"How Important Are We to the Americans?"

My friend Stan, the bus driver, asked me how important I thought the Australians as a people were to the Americans. He asked if we thought as much about them as they do about us.

I grimaced and shifted in my seat uncomfortably, not wanting to ruin my friendship with my new friend, and said, "No, Americans don't think of anyone but themselves. Maybe, we'll think of Europe or the Middle East, but not Australia."

He looked at me excitedly and said, "Well, I've told all of my friends that, but they never believe me. Now I know. "

I laughed. He smiled, it was all good.

So, I needed some empirical evidence. Just how important was the David Hicks case in the States. David Hicks was suspected of terrorism and is being held at Guantanamo Bay, and he's been there since he was captured in 2002. He's on the Australian news EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. I mean, he's usually in between stories about weather or grapes, right up there at the front. He's were GWB would be in our news reels. It's completely WILD.

I found my empirical evidence when I pulled a Bill Bryson (Author of "A Walk in The Woods" or "In a Sun-Burned Country") and searched the NY Times for the last 5 years. About 140 articles came up, 50 of which were unrelated to Oz's David Hicks.

I then searched "The Australian", a major newspaper over here. It only let's me search for a week, but just in the past 7 days, there had been 7 articles on him. 7! One per day! So, let's look at the math. Say they published for 50 weeks a year, for five years, at one article per day. That's 1750 articles! Another news site returned 238 articles in the past 30 days. Compared to our 90 or so. Suck on that!

So, Stan, I think you are right. But rest assured, Australia means a lot to some Americans, and they're the ones you really need to worry about. Who cares about GWB? I'm cool, and I'm at your end of the globe, so, no worries.

Cheers