What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
I’ll happily allow myself to be called a free speech extremist, an individual liberty extremist, a national sovereignty extremist, and many other kinds of extremist besides. But I would never call myself, or consent to being called, a “right wing extremist” or “far right extremist,” because that would be inaccurate. Nor would I identify myself…
The view of America from Danish media is almost invariably wrong. Coverage isn’t just unintentionally inaccurate or incomplete—notice I said just—but also often wildly misleading. Whether that’s because they source so much of their American material from partisan sources or because Danish journalists and editors are themselves all wildly partisan is irrelevant: the end product…
The big jury story making the rounds right now is the saga of juror #52 in the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd. I’m more interested in a very different jury. It’s called “The Oversight Board” and its decisions are final: there is no appeal. It’s Facebook’s Star Chamber, and DR makes…
If you still don’t understand why so many of us consider “wokeness” to be a toxic blend of stupidity and racism, invest 139 seconds of your time in watching this video. It was recorded on April 23 but was released on Twitter yesterday and has already been viewed several million times. The Daily Mail has…
A couple of news stories and a single personal anecdote, taken together, suggest to me that something like actual life may be returning to Denmark. It may take our politicians a while to catch up, but they’re always a lagging indicator. First, from Berlingske: Lundgren withdraws from the media: The crisis is overBerlingske.dk, May 2…
The blog is going to go dark for the next few days, as the Danish Store Bededag (“Great Prayer Day”) holiday weekend dovetails perfectly with my need for a little extra time to attend to private matters, not least among those some time away from the news. It’s a well-timed break, and by jumping into…
Today in Berlingske, American correspondent Michael Bjerre offers his take on Biden’s first 100 days: Analysis: Trump was noisy and stood as a promise-breaker after 100 days. Biden is boring – but has created change, Michael Bjerre, Berlingske.dk, April 28 Bjerre says that, in contrast to the noisy predecessor, American now has a “boring” president…
Have you been listening to the American CDC or the Danish Sundhedsstyrelsen? Do you trust them? Do you consider them credible? I can’t answer those questions for you, but here’s something the American CDC is saying: Obesity is a common, serious, and costly chronic disease. Having obesity puts people at risk for many other serious…
Nothing excites the Danish press more than international recognition, so the headlines this Monday morning were overflowing with coverage of the “Best International Film” Oscar awarded to Druk (the English title of which is apparently “Another Round”) at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony: Druk receives an Oscar for Best International FilmBerlingske.dk, April 26 Thoms Vinterberg wins…
I was a teenager for seven years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Most of my friends at the time were also teenagers. My experience of teenagers was mostly limited to my peers in our suburban Massachusetts hometown and the surrounding communities. My horizons broadened when I went away to college in Pittsburgh and…
A drug-addled thug on the brink of (or in the throes of) an overdose died while in the custody of law enforcement. Was it murder? An accident? The family blamed the police; the officers involved claimed they’d done everything by the book. The victim’s name was Alex Billmeyer. He was a white man from Dubuque,…
There’s a giddy anticipation in the air: the trial of Derek Chauvin, accused of manslaughter in the death of George Floyd, is now up to the jury. Which is really exciting, because it could result in riots, and riots are big news, and big news is big business! (It’s a big business that crushes small…
In today’s Berlingske, Mikkel Danielsen has an article examining the schism between the two flavors of crazy fighting for control of the Democrats’ agenda in the House of Representatives. Ice-cold mood among Democrats’ stars: Speaker mocked AOC with baby voice, Mikkel Danielsen, Berlingske.dk, April 19 It breaks no new ground: it merely chronicles, very briefly,…
In a headline item yesterday I linked to a B.T. story about the Project Veritas videos released earlier in the week that had revealed a CNN technical director bragging about the many ways in which the network actively, deliberately, and aggressively misled their viewers to damage Donald Trump, support Joe Biden, and steer the national…
Berlingske.dk put out another piece of American leftwing agitprop today. It gets off to a rough start with a confusing headline: Blacks raging over charge against officer: “He was brutally murdered.” The brutally murdered “he” was of course Daunte Wright; the charged officer was Kim Potter, the officer who shot and killed him. The headline…
“Imagine a mask strapped to a human face. Forever.” Berlingske reports today that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was asked at a party leader debate on Tuesday if she really couldn’t guarantee that all restrictions would be lifted once all Danes had been vaccinated: No one can. Because we don’t know what kind of world we’re…
Two big stories out of America got a lot of coverage in Danish media today: the “police-involved shooting” of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb (and its inevitable aftermath), and news that 46% of Americans would support Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a presidential candidate. Both are American tragedies. Wright’s death is in itself a…
Like many other bloggers, I don’t always have something useful, funny, or interesting to say. Unlike many other bloggers, however, when I find myself with nothing useful, funny, or interesting to say, I remain silent. It’s a healthy practice, and one that I wish more bloggers observed, but it’s not very helpful for a little…
There appears to be unanimity among the western nations that China is doing dastardly things to its Uighur population, even if there’s no agreement at all on how to spell Uighur. For example, in early March a panel of 50 “experts” (sorry, experts, but you’ve earned those scare quotes) determined that the Chinese government “bears…
Joe Biden’s so-called “Infrastructure” plan, with a price tag equivalent to about 5% of all the money that exists in the world right now, includes a provision to increase the corporate tax rate up from 21% to 28%. If math isn’t your strong point, that’s an an increase of 33%. One of the many problems…
