This morning I called my family in Portugal, to take care of some little family matters. Those were disposed of as quickly as it’s possible for a sleep-fogged author and two cross-talking parents to dispose of.
But the thing they really wanted to talk about, what they wanted to hear from me was what I thought Romney’s chances in the election were now that Obama had defeated him in the first debate.
Yes, you actually read that correctly. Go up and read it again.
Apparently, according to the Portuguese Media, Obama was the better-prepared debater and Romney was clearly shown to be lacking. The “Right Wing” media over there have stuck out their neck so far as to say it might have been a draw.
I know, I know. You’re now wondering if my parents live in an alternate universe. So did I.
My mother, who is the one closest to me politically, thought my denial of those reports was wishful thinking, and is still not convinced that Romney can overcome his poor performance… last night.
While making breakfast for the kids, I think I came to understand, if not the reports the mechanism behind them.
You see, my parents, like maybe 50% of Portuguese (and 99% of older Portuguese), don’t understand English. The other 50% often have trouble with colloquial – and particularly American – English.
Even most of the media doing the reporting there will miss nuances. And yes, body language is different, too.
Heck, the Toledo (Ohio) Blade even has the headline “Challenger finds own voice as President struggles for footing.” And it will do anything to paint a Democrat in a good light and demonize a Republican.
Yup. When all the professsional Obamarrhoids are sharpening their katanas and composing their haikus because of Obama’s abysmal performance, it’s pretty safe to say Romney didn’t lose that debate.
“One of America’s Newspapers”?
The Blocked News Alliance?
The model for the Dacron Republican-Democrat?
Say it isn’t so.
When you’ve lost Dr S Amjad Hussain, you’ve lost Middle America.
Trickle down government has a name, it is called Socialism. That it is a worldwide failure is difficult for some to accept, especially those in the media who have pushed it so hard and seen their market share fall as a result. They must keep pushing it if they have any hope of getting their own mouths on the government teat.
This is typical of foreign coverage of US politics and such. Talk to a European or Aussie or something sometime; hilarious.
The root cause is they get only super left coverage of the USA: Herald Tribune = NYT, CNN, or worse–BBC.
Typical European considers Bill Clinton the greatest President in history, etc.
Look at nzz.ch and lemond.fr on google translate
O lost in two languages…..
See The Diplomad 2.0 at thediplomad.blogspot.com for a good analysis.
Interesting, I’ll have to ask my wife about the view from the Philippines.
BTW if American media is biased, then Euro media are composed of people fired from Pravda for lacking objectivity. This is partly because most of them are state-funded, partly because Euros are a bit farther left generally, and partly because the self-selection problem is even worse there than it is here.
We lived in Ireland when I was a teen in the 70s. It was completely clear that McGovern was going to trounce Nixon (we literally only had one TV station and 2 radio stations).
Gene
Not all Portuguese media. “Publico”, a major national newspaper titled “Romney wins the first debate”. But it’s true that Portuguese media is strongly pro-Democrats. Often they talk as if they could influence the result of the election.
Too funny. Your description of the Portuguese media is rings so true when compared to the Danish. The only difference is that most Danes, especially the younger ones, speak English. Pretty well, in fact. And since too many of the usual sources in the American media gave the debate, if ever so grudgingly, to Romney, they’re stuck.
… so, in search of a scapegoat, they’re going with the apparently awful job that Jim Lehrer did (headline in Jyllandsposten, Kritik hagler ned over ordstyrer – Criticism Hails (ie, Rains) Down on Moderator).
Refer them to the Brazilian news paper O Globo which says that Romney won the battle, if not the war.
http://moglobo.globo.com/integra.asp?txtUrl=/mundo/romney-venceu-primeira-batalha-mas-nao-guerra-afirmam-analistas-6280681
Media that will lie to you about one thing is probably already lying to you about others. If you are being lied to, you will not make the best decisions, a phenomenon that puts your entire society in slippery, knee deep molasses. Anybody looking at such a society both laughs at the spectacle and sees them as suckers who are unusually easy to part from their money.
