American Idiot

I was over at a friends house for dinner a couple of Sundays ago. We were all sitting around the table, eating, enjoying, sipping some wine. My mate's girlfriend joined us for dinner, and I think we got off on a bad foot right away. If you know me, you know how horrible I am with names. I had met this girl before, I know I did, I recognized her face. I couldn't for the life of me remember her name. Well, she remembered me and remembered that I had not remembered her name the last time we met, so she basically started hating me right away. (Greeeatttt.)

We were chatting at dinner, and we got into a conversation that resulted in her asking if anyone knew of a city called Columbo. I said not, that was US television show, the only city I knew that vaguely Colombus, OH. She looked at me and said, "I'll bet there's a world city named Columbo. You see, there's this thing about Americans. They have a reputation for being self centered and know absolutely nothing about world geography and history. I see you're not exception."

I'm sure I turned red straight away. I was quick on my feet and said, "Well, we don't need to look any further than home, we've got all we need to be great." I followed this up with a laugh to show that I was half kidding, and I got a group laugh from the Aussies. I was more seriously then I could have let on in that moment.

I know we have that reputation world wide. But, it's not like anyone else in that situation was volunteering any examples of this chicks' magic city. I agree with this statement in some ways, a lot of Americans don't look further than home and we come across as stupid in the world view. They have a program here called the "Chasers War on Everything", which is what the next comes from. I do love it, you should watch the episode where they run up to Johnny Howard with various objects. Anyway, here's a good Australian view of Americans:

With that, I'll bet I could find an equal number of retarded Australians. This is essentially propaganda. Funny, but, it could be repeated in any country. Entertaining.

But, lately, I've been chatting with my flatmates and history has been coming up quite a bit. Here's the example I'll cite. One of my flatmates was trying to explain that her family name had been altered because it began as Boleyn. After Anne Boleyn was killed, they had had to change their surname to avoid persecution. Someone asked why Boleyn had been killed. Not a single Australian in the room could recall, so I finally broke down and told the story. The "stupid American" was telling the colonial commonwealth country dwelling people a story that took place in their "mother country".

This happened again, and again. Major wars, major events, ancient and modern...all with my resident Australians having no idea what went on. I never expected them all to know anything about US History, but I did expect them to know European History like the rest of us. Especially England, given that they are in the commonwealth and technically still under Elizabeth II.

I'm not a history buff, I haven't had global history since 10th grade with Mrs. Darrow! (Maybe I'm proof of how fucking rockin' Mrs. Darrow is!) But, I still evidentially have a much wider working knowledge of past world events, and, as I've found, a much larger working knowledge of current world events.

Australia loves to hate Americans. I think the real case is that Australia loves to envy Americans and the States...we took the chances, made a name for ourselves. We have opinions, we make them heard. Love us or hate us, you know our name and there is some degree of success in that.

This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black!


Hey Australia, watch who you're calling stupid. We're not all dumbasses.

Cheers Big Ears

Oh, and Colombo is a city in Sri Lanka. Columbo is a TV detective. But don't worry, the smartass Australians didn't know that either. :-)