The most offensive ones were those uber-libs who curried favor with their Euro conversation partners by dissing America and agreeing with every nasty and insulting thing uttered about our country. What they did not seem to realize is that these Euro-weenies despise ALL Americans and laugh up their sleeves at such obviously needful people.

One does not begin to understand Americans abroad until one lives as one and with them for a few years. As for “Ugly American” tourists, they are just as plentiful as Ugly Russians, Ugly Brits (their football fan exports are loathed everywhere), Ugly Chinese, and Ugly Slavs.

If you want to get a taste of their total hypocrisy about race, stand in a customs line after debarking a plane behind someone with darker skin – shades of darkness do not matter. Inevitably, the customs officer will grill them four or five times longer than any Caucasian. Alternatively, you can watch Sky News programming to catch their racial innuendos that elicit laughs rather than a switch to commercial and return sans the joking news reader as would happen here faster than you can say “Polish joke.”

Spend some time along the Mediterranean coast in August and you will get to see tourist hell acted out by virtually every nationality on the Continent replete with behavior that makes college spring breaks in along the Florida coasts look like Benediction services on a Sunday afternoon.

You all seem to enjoy falling victim to stereotype-itis, something the Euro-chattering classes you seem to worship so much can spot in a nano-second after which they will spend your time with them laughing at you behind your backs. Time to get real, folks.

Can’t let this go, don’t know if anyone’s addressed it yet.

Joe Max did point out, tho, that Jello and the DKs were part of the second generation of punk, which he admits was more political.

Wasabi is fucking brilliant though. Jean Reno fights the Yakuza in Japan and bonds with the Japanese daughter he never knew he had.

Intermittent Roadway

FYWP! My Inaccessible Island link got eaten.

“…Jello Biafra made political statements and that those statements, while clearly anti-establishment, became more virulent against conservatives than liberals?”

Not if “California Über Alles” and “Holiday in Cambodia” (and a brief sideswipe in “Kill the Poor”) are anything to go by. Jello was an equal-opportunity hater. Haven’t really followed his later career, though, so maybe he became more exclusively anti-right over time.

“Nazi Punks, Fuck Off” mean anything? “Holiday…” was obvious irony, “Kill the Poor” was a sarcastic swipe at the militarist fantasy of the right of killing the rest of the world while leaving their property intact for the taking with the neutron bomb. “California Uber Alles” was a swipe at liberalism, not leftism. As is the name of the band, for that matter.

Ahem, from Wikipedia (hey, it’s easy):

Politically, Jello is a member of the Green Party[1] and actively supports leftist political causes. Biafra ran for the party’s Presidential nomination in 2000, finishing second to Ralph Nader.[2] He is a self-identified anarchist[1] who advocates civil disobedience, direct action, culture jamming and pranksterism in the name of political change. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics in the tradition of the Yippies to highlight issues of civil rights, social justice, economic populism, boosterism, anti-corporatism, peace movements, anti-consumerism, environmentalism, anti-globalization, universal health care, LGBT rights, anti-capitalism, reproductive rights, feminism, and the separation of church and state.

Not exactly apolitical in other words. That it’s only the second paragraph of a fairly long and detailed wiki article indicates the relative importance of his poltics to his public persona.

The punk scene I remember was always political- further left than left, radically anarchistic. Those people were angry. Sure there were people who were apolitical, but they were the ones I recall most likely to be dismissed as posers, in it for the clothes, the drugs, the moshpit. But then, that was Miami in the early ’80s- hardly the center of the scene, right?

Besides, compare it to the political expression in pretty much any other rock genre of the late 70s and 80s. Metal? Southern Rock? Prog-Rock? Hell, if you’re looking for apolitical rock music of the time, you’d look anywhere BUT at punk.

Ok, enough of that. Sorry for the rant. Still love ya, Mrs. T.

Anyway, in keeping with the rest of the thread…

Ahem:
The Umbrellas of Cherblart.

