Seattle is closer to France than to Texas
Hat tip to
L.G.F. for this link to
this article by Seattle P-I editorial cartoonist David Horsey:
bq. The typical citizen of Seattle would feel more at home, ideologically speaking, in Paris than in Dallas. Yet, even a liberal Seattleite would be shocked by the images of America drawn by French schoolchildren.
And more:
bq. They might hate our president, but the French loved us -- which is no great surprise since most of what we said was what they wanted to hear... ...Nevertheless, we were brought in with the assumption that we would be Bush bashers and we lived up to expectations.
bq. At one point, as we stood onstage getting our pictures taken with yet another student being awarded a prize for yet another anti-American image, I turned to Benson and said I felt like one of the Dixie Chicks, the all-girl country singers who got heat in the heartland for denouncing their president at a concert in Europe. We realized it was one thing for us to point out our country's flaws in our daily cartoons and quite another to see our homeland portrayed in such brutal imagery by French schoolkids echoing what they hear from their parents and teachers and see in the media.
As Charles pointed out regarding this last paragraph:
bq. "But Americans like Rall and Horsey do their best to feed it—and Horsey, for one, seems to be hearing the sound of chickens coming home to roost"
And Horsey does seem to have some second thoughts - he says this:
bq. As sharp critics who, nevertheless, love our home, we tried to point out that the America simplistically rendered in the children's drawings was a mere caricature, that our country, like theirs, is a complex society struggling to make real its founding principles of liberty, justice and equality. But it was impossible to move the conversation far from the president and his triumphalist foreign policy. Europeans are preoccupied with their disdain of Bush.
But then he follows with this sentence:
bq. It would be nice to think that, once the current occupants of the White House are retired to their ranches, think tanks and corporate boards, all will be harmonious again between old allies, and French schoolchildren will see America in a kinder light.
Talk about out of touch with the realities of world politics... For an example of Mr. Horsey's cartooning, check this one out
here. Goering=Bush indeed...
Posted by DaveH at March 1, 2004 4:36 PM