Actually I preferred this article because it
reminded me of some recent happenings on the Futurework list. I
thought it was especially interesting the ethnic descriptions of each
other. Maybe there is a basis for WW III after
all.
REH
July 13, 2003
The New Europe Sounds Just Like the Old
By FRANK BRUNI
The New Europe Sounds Just Like the Old
By FRANK BRUNI
ROME � It seems like an eternity ago, but it was only mid-June when pundits around these parts trumpeted the shared values and common goals of countries in the European Union, which was pressing the accelerator on its first constitution. The hills were alive with a Continental Kumbaya.
No more. In short order, that suspiciously sweet
music has been replaced by a din of name-calling, backbiting, wounded national
vanities and rekindled national grudges. Historians can now breathe a sigh of
relief, and everyone can rest assured: Europe is back to normal.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister,
helped nudge it there, telling a German representative to the European
Parliament that he resembled a concentration camp guard. A lower-level Italian
government official did his part last week, saying he was fed up with overfed
Germans who hogged all the best beaches on the Mediterranean.
Understandably chagrined, the German chancellor,
Gerhard Schr�der, canceled a planned summer vacation in Italy, while his
countrymen chattered acidly about those ruffians on the southern side of the
Alps.
It was a torrid tit-for-tat. It was also a fresh,
revivifying glimpse into the ugly emotions and messy truths obscured by all the
environmental regulations, farm subsidies, stylish logos and snazzy Internet
sites that glue the European Union together.
"There are old wars, battles lost, battles won,
eclipsed glory," said Keith Spicer, the director of the Institute for Media,
Peace and Security in Paris. "It's just endless."
Mr. Spicer was referring to the last six centuries,
during which the forebears of Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany and
England vied for global domination. Military invasion easily bested soccer as
Europe's preferred sport, creating the kind of hurt feelings that die awfully
hard.
Those resentments are infinitely larger and more
varied than the latest spat between Italians and Germans, who actually like one
another a whole lot more than the English and the French � or, for that matter,
the English and the Germans � do.
Even before the tornado-sized dust-up in Europe
over who was and was not supporting the United States in Iraq, relatively
respectable British publications ran articles that dismissed the French as
"frogs" and the Germans as "krauts," presumably on the principle that you are
what you stereotypically eat.
That derogatory, decades-old tick may explain a
comment in the 1990's by Edith Cresson, then the prime minister of France. In a
not-so-atypical example of intra-continental insult, she asserted that fully 25
percent of British men were gay, and she did not mean happy.
Methods of lovemaking, styles of cuisine, even
manners of speech: these are grist for the mill of European jealousies and
jibes, neither harmless nor pretty but persistent nonetheless.
As a general and admittedly broad principle, the
British find the French condescending, as do the Italians, the Germans, the
Spaniards, the Dutch and maybe even the French themselves.
The French think that the British have no taste in
food and no restraint around alcohol. The French think that about the Germans,
too.
The Germans and the Italians think that the
British, or at least those British who consider themselves upper crust, are
supercilious and punctilious � and use too many fancy words.
"They have a superiority complex when it comes to
public life, but an inferiority complex when it comes to private life," said
Beppe Severgnini, the former Italy correspondent for The Economist, a British
publication, and the author of a book about Britain through an Italian's
eyes.
For example, he said, the British fret some about
sex.
Nigel Farage, a British representative to the
European Parliament, said Italians don't fret much at all about a few other,
arguably important matters.
"It's rather like if we talk about fraud in the
European Union budget," Mr. Farage said. "There are missing billions every year.
The British care about it passionately. The Italians couldn't care
less."
In fact, Europeans' impressions of Italians as
lusty but lawless, charismatic but corrupt, were fuel for the recent fire. Even
before Mr. Berlusconi lost his temper at the European Parliament and said
arrivederci to etiquette, other countries' newscasts and publications were
treating his assumption of the union's rotating presidency as an apocalyptic
event.
Some of those appraisals carried clear traces of
bigotry and ethnic suspicion, the kind of ill wind that could blow stronger as
the union expands and clumps more onetime adversaries closer together. It is set
to grow to 25 nations next year from 15 now.
The eastern and central European newcomers have
seldom engendered much admiration from their western counterparts, who believe
that real civilization clusters much closer to the Atlantic.
There was a pungent whiff of that prejudice when
Jacques Chirac, the French president, famously (and frostily) told some of those
countries that they should have shut up rather than express support for the
American-led military campaign against Iraq. It was a poignant preview of the
love-fest to come.
Sections of Europe that look, from the outside,
like homogenous recipes for unfettered harmony turn out to be something else
entirely. "Even Scandinavians have very specific feelings about each other," Mr.
Spicer said. "The Danes will say the Swedes are boring. The Swedes tell you that
if you think they're boring, you should look at the Norwegians. The Norwegians
will tell you to look at the Finns."
The Norwegians do not actually belong to the
European Union, having taken a pass on the project. Mr. Farage understands that.
He is against extensive European political integration, and was elected to the
European Parliament on a platform of not letting it go too far. "I'm the enemy
within," he explained.
"The rivalries here are very deep, and I don't
think that anybody pretending they're not is helpful," he said, referring to
Europe's future, present and past.
From his pessimistic perspective, Mr. Berlusconi's
outburst at the European Parliament was a moment of bracing and necessary
truth.
"They were the best theater tickets I ever bought,"
Mr. Farage said. "I was there, roaring with laughter and shouting out, `Ah! The
happy family of Europe!' "
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Perhaps we should say the "Happy Family of the FW
list," except some take their toys and go home if they encounter
real feelings. Oops! That was very American New Age type
talk. That is what happened when the Beatles invaded America
and infected the music scene with what they couldn't say back home unless they
were high on drugs. Cheez! acid is just dripping from my
keys after all of this begging for money from the wealthy. I'm
thinking about writing my memoirs and calling it "Confessions of a Music
Addict." I have all of the symptoms of the man addicted to
gambling and am now reduced to begging for the "big one." The
bottom line now is "what do I have to lose?" And "Go for
it!" Perhaps I should "move on" to the next big promise if
this one doesn't pan out. I could write about what I've learned
about America and the Arts and best of all, the people I've
observed. When you have nothing to lose why be discreet?
If its a "best seller" they will hate you but their grandchildren will
point your work out for mentioning their grandparents and take recognition from
the fact that their scandalous ancestors weren't anonymous.
Funny, I'm beginning to sound like all of the things I've heard about Ned Rorem
and his writings. Or maybe George W. Bush? What a
terrible thought. I might truly be a Texan? Maybe its in
the water.
REH