Oh, and I’ve got a few funny ugly American stories overseas stories too. When I was in the Navy, the carrier I was on visited Hong Kong. Now, I’ve loved Chinese food all my life and was really looking forward to the real thing. I got off the liberty boat and was mildly horrified to see about a thousand (no exaggeration) of my shipmates in a snaking and shoving line waiting to get into the McDonald’s on the pier. Couldn’t fucking believe it. Well, hell, we’d been away from the US for a whole month- who could go that long without a quarter-pounder?

Last summer, I was in Tokyo walking by Shinagawa station when an American guy (by his accent) in his 40s stopped me and asked if I knew where the McDonald’s was. It was right across the street, so I just pointed to it and said, “right over there, in the station. I’m going right by it, just follow me.” While we waited for the light to change, he looked embarrassed. As we crossed, he said out of nowhere that he wasn’t eating there, he was just meeting somebody. I guess he knew all too well what kind of yanks eat at McD’s in a great restaurant city like Tokyo and didn’t want me thinking he was one of them.

I know a guy there who, travelling a lot on business, basically divides his time between Tokyo, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Manila. He rarely eats anywhere but McD’s, Hard Rock, Tony Roma’s, or Denny’s. He’s actually a really nice guy, and neither conservative nor Republican, just completely unadventurous when it comes to food.

Speaking of Tokyo and anti-Americanism in movies, has anyone else in this country seen The Glorious Life of Sachiko Hanai? Just saying, if that scene in Paris bugs Romano, he’ll love seeing the animated severed finger of GWB raping the smartest woman in the world.

If it’s any consolation to your friend, I suspect those girls would do that in English-speaking cities and countries too.

I lobbied hard for the city motto to be changed to “Welcome To NY. Leave your money and get out”

That, or at least raise the kill limit during tourist season.

I remember a Letterman show which began, “From New York! Don’t come here! It’s Late Night with David Letterman!”

Yeah, Queens still kicks my ass. I believe the root of the problem is that the old blocks were chopped up into smaller lots for houses, so Lanes, Ways, Places, et al. had to be inserted. Then Robert Moses ran the damn highways through, leading to intermittent roadways. Brooklyn is much more navigable, and the Bronx is the motherland, or bad motherland.

B^4, you’re right. We Noo Yawkers have hearts of gold when it comes to helping people out, for the most part. And like you, I find plenty of people in other countries actually preferring to speak English to me.

Heh, I had a Romanian girl in Florence demand that I speak English in a bar… took me a while to figure out that she was a “B girl” and the place was sort of like a brothel… “artistic conversation” was not what I thought it would be. On the other hand, parlare la lingua made what should have been a sucky three hour train ride from Padua to Florence an excellent occasion, in which some old dude told me all about his rich American friend who lived a few towns over from me.

That is chock full o’ win, but I’d be afraid I’d fuck it up or do it to the wrong person or something and offend them.

They wouldn’t speak English to her all the time!

They responded coolly to her “Howdy! We’re best friends even though I’ve never seen you before in my life!” hyper-friendliness!

Translation: They wouldn’t treat me like Americans are the bestest evah!

I tried to explain to her that she had a lot of nerve expecting the Japanese to kiss her ass, much less to do it because she was an American with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. She cried.

But Jiminy Christmas, you’re in another country and you don’t bother to learn anything about their culture, then you’re offended when they treat you like the Ugly American you’re being?

The real clincher was when I asked her why she thinks the Japanese have to exhibit the courtesy of speaking English to her in Tokyo, when too many Americans are so fucking rude and ignorant that they not only can’t speak Japanese to their tourists in America, they would be horrified at the notion of even attempting it. And that’s just the language, never mind some of the less obvious cultural behavior differences.

Hell, I had every Japanese and Korean customer asking for me by name at one post office I worked at, simply because I bowed to them, if only a little, when serving them. They noticed. They remembered. And what did it hurt me?