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Jewish World Review June 18, 2001 / 28 Sivan, 5761
James Lileks
1. A French televised puppet show has suggested he does not know the
name of France's premier (which is, in case anyone asks, Petomaine Fromage)
2. A German newspaper has dubbed him "Bully Bush."
No! It can't be! Withering sobriquets from the Hun press! Ergo, the
Times seems to suggest, the Bush administration should scrap plans for
missile defense, sign Kyoto, reposition NATO as a book club and revive
McVeigh to atone for our "barbaric" habit of painlessly dispatching child
murderers. That's all. Then they'll be nice. Then they'll let us hang out
with them, as long as we sit in the corner and don't interrupt when they're
lecturing us on our imperialist sins.
Who cares what Europe thinks? Sure, they've had some high points; we can
all thank them for the arts, the cheese, the nice paintings and the bleak
movies that are really, really deep because they're all about, you know,
death and chess and stuff. But we've no reason to feel insecure. They had
Piaf; we had Billie Holliday. They have cathedrals; we have skyscrapers.
(And cathedrals.) They have centuries of rule by inbred families; our
aristocrats always peter out by the third generation. (e.g., the tertiary
Kennedy lads, the Bush daughters, etc.) They came up with Marxism; we came
up with Disneyism, which is more effective and considerably more
entertaining.
Did the Romans go to the moon? Did the Medicis invent jazz? Yes, Monet
was a great painter, but that was some time ago - what, exactly, has Europe
done for the world in the last 100 years? Two hideous wars doesn't quite
balance out Yves St. Laurent and the Beatles.
Yes, yes, how chauvinistically American, to use the utterly apt FRENCH
word for inordinate devotion to a national cause. But it's fun to give them
a ration of their own snooty bile - particularly when the European leaders
act as if Bush is riding in on a bronco, shooting holes in the Gobelin
tapestries and relieving himself in the fireplace. So why don't they like
Bush?
Because they are Flaming Commies. Well, that's harsh. Smouldering
Commies, then. Okay: warm glowing socialists. They seem to believe that
America is a snarling laissez-feral nightmare where old people are regularly
cleared from the factories by giant plows. We should be more like Europe,
where taxes flay the rich to their ivory bones, and the entire economy is
built around protecting 30 million workers and the 197 million bureaucrats
who serve them.
The European unemployment rate is about twice that of the US, but that
doesn't tell the whole story. European workers are showered with many fine
benefits - 35 hour workweeks, four weeks vacation time in any month that
contains a vowel, 18 years paid maternity leave. Naturally, this has the
same effect on job creation as a bucket of cold water on mating cats. But it
also means that the jobs Europeans don't have are so much better than the
jobs the Yanks don't have.
Nevertheless, we're supposed to learn from them. Crushing taxes that
eliminate jobs, penalize success, and make for a comfy dole. Health care for
everyone, paid for by magic money-sprites that come in the night and leave
pots of gold on the hospital steps! Mass transit! Lots of nuclear power!
Smoking everywhere! Monolithic cultures based on language and tightly
defined ethnic identities! Bloody wars with death camps, pogroms -
Wait a minute . . . okay, just the taxes and health care and choo-choo
parts, then.
Bush will do fine. Just remember what's really bugging many American
Europhiles: They can never be French or Italian. They're stuck here. Anyone
can be an American. There's nothing exclusive about it - and oh, how that
pains the egalitarian
06/01/01: One of the stranger indexes you'll ever hear about
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