OUR PORTRAIT
The picture people all around the world are getting this week would seem to justify the use of the term “the ugly American”.
We, here at home may not see it exactly as foreigners do.
We say the United States won over a hundred medals at the Summer Olympic Summer games and list them proudly as gold, silver and bronze. Reports in other lands suggest we gobbled up all the awards, “as usual”. Trickery, deceit and dishonesty were suggested. The results overall, are often seen in a slightly different light among most competing nations because of judging errors.
The Olympic Games are over, and with little protest from dissident groups, and the media's emphasis has shifted to the political scene in the United States. While the Republicans are in convention assembled in New York City, the Democrats will run riot in the streets. “527-groups” the Democrats have been scorning are, this week, given full support and funding as they march through New York's streets in vocal and muscular opposition to our government and our duly elected leaders.
The picture the average citizens of most foreign nations will be getting is severely warped and a notable infringement on our efforts to improve the international image of our nation.
To TV viewers the world over, this type of presentation abets their feeling that we are nation divided against itself in many way; that we are vulnerable to their most childish tactic and unable to defend ourselves if pushed to combat because of intense divisions at home. We are being pictured as a forlorn group of nincompoops. Promoters of the protesters give viewers the impression that all of those roaming the streets are people who oppose Bush, when, in truth, scores of those present are not politically oriented at all. Some are chronic, habitually marcher-protesters; others are supporters of Ralph Nader, a man many predict will wean five per cent of votes away from John Kerry. Watch for the number of posters which call attention to affair other than the election. I cannot miss to see the political import of the sign-holder who's big letters proclaim: “I pee on Bushes!” but I think sort of conduct, shall we say, unseemly. Certainly our opposition is up to, at least, the level that sort of sign suggests might be the norm.
In listening to some of these demonstrators attempting to voice their avowed convictions when interviewed by TV street people, I wondered if many of them do not have a difficulty which turned up far too often in the Athens Olympic games this past week - a dependency on drugs to see them though the ordeal of incompetent performance and some inept individuals serving as judges.
This week America is on stage! We are being exhibited world-wide!
What kind of picture should we be presenting?
A.L.M. August 29, 2004 [c480wds]
