Sunday, May 22, 2005

Newsweek "trashes" America, literally...

Via Riding Sun http://ridingsun.blogspot.com/2005/05/newsweek-america-is-dead.html , see a Newsweek Japan cover (Feb 2nd '05) showing a sullied American Flag in a garbage pail, titled "The Day America Died.". See their international edition, featuring a picture of W. on the cover, with the caption "America Leads ...But is Anyone Following?" . But there's more:

...Both of the editions featured a cover-story article by Andrew Moravcsik, titled "Dream on, America". (This was translated into Japanese as "Yume no kuni Amerika ga kuchihateru toki", which is even harsher; it means, roughly, "America, the dream country, is rotting away".) According to Newsweek itself, the article described "the world's rejection of the American way of life." Moravcsik's article did not run in the American edition of that same issue. The cover was also a bit different. It featured Hilary Swank, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx, with the title "Oscar Confidential"

This is almost too Orwellian to be true - Newsweek peddles anti-Americanism abroad to an increasingly hostile international community, then offers American readers puff pieces on the Oscars?

Are they:
- telling us Americans are too stupid to understand "complex" issues like the "rotting of the United States", so we must be given entertainment-based news to read?
-intentionally working as a propoganda outlet for hostile powers, spewing anti-American bile overseas while presenting a happy face here in America?
-simply so base, that they are doing nothing more than chasing the dollar by peddling crude anti-Americanism to less sophisticated overseas readers?

I believe it's all three (yes, even the propoganda part - the media elite's loathing of W. is reason enough for them to throw their whole country overboard). Riding Sun can finish for me:

It's one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a "dead", "rotting" country overseas. But it's quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won't it tell us? If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you're ashamed to run in America probably shouldn't be used in other countries, either.

Right on.

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