Johnny Depp badmouths America in Germany

EmperorChrostas the Cruel · Post by **EmperorChrostas the Cruel** » 2003-09-03 09:32pm

The context of Alec Baldwin's statement.

www. snopes.com/inboxer/leave.htm

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-03 09:40pm

You don't have to break the links to normal sites

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-03 09:59pm

Durran Korr wrote:The problem I have with folks like Depp and the Ditzy Twits is that they badmouth their primary source of income in the foreign press rather than doing so at home. At least other celebrities like Michael Moore aren't so cowardly.

True, but then again, a reporter did ask him the question. Did it ever occur to you that celebrities are more likely to say such things in other countries because the reporters there are more likely to ask?

What American reporter would ask Johnny Depp about his opinion of America? I think you read too much into his behaviour. The man has an opinion. Someone asked him for it, and he gave it. Big fucking deal.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-03 10:11pm

What American reporter would ask Johnny Depp about his opinion of America?

Given the massive amount of celebrities that are voicing their opinions in the American media (there's a partial list here), obviously someone is.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-03 10:15pm

Durran Korr wrote:
What American reporter would ask Johnny Depp about his opinion of America?
Given the massive amount of celebrities that are voicing their opinions in the American media (there's a partial list here), obviously someone is.

Interesting. I randomly clicked on five celebrities' names, and saw many quotes against the war in Iraq and against the Bush administration, but none against America per se. For some reason, the site's authors (and you) interpret anti-war and anti-Bush attitudes as "anti-American". Please justify this connection.

PS. You haven't really addressed my point about how you're making a big deal out of nothing.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-03 10:27pm

Looks like I've backed myself into a corner here. Guess you got me.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-03 11:39pm

On the other hand, we do have Britney on our side! Yeah! SUCK IT DOWN, LIBERALS!

EmperorChrostas the Cruel · Post by **EmperorChrostas the Cruel** » 2003-09-04 01:22am

Of course Britney is for bush, didn't you see the MTV award, or hear the rumors of the Jenna Jamison thing?

OOOOOH!
That's Bush, not bush!

Too good to pass up!

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-09-04 02:13am

This man makes millions for acting, something people all over the world can do, and his opinion become some big thing.

Go figure.

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2003-09-04 02:48am

For some reason, the thought of America described as a giant puppy made me LOL.

Jason von Evil · Post by **Jason von Evil** » 2003-09-04 04:32am

What pisses me off is that these fuckers don't have the balls to speak their mind while their in the US, they always do it in a country thousands of miles away. If you're going to badmouth your country, grow some balls and do it while you're actually in it.

Whats even dumber is the fact that he's in another movie that's going to be coming out and you know this BS is going to hurt it.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2003-09-04 04:38am

Durran Korr wrote:On the other hand, we do have Britney on our side! Yeah! SUCK IT DOWN, LIBERALS!

You can have her, dude.

Posbi · Post by **Posbi** » 2003-09-04 06:50am

All, anti-US rethoric of Depp aside (how fitting that his last name means "idiot" in German), he does have a point in one issue. The US government hasn't shone with brilliance in anything it has done during the years since the election, the record is rather quite bad. It seems as if there's not also the lack of fundamental success, but also a lack of a fundamental concept of how to achieve said success step by step. But then this could also be said about Germany's government...

Hobot · Post by **Hobot** » 2003-09-04 08:24am

Aya wrote:What pisses me off is that these fuckers don't have the balls to speak their mind while their in the US, they always do it in a country thousands of miles away. If you're going to badmouth your country, grow some balls and do it while you're actually in it.

Did you not read Mike's post a few posts up?

Darth Wong wrote:True, but then again, a reporter did ask him the question. Did it ever occur to you that celebrities are more likely to say such things in other countries because the reporters there are more likely to ask?

What American reporter would ask Johnny Depp about his opinion of America? I think you read too much into his behaviour. The man has an opinion. Someone asked him for it, and he gave it. Big fucking deal.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-09-04 09:06am

EmperorChrostas the Cruel wrote:The context of Alec Baldwin's statement.

www. snopes.com/inboxer/leave.htm

And how many people say things like this and never follow through? Grousing aside, few people actually would uproot their lives and leave their country simply because of the election of a leader they didn't like.

I also saw people who swore they'd leave the country if Clinton got elected in '92. Come January 20, 1993, they were still here.

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2003-09-04 10:34am

Darth Wong wrote: For some reason, the site's authors (and you) interpret anti-war and anti-Bush attitudes as "anti-American". Please justify this connection.

Nice to see that I'm not the only one to be disturbed by the way that some Americans equate criticism of their government as hatred/bigotry towards all Americans. The equivalent would be if a Russian claimed that opposition to Russia's invasion of Chechnya was an indicator of racism towards all Russians.

