What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
Have a look at this chart (it’s not important if you can’t read the texts): That’s courtesy of Berlingske, where journliast Philip Sune Dam continues to do yeoman’s work in trying to dig to the heart of Denmark’s actual covid numbers, as distinct from those reported by the government. What you’re looking at is a…
Mads Fuglede is a member of the Danish parliament for the (ostensibly) right-of-center Venstre party. On Sunday he penned an opinion piece for the (ostensibly) right-of-center Berlingske Tidende. In his byline, Berlingske identified him not only as a member of parliament, but also a “U.S. Analyst.” A right-of-center reader of this right-of-center publication might have…
An editorial in today’s Berlingske, signed by Pierre Collignon, is unusually sensible. Entitled “The west hasn’t lost yet. Let’s wait a little before selling out,” the editorial takes exception to the “realists” and “pragmatists” suggesting that the western powers—the US, the EU, NATO—should promise Russia that Ukraine will never be granted membership in the EU…
Let’s play the game by the same set of rules being used by Joe Biden. Any tactic he’s allowed to use, we’re allowed to use. Whatever heights of hyperbole he soars to, we’ll fly right alongside him. Whatever depths of mud and slime he’s willing plumb, we’ll wallow in it. You’ve been warned. Joe Biden…
Ladies and gentleman, the balanced Danish media: Do you remember the pictures? A year ago wild and angry Trump supporters stormed the American capitolAngelica Schou-Petersen, DR.dk, Jan 6 One year after the attack on America’s democracy: what’s happened since the storming of the capitol?Lillian Gjerulf Kretz, DR.dk, Jan 6 Trump’s people have put a large-scale…
Writing about temptation, C.S. Lewis observed that “you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.” Lewis was debunking the stupid but popular notion that good people don’t know…
According to DR, Statens Serum Institut (SSI) has promised “more precise numbers” for corona admissions after the New Year. The added precision will come in the form of a distinction between inpatient admissions of patients due to corona and admissions of patients with corona. “More precise,” in this case, appears to mean “correct.” SSI is…
I’ve talked about the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect before (here, for example), but allow me to restate Michael Crichton’s elegant observation so we all have it top of mind: The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect describes the phenomenon of reading an article about a subject you know quite well and realizing it’s got everything wrong—then continuing to read…
The headline of Kalinka Aaman Agger’s Monday piece in Berlingske has the sound of a horror movie tagline: After the election it was the scenario they feared. Now it’s happened. Yes, it’s happened. In a world gone mad, a vote that Democrats hoped would go 50-50 appears fated to go 51-49 against them. Democracy is…
Soldierly Language DR followed up on yesterday’s widely-run wire story about Swedish conscripts being sent home to recover from “rough treatment” with a little more depth later in the day. It doesn’t really add to or change the original story, or affect my initial reaction, but there was a bit more detail in one respect:…
I lived six years of my life in Chicago. I have many friends who still live there. I have some family there. It’s a one-party town. Has been forever. The last Republican mayor of Chicago left office in 1931. There are a few Chicago precincts in which Donald Trump outpolled Joe Biden in 2020—the Dread…
Apart from a few articles about the Biden-Putin video conference the other day, most of them pretty matter-of-fact recitations of the White House and Kremlin versions of the conversation, Danish media has been very light on American political news lately. I’ll cut the Danish media some slack on this: there’s enough going on closer to…
Despite obvious philosophical differences, George Orwell and Ayn Rand had a lot in common as novelists: they both cranked everything up to eleven and whacked you over the head with it to make sure you got their points. Their characters are cartoonish, their plot lines are simple, their morality is black and white. They aren’t…
Mikkel Danielsen had a strange piece out in Berlingske yesterday: Fox News’s big star put a video out on the internet. Then the hosts burst into conflict.Mikkel Danielsen, Berlingske.dk, Nov 25 (“Then the hosts burst into conflict” is a lousy translation of a Danish colloquialism for which there’s no handy English equivalent, so the clunkiness…
Earlier this year I wrote about the Boomerang Principle: what you do to your adversaries today, they will do to you tomorrow. It may be novel to bring a gun to a knife fight—but only once. After that, every knife fight’s gonna be a gun fight. This principle obviously isn’t limited to physical combat: it…
Berlingske has a spectacularly wrong headline up right now: Biden said the N-word. Then Twitter went amok: “Where are the woke?”Kalinka Aaman Agger, Berlingske.dk, Nov 12 Biden used the word “negro.” He used it by mistake. He made the mistake because, to quote a Stephen Miller tweet cited in Agger’s article, his brain is applesauce….
