I have offended an American
I seem to have upset one of my readers.
I’m sorry Nancy. You seem to have taken exception to my little article the other day. That’s your right. But you are confusing me a bit.
For a start, you take me to task for implying that all Americans are stupid. In fact I said [and I quote] “I said how I didnât think they were all stupid. Only the ones who voted George W back in.”. I stand by that.
No. The only people who proved themselves to be stupid [and ignorant] were the people who were interviewed. And they were – you’ve guessed it – Americans.
I take your point that the Australians could have interviewed other people. You even provide a list of alternative candidates.
Bill Gates – OK. I’ll give him ten out of ten for constantly nearly getting things right. They never work properly the first time, otherwise why does he keep having to rush out fixes? I certainly wouldn’t buy one of his cars if he made them!
Doctors and staff at the Jonas Salk Institute – I’ll disqualify this one, because there are research institutes all over the world. Some worse. Some better.
Neil Armstrong – Hold on now! He is a fighter pilot who was trained for a different job. He did it well, I grant you but it doesn’t qualify him as a mastermind. I think you are confusing intellect with achievemnt here.
Hillary Clinton – Ex-president’s wife? Senator? How does this qualify her?
The staff at Google Earth – OK. You have one here. Hats off to them.
Oprah Winfrey – Now you are joking! She’s like Pat “The Plank” Kenny on speed with a screechy voice. Disqualified.
Noam Chomsky – A professor. I would expect him to qualify. No problems there.
Thomas Friedman at the New York Times – He’s a journalist. I would expect him to know about things.
The engineers and designers at Boeing – They are designers and engineers. That’s all. The world is full of them.
No Nancy. You are missing the point entirely. If I had a film crew, I’m sure I could travel to the States and interview some great intellects. I’m sure if I brought the same crew around Ireland I could find some right gobshites. But in either case, I would have to do some research first.
What worries me is the magnitude of the ignorance. I doubt there are many people in Ireland who would say that Australia is Iran, just because someone had changed the name on a map?
Incidentally, I did a search on the Internet using the term “are americans stupid” and got 2,930,000 results. Wow!
One I picked at random was quite good
And by the way, Nancy – I didn’t write the above.
Maybe we should start a debate on the American sense of humour?
or possibly “humor”. Americans do like to dumb all things down a bit, including spelling 🙂
Don’t encourage them. We must train them by good example.
It’s easy to see why.
Replacing {American} with {Irish} in some of your posts would make little or no difference.
ie Are {Americans} Stupid?
That picture you had of someone’s {American} bottom can be seen on a daily basis blocking the view on Grafton Street and belonging to an obese {Irish} person.
You should never misunderestimate the {Americans}…
In fairness Skellig, I have had some support from over there… 🙂
i think our american friends now feel an overwhelming sense of “must defend america at all costs” irrespective of what the subject matter of the argument is. yes there are dumb people everywhere but what i would consider “dumb” is the american with his back up because people ciritcize him. this comes from a government who have brainwashed the masses and constantly tells them they are being attacked, at risk and that freedom and democracy is being threathened. it is easy to gain the will of the people by doing this – tell them they are being unpatriotic and are under attack – they’ll say, believe or do most anything … THINK PEOPLE ! how much worse off the world is now because f the current administration
Bill Gates is not some brilliant extraordinaire intelligentia, he is just our average Businessman who struck gold. Engineers at Boeing, they are engineers and we have the same at Airbus, Dassault or any other aerospace company. In fact Airbus scores over boeing in giving out the first fly-by-wire aircraft Airbus A320 two decades before boeing and also today we have the largest passenger plane from Airbus. Jonas Salk Institute? Edinburg and London Universities could boast of the most breakthorough medical researches since the industrial revolution. Neil Armstrong and Hilary Clinton? Is that a joke or sarcasm?
I followed up on this post, Aby. I decided that it wasn’t the Americans who were stupid, but the Irish. It is after all the Irish who are adopting the ‘American Way’ by using Yank Slang and stuffing themselves on McDonalds.
And I agree with all your answer above 😉
To be fair, Australians are pretty stupid too.
And, as a USer, I don’t consider 40 of the 50 states to actually be apart of the 50 states. Those who make the my “fellow Americans” look like a frog stuck in a blender are the poorest, dumbest and loudest and in no way, shape or form represent the United States as a whole. The areas with the largest population, the strongest economies and the greater benefit to society fall far above the “Bible Belt.”
Any Joe who wants to dispute this fact need look no further than the budget. The “blue” states pay more in taxes and give more to the “red” states than the “red” ever do. The Bible belt also has the highest levels of those nasty sins of “Pre-marital pregnancy” and “divorce.”
Screw em. They’re the annoying cousin who insists on coming to family dinner and we’re forced to let them sit down in order to continue civil discourse.
Hi TroyJMorris, and welcome!
This is going back a bit in time!!! Actually, my attitude to Americans has changed considerably since then [that doesn’t include George W, though]. We have nearly become good friends 😉