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thedrifter
03-01-06, 06:16 AM
Americans Behaving Badly - Got A Problem With That?
Written by Jack Engelhard
Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Seems that those Europeans in attendance grinned, smirked, and even cheered when U.S. snowboarder Lindsay Jacobellis took that tumble on the slopes to teeter from gold to silver at these Winter Olympics that just ended. Jacobellis' ''gnarly'' who-cares attitude after the spill won her even fewer friends OVER THERE and even offended some of us over here.

If there was gold in those hills for bad manners and poor sportsmanship, we won.

After losing to Russia, our millionaire hockey players whined about having to hail cabs and order food all by themselves. About Bode Miller, please. Enough. Then, of course, we had speedskater Chad Hedrick who (supposedly) had this tiff going with Shani Davis. (It was supposed to be us against them, guys, not us against us!)

All that feeds the worldwide perception that Americans still haven't grown up. We are not quite civilized--certainly not as cultured as they are in Europe and elsewhere. (Our civilian dollars are always welcome, though, as are our military sacrifices when tyrants plunge them into world wars.)

Okay, I buy this, that we're short on etiquette. Yes, we tend to be somewhat spoiled, snarly, gnarly, arrogant, reckless, extravagant, cocky, and brash--much of it reflected upon the rest of us when some of us, like our athletes (or just plain tourists), go abroad. We don't use the right fork and we're less about saving face and more about in-your-face.

All that is true, but this is also true:

We don't go nuts when "artists" portray images of Jesus in derisive forms. When the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibited Jesus as a naked woman, there were no riots.

We don't go bonkers when people stomp on our flag here and everywhere. We don't like it, but we call it freedom.

There were no stampedes and cries for a holy war when "The Last Temptation of Christ" hit the theaters, and no fatwa against Director Martin Scorsese.

When Steven Spielberg's anti-Israel movie "Munich" came out, American Jews got REALLY MAD and expressed their rage in letters to the editor.

When Sirhan Sirhan murdered our attorney general, Robert Kennedy, we did not rush to the assassin's place of worship to burn it down.

When Palestinian Arabs invaded the Church of the Nativity and used the Bible for toilet paper, American Christians sighed, but chalked it up as just another day. Christians did not shoot rifles up in the air, and shake their fists in frenzied cries for payback. There was no talk of "off with their heads."

When 19 hijackers came here and murdered 3,000 of our citizens, there were no sermons from the pulpits of churches and synagogues to go get their mosques.

We take offense when multitudes gather around the world with shouts of "Death to America." So what we do is--we turn the channel.

Representing her hip-hop skateboard-surfer generation, Jacobellis was indeed a poor diplomat for us. She had it all in the bag like Secretariat who went on to win the Belmont by 31 lengths. Jacobellis' lead was about the same, in terms of snowboardcross, but nearing the wire she decided to "style" and that cost her, and cost us, the gold. After that, instead of atoning, she went snarly.

Okay, maybe next time around we'll all learn some manners.

Meanwhile, I'll take our misbehavior over their decorum. All things considered, I still say we're the big winners.

Editor's Note: Don’t forget to go to Amazon.com for the latest installment of Jack Engelhard’s serialized novel, The Bathsheba Deadline.

About the Writer: Jack Engelhard is the author of the bestseller "Indecent Proposal," the award-winning "Escape from Mount Moriah," and the novel "The Days of the Bitter End," which is being prepared for movie production. Jack's latest novel, "The Bathsheba Deadline," is now available in serial form at Amazon.com. Jack receives e-mail at viewopinion@aol.com.




Ellie