What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
Denmark’s running out of biofuel pellets just in time for winter. Sounding the alarm and warning the minister: Over 100,000 Danes are at risk of freezing this winterNiels Pedersen, Berlingske.dk, August 26 Hundreds of thousands of Danes are struggling with sky-high energy prices at the moment. But for some of them the price increases may…
Surely we live on the best of all possible worlds. Surely: Nobody at the age of zero will get a legal sex change, so it makes sense anyway, says expertStine Hansen, TV2 News, August 17 Persons as young as zero must be able to perform legal gender reassignment. The government presented this on Monday in…
In covering Liz Cheney’s entirely predictable defeat in Wyoming’s Republican primary, Berlingske offered a telling headline: She became world famous for hating Trump. Now she has lost.Sara Hodzic, Berlingske.dk, August 17 It’s an accurate headline: Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, did indeed become world famous for hating Trump, and she lost her…
It’s a red-letter day in Scotland. As the DR headline puts it, “Starting today it’s free to menstruate in Scotland.” Menstruation has always been free of charge in Scotland, as far as I can tell, but beginning today tampons and menstrual pads will be available free of charge to that country’s menstruators. (Really to everyone: apparently…
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deleted confidential emails from the illegal server maintained at her private New York residence. Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was caught smuggling stolen documents from the National Archives by stuffing them into his clothes. President Joe Biden has been heavily implicated in the emails discovered on the laptop of his…
I don’t write much about Danish politics because that’s not what this blog is about. (Also because Danish politics is of little or no interest outside of Denmark.) Yesterday Berlingske published a very “inside-baseball” article about the state of play in Danish politics as the parties position themselves for the next election (which must take…
Berlingske published their most superfluous and redundant editorial of the decade this morning: Berlingske believes: Everything and everyone is better than TrumpBirgitte Borup, Berlingske.dk Leader, August 1 There’s no need to parse through the whole thing because there’s very little in it that’s new or novel. The headline alone is just a condensation of the…
We got back from “the the west” very early Wednesday morning. Cool, gray, drizzly Denmark was a welcome relief after our week without air conditioning in the sun’s European anvil. The Danish media are mostly dominated by stories about Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour de France victory, and the local celebrations of that victory, and the planning…
If you’re a full-throated left-wing extremist—if you still want George Bush and Dick Cheney hog-tied before a Hague war crimes tribunal, for example, and if you believe American news media are biased to the right, and if you simply cannot understand why Donald Trump still hasn’t been taken out and shot— then Poul Høi is…
My headline is my contention: the wild and hysterical extremism of the global left is the most destructive political force in the west. Let’s start with some definitions, in accordance with my old-fashioned notion that communication and understanding work best when people are talking about the same things. By “the global left” I mean the…
In yet another sign of the west’s alarming cluelessness, British and American “intelligence” held a joint press conference last week to announce something any half-witted dullard could have told you years ago: China, it turns out, represents the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” Or, as a random Hong Kong protester with…
If there’s a single over-arching theme to the political thinking of western elites—you know, the GLOB—since the early 1990s, it’s wrongness. Try and think of a single major issue that our political and cultural establishment has gotten right since the Soviet Union collapsed. Something you can look back on and say, “Well, we can all…
It’s Sankt Hans Aften tonight—St. John’s Eve, in English. It’s the Danish (and Scandinavian) celebration of the summer solstice. All across the land, tonight, Danes will gather around bonfires, enjoying picnic dinners with friends and neighbors, singing songs, and simply enjoying the long and beautiful evening. It’s an enchanting tradition. In many cases, the bonfires…
This is a tough post to write for two reasons. First, it’s just one more example of something I’ve chronicled many times already. Second, it makes me so angry I have to fall back on my Clemens quote: “A man can’t write successful satire unless he be in a calm judicial good humor,” [Clemens] remarked…
Straight to the money quote: The storming of Congress made an indelible impression on me. The mob and the rabble flowed towards and into one of the iconic altars of democracy, storming the hallways, ravaging, robbing, and killing. Armed with everything from handguns to clubs. “The mob and the rabble” is my own interpretive translation,…
Yesterday’s post was about the stupid prizes we’re winning for the stupid games we’re playing with language. That theme continues today. We’re going to start with a recent decision of the Danish bakery chain Lagkagehuset (the name translates to “The Layer Cake House”) to replace two of their popular cakes, the so-called kagemand (“cake man”) and kagekone (“cake wife”) with the…
Some things are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them.—George Orwell (apocryphal) Sovereignty is irrelevant.—Intellectual The new think pieces are here, the new think pieces are here! American professor: The Danish yes is part of a new world orderSolveig Gram Jensen, Berlingske.dk, Jun 2 Yesterday, as expected, Denmark voted overwhelmingly (roughly 2:1) to drop…
