east coast)

Jazz - music to feed your mind and soul

wide open spaces - which provided a home for more
potato-eating paddies than was properly charitable
(including my brother - but then he was always
slightly right of Genghis Khan in this thinking so fit
right in)

Jessica Simpson - what would the world be without
the 'chicken of the sea'

Gotta be loads more cool stuff (science,
entertainment, engineering, etc) - answers on a post
please.....