Comments on: Germantown

By: Teresa

Teresa — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:18:18 +0000

Yes I am of German/Irish descent which makes me neatly scattered I suppose *grin*. It’s a theory I hadn’t thought of before – I shall have to ponder it for a while.

By: JSAllison

JSAllison — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 19:35:14 +0000

A lot of them probably formed their opinions based on the bar crawlers they met at 2am at the gasthaus outside the local US kaserne. Frequently, the further away the nearest US troops were stationed, the better they liked us. Except around the border camps on the East German and Czech borders. We were pretty universally well-regarded in those parts, as the alternative was visible right over *there*.

By: cpl blondie

cpl blondie — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:31:48 +0000

huh…odd the Germans that seem to have such a low opinion of us, don’t seem to live here or are citizens of the US.

By: tom

tom — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:26:57 +0000

In a post a made a while ago that I can’t find now I wrote about why the French are so ripe to be hated and not the Germans, Turks or Swedes. A bit later a French guy wrote something similiar to what you’re saying in the NY Times and I always meant to update that post. He argued that for electoral reasons it’s politically impossible to villify in a large way Germans or Swedes. On a list of countries that get flak from conservatives, Sweden comes in second to France. Yet that never comes to the surface in the way that emnity towards France does. The reason is, of course, that if you drive North of the Twin Cities to, say, Taylor Falls, you’ll see a series of small towns on the way. All of them have signs that say, “Welcome to Chisago City/Lindberg/wherever. Population 1,000. Sister city to Bjornheim/wherever Sweden. Every last one of those towns has that sign. Who wants to risk needlessly alienating Minnesota and Wisconsin? But, as you say, it is more or less risk free to villify the French.