How high is anti-American sentiment running right now? Surprisingly not that high, actually lower than usual, using my own unique social barometer, and I put it down to Olympic spirit, which has the city of Vancouver and surrounding regions in the grip of some sort of love-in.
But our rivalry with our neighbours to the south, good-natured or not, is never far from the surface and it may yet raise its ugly head again. Still in the international sprit of the just ended Olympics I feel we should take a moment to look at other big brother/little brother country rivalries around the world. First and foremost is Australia/New Zealand, think we sometimes find Americans objectionable? Well listen to how one New Zealander describes Australians. “Take American self-centeredness, insularity, pomposity, self-delusional grandiosity and lack of an ounce of self-awareness, multiply it by a 100 and you have an Australian.”
Ouch – personally I never thought Australians were quite that bad, but then I also think Koala bears are cute, to which my Kiwi friend quickly disabused me of. “Koala bears are anything but cute, they’re vicious man-eating killers and that’s part of the problem with Australia they don’t tell people about the dangers lurking in their own country, like Koala bears…did I mention they’re killers…I did, yeah well, like I say watch out for them. New Zealand on the other hand, well when’s the last time you ever heard of a vicious man eating lamb?”
Also it’s perhaps worth mentioning that Canada was recently dissed by Australian You Tube sensation Natalie Tran, who completely without provocation belittled the entire nation of Canada on her You Tube channel for our milk drinking habits. Apparently they only drink Kangaroo milk in Australia and milk from cows is considered barbaric, perhaps those Kiwis have a point.
Anyway as heated as the Australian/New Zealand rivalry is, there is also of course the long simmering and often violent English/Irish conflict. This one goes back centuries and as far as I can tell rests mainly on the English, who clearly have no sense of humour about anything as we have seen recently (for all of you Monty Python fans out there – it was 40 years ago get over it).
Actually just like the Australians Canada isn’t getting much respect from the motherland these days, so I think we should feel free to jump in with the Irish and deride the English for the bunch of stuck-up tossers we’ve always known them to be, but then I’m of Scottish descent so these sentiments come naturally to me.
Still maybe I am being a little harsh in indicting the entire country – it is mainly the Guardian newspaper that is leading the anti-Canadian charge and they clearly feel some jealousy that their quasi-socialist economy is fairing so poorly compared to our, somewhat less quasi-socialist economy.
And then there’s the Norwegians and the Swedes, and like so many of these rivalries it always, it’s not us it’s them, or as one Norwegian put it to me recently. “We like the Swedes, we really do, it’s just that there such underhanded slimy bastards about everything.” Yeah, clearly there’s a lot of love there. But the love goes both ways, my niece and nephew are half Swedish and they tell me they have nothing against the Norwegians, except, “they’re just so slow about everything, you can have better conversations with a dachshund.” Now that just seems completely unfair to me, since I’ve had conversations with both and I have to say unequivocally the Norwegians come out on top.
So to sum up, in the spirit of the Olympics, may I suggest, you turn to the nearest Australian, Pomm…I mean Brit, Swede and yes even our American friends, give them hug and say, “you know what, you’re alright.” They’ll then push you away and say, “who the hell are you?!” But you know the spirit will still be there and you’ll feel good about it. Unless of course we’re talking about Czechs and Slovaks…don’t even get me started about them.
