I like your checklist, Morton (#9)

The other night I was pondering the difference in the deliberate media caricatures of Americans and Europeans. The differences are stark.

First, in Europe, it appears there are only two sorts of people: really smart fashionable people who Americans should want to imitate, and rioting urban, never-named “youths.”

But, in America, global media has proliferated countless caricatures, almost all bad. There is the “fat American,” the SUV-driving wasteful American, the stupid “Cowboy” American, and the “trailer-trash” American. There is also the uncouth American – these are US citizens that think the death penalty and Bush’s tax-cuts should remain. And there is of course the “racist,” slave-owning American who must still, over a century after abolition, repent to the “World Community.” I could go on and on.

I understand that the tax for being the world’s policeman is to bear the brunt of “pig” jokes and their surrogate insults. But, I’m still left with a nagging question: Is Europe’s electorate being served by their media’s rampant caricaturing of us, Europe’s cultural son?

Or is this tendency to disproportionately caricature her historic ally actually a symptom of Europeans’ rampant denial of the dire straits that they’re in?

In the ongoing contest over the Continent’s future, the battle of Havel vs Chirac is in its fifth round, and I’m firmly in Havel’s corner.