Objectively, both left and right need to demand an accurate media. The penalties for not having one are real, spread throughout society, and simply hurt everybody, even those internal factions that biased media may favor.
Portugal is no typical European country: it’s the only one with socialism enshrined in the Constitution (isn’t it?)
In fact, both BBC and La Repubblica (Italian “left-wing”) claim Romney the winner.
I think I detect a hint in there that it was all about “style”; but since Europeans have always admired Obama’s style, even that is a big concession.
I also note that L’Espresso (Italian “left-wing” magazine) was more critical of the USSR during the Cold War than the NY Times is now.
You’re quite right that the Euro media gets its narrative about the USA from American media, and in fact I suspect that many get all narrative for all non-euro countries from the US media and the BBC. The disproportionate concern for the Palestinians, as opposed to, say, the Congolese, is evidence for that.
Another factor is the prejudice that American politics is necessarily more “right-wing” in some unspecified sense. Therefore the Republican candidate will be considered extreme a priori, before he can even make his case.
The fact that Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Estonia, and even the welfare states of Finland and Denmark are now reckoned to have more economic freedom than the US, should challenge this prejudice; but probably it won’t: it’s easy to twist the meaning of “right-wing” so that the US remains more “right-wing”.
“I don’t know how Romney won with such a large margin. Nobody I know voted for him.”
Cross Portugal off the list of places I want to visit. What an insane little hater of a country they got there.
In fairness, the two biggest Irish papers, the Irish Times and the Irish Independent, proclaimed Romney the clear winner, even though the Independent tilts a bit left, and the Times is hard left. The Guardian, the home of Britain’s crazy left, also proclaimed Romney the clear winner. Ditto for the left wing BBC. There was a complaining tone to the coverage, of course, but a clear admission that Romney battered Obama.
Reuters has a story about how Romney’s strong debate performance has European leaders on edge.
Of course it does. They prefer a pushover like Obama as US president. Even better, Obama wants to tear down America and create a socialist country in the European model. They want a weaker America, too. Just no so weak as they’d actually have to pay for their own defense.
My experience with reading newspapers in Spain is that they simply regurgitate exactly what is printed in the New York Times…. which fits exactly with what you’re hearing from your parents in Portugal.
I can vouch for media here in Australia pushing a “Romney is toast” line. Their response to the debate seems to be to ignore it for now. However one local radio show I caught stated that the debate saw Romney “getting a little better” and then suggested it must be a tie or something, because Obama was polling well.
If Romney wins there will be journalists in deep shock down under.
I remember when Oliver Stone’s movie JFK premiered in Lisbon, the Portuguese president, Mario Soares, praised the movie for its historical accuracy.
As for The Gift crossing Portugal off his list of countries he wants to visit, he is making a major mistake because the Portuguese do like Americans. It’s not their fault that their media is lazy and biased. But then so is the American media.
Typically it takes several days after these debates for the winner to be recognized; there is the initial take and then the one that develops and sets after a few days of “water cooler” conversations. Probably not the case this time, and we can all do our part to “set” the narrative in days to come. As opportunities arise drop a few snarky comments at the water cooler, in the grocery line, about Obama getting his a** kicked, about the thin air making him as light-headed as he is light-weight or about him being as unprepared to debate Romney as he was to be president.
OK, I also checked Le Monde and De Volkskrant (Dutch “left-wing”) as well as the English edition of Der Spiegel.
The balance of western European opinion seems to be:
UK: Romney win
Ireland: Romney win (see #14, William Sjostrom above)
Netherlands: Romney win
Germany: Romney win
France: Romney win
Italy: Romney win
Portugal: Obama win (with reservations: see Azores #7 above)
Denmark: Jim Lehrer lost (see jdm #8 above)
That’s pretty one-sided if you ask me.