We are the new media.
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But the US media doesn’t get the message.
By Paul Geary
January 5, 2005
The New Editor
It’s axiomatic that the Europeans and the British loathe George Bush, so I brought on my
London trip the trepidation that I might be the recipient of unfriendly lip service. Sure
enough, I got a fusillade of anti-American and anti-Bush venom: from other Americans.
My hotel had a sitting room off the lobby with a television playing the BBC news, in which
folks from around the world dropped in to chat with each other, smoke, or quietly watch the
set. Two folks in particular honed in on coverage of US cheapness toward the tsunami
victims, or the latest tidbit of disaster from Iraq. They weren’t French, or German, or locals.
They were from New York City.
Between guffaws at the president, I learned from them that Republicans like Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Rudy Guiliani were “fronts” for “back room deals” that Bush wanted to
make. I learned that the British who patronized McDonalds – every McDonalds that I passed
(ok, I went in a couple of them) was packed – did so because they were poor and had no
other recourse. (A Big Mac there is nearly $4.)
Finally, one of them actually said what I think every American liberal believes but won’t say
out loud: that there are stupid people in the world (“less savvy” was the actual term used)
who need guidance from the smarter people. And of course George Bush should be one of
the guidees.
(The same gentleman hoped that the woman who massaged his feet during his past trips to
Phuket in Thailand was still alive after the tsunami. The compassion of the American liberal
knows no bounds.)
The Brits don’t loathe America nor do they despise George Bush with anything approaching
the degree that the American media would have us believe, nor evidently to the degree of the
typical Upper West Sider. That the American media’s counterparts across the pond loathe
George Bush serves as a proxy for British public opinion, and that’s what we’re served as
evidence.
In fact, the only two comments that I heard from British locals – or anyone else outside the
media – about George Bush in my week in London were rather neutral. One man, a
Londoner, said that he couldn’t believe that so many Americans didn’t accept the result of
the 2000 election and “just get on with it.” One other Brit opined that “it seems Bush does
quite often get the short end.”
Paul Geary is a contributing editor for The New Editor.
Paul Geary
David Rogers