EmperorChrostas the Cruel · Post by **EmperorChrostas the Cruel** » 2003-09-04 04:00pm

Iceberg.
Can you name any of these folk who said they will leave if Clinton gets elected? Provide some quotes, like I did?
It must not have gotten much press. That or the lefties don't see anything worthy of note badmouthing the USA, and don't bring it up. To them it is normal, so why act surprised, or outraged?

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-04 11:50pm

And.....backpedaling!

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-04 11:52pm

Not surprising. Since any American who expresses an ideologically incorrect opinion is immediately set upon with feverish abandon, he would be smart to disavow any such opinions.

Canadians bitch about Canada's problems all the time (have you ever seen the "My Canada includes every whining special interest group in existence" T-shirts, with a picture of Canada's provinces being held together with band-aids?) and lambast our own prime minister (Jean Chretien, or as we affectionately refer to him, Jean Cretin) on a regular basis, and we don't get screamed at by our countrymen when we do it. Why do you have to be so sensitive about stuff like this? What's the big deal?

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-04 11:57pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Durran Korr wrote:On the other hand, we do have Britney on our side! Yeah! SUCK IT DOWN, LIBERALS!
You can have her, dude.

I was just kidding (it's just damage control for recent publicity stunt).

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-09-05 12:01am

Darth Wong wrote:Not surprising. Since any American who expresses an ideologically incorrect opinion is immediately set upon with feverish abandon, he would be smart to disavow any such opinions.

You make it sound like there's a VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY....

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-05 12:02am

MKSheppard wrote:

You make it sound like there's a VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY....

No, a conspiracy would be hidden. This behaviour is right out in the open.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-09-05 12:10am

Darth Wong wrote: No, a conspiracy would be hidden. This behaviour is right out in the open.

Maybe because of this?

Germans are America’s big ethnic secret. No people and no culture has contributed more to what the United States is and is becoming. In the nation’s ethnic tangle, no root runs deeper than German America. As a scattered community only fitfully conscious of its own existence, none has more successfully pursued wealth, power and intellectual influence. And as a philosophical force in US politics — a whole political mindset — none has greater potency. Germany as a European state may have lost her way, the German language may struggle to keep its world grip, but the German spirit is alive and well and living in — and through — America: Bismarck’s last laugh on modern history.

Yet from new Labour to the Tory Right, the British Establishment has fallen in love with the reincarnation of our former European enemy, even as our Europeanism sours. Across much of conservative Britain, an embrace with America is welcomed as a healthy, English-speaking alternative to the sinister advance of the Franco- German axis.

Why? It is understandable that the British do not feel towards America the visceral distrust that continental Europe arouses. Americans speak English. Their invasions have been peaceful. We remember the Mayflower, the Founding Fathers, and the familiar English surnames of almost all the Presidents until Roosevelt. We remember, too, that the United States did (after a slight hiccup) support us against Germany in both world wars, and we take vicarious pride in seeing another great English-speaking country — once ours — stride the globe: imperialism by proxy. We count the Americans as our cousins. These world-beaters are our kith and kin, are they not?

No, they are not. America’s cousins are the Germans. This is true literally — in blood lineage — but also the personalities of the two nations. Modern America has become more Germanic than it is British. The New England aristocracies are pushed aside, Mittelamerika rides high, yet few notice and still fewer discuss the Teutonic phase the country is now entering. A common language — English — overlays deep cracks in the collective American psyche, blurring the outline of a vast community so submerged that its members have all but lost consciousness of what they have in common: an outlook.

Everybody knows about the blacks and the Hispanics (each about 10 per cent of the population in the 1990 US Census). Irish-Americans are slightly less than 16 per cent. Those of broadly English origin are even fewer — some 13 per cent. Italian-Americans are 6 per cent. But nearly a quarter (23.3 per cent) of all Americans are of predominantly German origin. They are easily the biggest single ingredient in the New World melting pot. Financially and politically they are also among the most successful. Were the pie chart to be adjusted according to wealth, the German-American share would grow further. A roll-call of the names of elected congressmen (or the presidents of the great US corporations) sounds like the calling of the register in a Bavarian kindergarten. As for the power of ideas, the US academic and research world is stuffed with German-descended talent.

After the Holocaust, it may be tactless to mention the flowering in the New World of the union between the German and the Jewish traditions, but the fruits have been extraordinary and America has been the beneficiary. The energy and genius of this small community has earned it an influence beyond its numbers. The cultural inheritance of German-Jewish immigrants was a powerful hybrid, and the inheritance is fresh because the wave came late. Names such as Wolfowitz, Perle or Fleischer are only recently famous: but the political and academic contribution is long-standing, and so is the contribution to the national media. The most recent issue of The Economist argues that the philosopher Leo Strauss, who fled the Holocaust for the US, is the leading intellectual influence on the neoconservatives in Washington.

