From the BBC's "Have your say" pages...

[mrph]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3630309.stm

While Europeans whine, complain, and grow nearer committing suicide over their low self-esteem, Americans are winning everywhere! This page is always full of idiotic remarks from around the world that Americans get a kick out of reading. Frankly, America is the only nation on the planet that can accomplish anything. Losers always make excuses.
David Croft, Tampa, FL

*boggle* Meanwhile, back on this planet...

I know, I know. Don't feed the trolls. But still, I wonder why the BBC keep publishing comments like this when it's clear that they get much more coherent criticism from the USA (and elsewhere), too. They don't publish all the knee-jerk British crazies (well, except on the Question Time pages), after all.

Are they just trying to convince us that the USA really is full of people who think this way?

Comments

[erming.livejournal.com]

I think it is part of an ongoing campaign by the US government to persuade us that we don't really want to visit them. They have tried various tactics, from repeatedly cancelling planes for security reasons, over tough immigration, their president's approach to the rest of the world, and now they are trying to get morons comments on the European bulletin boards.

I guess they're also trying to put people off by requiring visas / having to be photographed and have their fingerprints taken.

Then all of a sudden they'll wonder why Disneyland has had such a fall of European visitors...

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

Then all of a sudden they'll wonder why Disneyland has had such a fall of European visitors...

Because of Napster and Kazaa, *obviously*. Duh!

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

Sure, it's provocative, and not particularly fair-minded, but... somewhere underneath all that innocent self-confident brazen nationalism, he does have a point.

[zarbi.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why the BBC bothers with any kind of feedback or 'have your say' web pages. Its all so self-selecting.

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

I think they're really important actually... they do tend to represent a pretty fair cross section of the views which are posted in so far as I know... and as for the ridiculous comment above, this unfortunately represents a significant body of opinion and therefore should be presented - and hopefully argued against by others...

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

he does?

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

Have you watched Fox News recently? I think the Fox's content demonstrates fairly clearly that there *are* a significant number of Americans who think like this. But I agree with you that it would be v. valuable to give as much air space to the equally large number of more sensible views... The Al Jazeera site has some very interesting discussions between (mostly sensible) Americans and Al Jazeera columists. http://www.aljazeera.com (I think)

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, there's Fox. There's always Fox.

But somehow I assume that the people watching Fox don't actually read many other news sources. Because if they did then why the hell would they watch Fox... :)