(dave e)

my country can (and just might) kick your country's butt

i suppose everyone has his or her take on the State of Things in The World, particularly the State of Things After 'mer'ca Has Liberated Those Iraqis From the Axis of Evilites (except for the ones who keep getting rounded up).

and i suppose polling is every bit as suspect as we're led to believe. national review's healthy stable of banner ads often rotates one for a book that'll "explain how liberal pollsters trick you." gotta watch out for them lib'rals, after all... it seems reasonable enough to assert that almost any poll can, in some way, be critiqued rigorously enough to make its findings suspect.

nevertheless, thanks, bbc, for your broad survey of "what the world thinks of america." that'll help quantify things a bit. their numbers and translations between "yes or no" responses and "favorable and unfavorable" are a bit difficult to negotiate, but it at least seems pretty clear that some people think the united states of le beeg mac totally sux.

my favorites: while 73% of respondents said "free" was a fair description of americans, 65% indicated that "arrogant" worked, too. in australia, 93% would rather stay put than move to the land of the free (not surprising, but that 1% who say they'd rather live in america looks pretty cast-out-to-survive-with-paul-hogan. g'day, indeed). koreans, asked which is more dangerous, north korea or the u.s., offered the following: neither: 8%, north korea: 39%, u.s.: 48% (whoo! sunshine policy!). on average, "the world" thinks the u.s. is as dangerous as north korea, and more dangerous than china, russia, france, iran, and syria. in case the reader's response is, "ah, the world just hates us because they think we're idiotic, immoral dolts," note that a slight majority believes that the people of iraq will be better off following the u.s. action than they were under saddam hussein.

it's just telling that homer simpson, love him as we do, was chosen overwhelmingly as the greatest american ever. again, i understand, i rilly truly do, that this sort of information is hardly a transparent window through which we can view "the world's" view of us with precision. on the other hand, this stuff doesn't just materialize out of the ether.

as my man-on-the-bus might observe, sh*t! thass some sh*t!