What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
This post is mostly (but not entirely) about small things. Trivial, even. I subscribe to the “Morning Briefing” email of the New York Times. It hits my inbox at around 7:00 weekday mornings, which I find impressive—that’s 1:00 in the morning, New York time. That’s the only impressive thing about it. Otherwise, its only real…
AUDIO NOTE: It’s a long post, today, and therefore a long audio. To save myself some time I did most of it in one take. It’s therefore bubbling over with mispronunciations, self-corrections, improvised riffs, and random musings that aren’t found in the text below. So it’s messy but fun. All you lurkers who come around…
Advisory: This post contains frank and uncensored sexual terms because the weight of such language is its topic. If you’re uncomfortable with informal sexual terminology—words that in the English language are typically disguised with asterisks in written form and bleeped out when spoken—then this post is not for you. Let us concede from the start…
There’s a small but telling news item in DR today: Social Democrats propose CO2 tax on agricultureOlivia High, DR.dk, October 16 “Denmark must be an agricultural country—also in the future. But we have to do it in a different way than we do today. There is the primary and most effective tool we can use,…
DR is taking a long, hard look at election swag. Chewing gum, pens, and roses are important in the election campaignMads Juhl, DR.dk, October 13, 2022 The lede elaborates: “Parliamentary candidates hand out thousands of gifts during the election campaign. And ‘the crap works,’ says the expert.” You can hardly avoid bumping into a parliamentary…
In reading this DR article about Giorgia Meloni, the woman who may well be Italy’s next premiere, I was struck by how freely they referred to her and her party and their allies as neo-fasicsts (nyfascister). I don’t know what to think when I encounter such adjectives in the western press, because when the president…
Two Quick Notes First, the Martha’s Vineyard immigrant story is all I want to write about. It’s the most perfect distillation of everything that’s wrong with the modern American left, and it just keeps getting better: yesterday, the Governor of Massachusetts requested 125 National Guard members to assist with the transportation of those migrants off…
Energy prices are skyrocketing in Europe and the natives are getting restless. The situation absolutely requires that a really stupid and futile gesture be done on somebody’s part—and you know what that means: The EU summit will fight skyrocketing energy prices: “Russia’s manipulating our energy markets”Per Bang Thomas, DR.dk, 7 Sept Is it boring and…
Back in 1992 the communications director of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, James Carville, set up a sign in the campaign’s Little Rock headquarters to keep everyone on message. Among the three bullet points was one that has since become a political cliché in America: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It says something about the American political…
I just want to lay down a marker: my advance transcript, posted hours before the transcript was even released yesterday, nailed it. Here’s the real transcript from the New York Times. Compare and contrast—and marvel at my powers of precognition. Which I had thought was just satire. I never would have imagined Biden’s handlers would…
Remember when hating Russia and Russians was the hot new thing? Vladimir Putin had just invaded Ukraine (“basically, that’s wrong,” the American Vice-President helpfully explained) and we therefore had to chuck not just Russian gas and Russian oligarchs, but also Russian literature, Russian music, and Russian people. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Bulkagov, Tchaikowsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky—out…
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…
I’ve written a lot about taxpayer-funded DR’s ace US correspondent Steffen Kretz over the past couple of years—about his writing, I should say. About his coverage of America. I have nothing against him as a person. His personhood is to me a matter of absolute indifference, as interesting and relevant as tomorrow’s weather report for…
I’d meant to post this Thursday, but the day got out of hand. The same thing happened Friday. Turns out that’s not such a bad thing, because the story ripened a little with age. We begin on Wednesday evening, when DR’s website featured the following headline at the top of their website: In English: Expert…
I posted just about everything I have to say about the Dobbs decision back when the decision leaked a few months ago. None of my opinions have changed. There’s no point in hashing over all that again. I’m not surprised by the Danish coverage, the general tenor of which can be deduced from the screenshots…
There’s an interesting article on DR’s website right now: EU wants more equality: “We’re lagging far behind”Simone Nielsen, DR.dk, Jun 21 The article itself isn’t especially interesting—the EU is implementing what amounts to gender quotas (but don’t you ever call them that!) for the boards of European companies with at least 250 employees. Pretty stupid…
The headline of this post is, as best as I can tell from the information available, a succinct and yet comprehensive taxonomy of our ruling class. This was brought home to me today by an article on DR’s website. The EU’s Mission in the Mediterranean hasn’t stopped a single human smugglerTine Toft, DR.dk, May 31…
On May 19, at East Kentwood High School in Michigan, two people were shot in the school parking lot while a graduation ceremony was taking place in the school football stadium. On May 17, a 7-year-old was “grazed” by a bullet when a gun in another kid’s backpack accidentally discharged. On May 12, in Houston,…
You may think my headline is interpretive: that I’m paraphrasing what I perceive to be the subtext of an article in DR. Unfortunately, however, my headline is actually just a loose translation of DR’s own: The temperature in Southern Europe is breaking records – and it’s your faultSilas Bay Nielsen, DR.dk, May 23 (“Temperaturen i Sydeuropa slår…
Here’s something that showed up on the DR website a couple of days ago: Bill on abortion access voted down in US SenateReuters/Ritzau, DR.dk, May 12 That’s a very crisp and succinct headline in English. The actual Danish headline speaks of “fri abort,” which I translated here as “abortion access.” I’ve often translated it in…
