I’m here in Amsterdam and I’m watching Spanish, Dutch, German and british coverage of the Olympics. When some major event has it’s finals - all of them cover that event, but the rest of the time - they cover events where atheletes from their own country - wins.

So there’s a lot of coverage on some Spanish bicyclist, a British female Marathon runner, a Dutch swimmer and a German - gee now I can’t remember what the German won?

Well needless to say - they all covered this incredible Swedish heptathlon winnner. And I also really dug the Greek female Discus thrower.

So I’m wondering what was shown in the States? I get nauseous viewing content filtered by those people. The whole media world, the election, the war, the power of oil, sugar, money and sex just permeates throughout the U.S. mainstream culture like some evil cabal - conspiracy.

So when you get out of there - a whole new refreshing outlook is exposed. It’s not that it’s any better (much of it is worse) - but at least it’s different.

As the networks try and figure out how to copy HBO’s success, you’d think they’d notice that it was all about being DIFFERENT that made all those breakthrough HBO shows unique - not the fact that they were all the same, copied from models derived by some focus groups analysts.

So mainstream media in Europe is roughly equivalent to independent, Sundance channel, on the fringes kind of content - because it’s NOT American.

One of the most fascinating stories I’m following - is the Iraqi football (soceer) team. The fact that I even have to clarify the word football - in this context - represents the state of the world - to me.

We’ve got an English centric, U.S. leading dominated culture, where McDonalds and Coke are just as important as local customs and traditions.

The commercialization and exploitation of the global economy is where America gets it’s profit margins from. The Tobacco industry can afford to pay 100’s of Billions of dollars in retraining and penance fees for what they’ve done to smokers here - with the money they’re making from everyone else.

So the next time you hear somebody groaning about losing jobs and out-sourcing, remind them of where the dividends are coming from - and what white male CEO types are cashing out for 100’s of $millions$.

Like whatever happened to AT&T?

I used to not really like French people, but now that they’ve stood up to the U.S. and were proven right - it’s Vive la Defrance - for me!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 21st, 2004 at 11:30 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.