German America hardly amounts these days to a community: it is almost too predominant to know itself. Its ancestors were among the earliest citizens of their emerging New World nation: they came early — before the Revolution and immediately after. They learnt to see themselves as Americans rather than look back. They have had time to assimilate. The days when (for example) the State of Pennsylvania almost made German its official language are gone. In what some might call a thoroughly Teutonic manner, many German-American families wiped their family slates clean of the old language and kinships and invested unstintingly in their new loyalty. Kurt Vonnegut, in his autobiographical Palm Sunday, says: “My parents volunteered to make me ignorant and rootless as proof of their patriotism.”

Indeed, you could argue that one reason German America has been in the driving seat has been that German-Americans have been so ready to forsake a separate identity, assume a new one, and push on. Many even Anglicised their names, further complicating the statistics.

Still, the roll-call of names is impressive, Donald Rumsfeld’s being only a latecomer to the pack. George W. Bush’s partly German ancestry — Amish and Mennonite through the Demuth family, who were 18th-century immigrants from Saxony — is well-known. Surnames (if you seek them) tumble from the books of modern American history — Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kissinger.

But this argument is not about amassing names or imagining conspiracies. Americans’ ancestries are a hotchpotch, and which surname a US citizen ends up with can be haphazard, saying little about his family’s active cultural inheritance. There is no membership and no plot. What there is is a confluence of successful citizens with shared ways of looking at the world, helping to shape a national personality. In a family-centred society, culture, taste and attitude are heritable down the generations long after folk memories of the old country are gone. A German-descended American friend of mine from Pennsylvania said: “I went to Berlin and took a train to Prague. The food was the food I grew up with — meat, sausage, potatoes and cabbage. The houses outside the cities looked American, with unwalled gardens of grass around detached, single family homes. It was spooky."

Spookier for me has been reading the way German statesmen used to talk, and listening to the way Donald Rumsfeld talks now. Italian and Irish America have made their own distinctive mark on political life in the US. It would be surprising if Germanic attitudes were not contributing in different ways.

What are these? In an article in The New Republic two years ago, Peter Beinart suggested the following qualities as typical of the German American in politics: “earnest”, “strait-laced” and “disciplined”. Voters, he adds, “like politicians, are often products of political traditions they do not fully comprehend. And those political traditions often have their origins in an America more ethnically segmented than it is today.”

To Beinart’s list I would add the work ethic and energy — never something that the British Establishment has been sure it wholly admired. In March 1990, Margaret Thatcher summoned to Chequers a team of historians, academics and specialists to advise her on a unified Germany’s long-term intentions and abiding characteristics. A leaked memo quoted: “Angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality and capacity for excess.” I would add these: candour; a yearning for structure and direction; impatience with ambiguity; a weakness for approaching problems in a blindly, sometimes self-defeatingly, methodical way; and overconfidence.

I do not find all these qualities unattractive. I love the sudden directness of Germans; I share their hankering for road maps in life; I admire bullishness; and I think an instinct to impose theory and system on a haphazard world marks a high order of intelligence. Notwithstanding the caveats one must enter about all generalisation, I cite these assessments neither to praise nor condemn, but as contributing to a national personality.

But is it not uncannily like George W. Bush’s America? Is it not as close an approach as we are likely to get to a definition of the neoconservative personality? And has the Tory Right removed continental Germans from the party’s guest list, only to welcome their reincarnation from across the Atlantic?

Out goes Vorwärts! and in comes Yee-ha! Somebody should whisper in Britain’s ear: America is the new Germany.

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2003-09-05 10:00am

Yet from new Labour to the Tory Right, the British Establishment has fallen in love with the reincarnation of our former European enemy, even as our Europeanism sours.

Just a question: What is Europeanism?? Is it the belief that the European Union should become a new superpower and compete with USA and China?

Why? It is understandable that the British do not feel towards America the visceral distrust that continental Europe arouses.

Is it just me, or do Americans make European disagreement with US foreign policy out to be much more than it actually is??? I often hear Americans accuse Europeans of hating America and its inhabitants because they dislike its governments - something rather unique, since the only other democracy which replies to criticism of policies in a different way is Israel.

To me, it definately seems like many Europeans who deride Bush don't hate his home country per se - they just want to see somebody else in power.

Sorry for my ranting.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-09-05 10:02am

EmperorChrostas the Cruel wrote:Iceberg.
Can you name any of these folk who said they will leave if Clinton gets elected? Provide some quotes, like I did?
It must not have gotten much press. That or the lefties don't see anything worthy of note badmouthing the USA, and don't bring it up. To them it is normal, so why act surprised, or outraged?

Doing so would be pointless, since these are personal observations and not notes that were ever in the press.