Doug McGill www.mcgillreport.com
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [Don't know if this book is any good, but MK's
> reactions to serious
> criticism of the U.S. sort of proves Hertsgaard's
> point.]
>
> New York Times - November 15, 2002
>
>
> BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'THE EAGLE'S SHADOW'
>
> Americans and Those in the World Who Resent Them
> By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> THE EAGLE'S SHADOW
> Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
> By Mark Hertsgaard
> 236 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $23.
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> Six years before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the
> scholar Benjamin
> R. Barber wrote a provocative and in some ways very
> prescient book,
> "Jihad vs. McWorld," which explored the growing
> post-cold-war
> tensions between secular consumerist capitalism and
> religious and
> ethnic fundamentalism; between the Americanized
> global marketplace
> and tribal movements virulently opposed to
> modernity.
> Advertisement
>
> The subtitle of Mark Hertsgaard's new book, "The
> Eagle's Shadow" -
> "Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World" -
> suggests that the
> author is going to take up where Mr. Barber left
> off, exploring the
> envy, worship and rage that America elicits abroad.
> But while Mr.
> Hertsgaard lifts some of Mr. Barber's ideas about
> the Americanization
> of global pop culture and the resentment it incurs,
> he neither
> delivers on his promise to explore "how we look to
> the rest of the
> world" nor communicates to foreigners "why America
> and Americans are
> the way we are."
>
> Instead, he has written a hectoring, fuzzy-minded
> book that devolves
> into an angry personal rant about what the author
> thinks is wrong
> about America: we are treated to long-winded and
> poorly reasoned
> diatribes about the presidential election of 2000,
> the inequality
> between rich and poor in the United States, and what
> the author
> describes as our hypocritical backing of
> "treacherous dictatorships
> that serve our perceived interests."
>
> Although Mr. Hertsgaard, a writer who is a
> contributor to National
> Public Radio, says he has spent 20 years living and
> traveling abroad
> through some 30 countries, his interviews with
> foreigners are
> sparsely sprinkled through this book. And they are
> thoroughly random
> in nature: a London cabbie here, a couple of South
> African teenagers
> there; a Japanese art historian in one chapter, an
> Egyptian salesman
> in another.
>
> Instead of seriously probing people's thoughts about
> America, he
> settles for making his own clichéd generalizations.
> "Americans are
> friendly but boorish, clever but shallow, prosperous
> but lonely," he
> says of foreigners' perceptions of the United
> States. "They are
> drowning in material possessions but poor in family,
> friends, and
> community. They are oddly moralistic; they seem to
> find sex shameful
> but violence beautiful. Above all, they live to work
> rather than work
> to live." A few pages later, he adds that we are
> "vulgar yet devout,
> modern yet old-fashioned, self-righteous yet
> rootless."
>
> There are many significant issues raised in this
> book, from the
> consequences of America's accelerating exportation
> of pop culture to
> its current proclivity for unilateral action. But
> the valid points
> that Mr. Hertsgaard wants to make about such matters
> are smothered by
> his penchant for overstatement and outright
> distortion - and his
> consequent unreliability as an observer.
>
> Indeed "The Eagle's Shadow" is filled with dubious
> generalizations
> and outrageous assertions. Mr. Hertsgaard writes
> that "our democracy
> is an embarrassment to the word, a den of entrenched
> bureaucrats and
> legal bribery." He writes that "our media are a
> disgrace to the
> hallowed concept of freedom of the press," that they
> "may as well be
> a formal part of the government, for all the
> critical distance they
> usually maintain." And he compares America's bombing
> of Dresden
> during World War II to the terrorist attacks of
> Sept. 11, arguing
> that both acts "pursued military or political
> objectives by killing
> vast numbers of civilians."
>
> "When we are ready to face facts again," he argues,
> "we may see that
> our country was in crisis before bin Laden's bombers
> set off on their
> mission of hate. Politically, we live in a democracy
> that barely
> deserves the name."
>
> Mr. Hertsgaard's skills as a logician turn out to be
> as poor as his
> skills as a political commentator. He suggests that
> the country's
> current economic woes are the result of a drop in
> consumer spending
> that reflects a post-9/11 "turning away from
> self-indulgence and
> material things" - never mind the drop in the stock
> market or rising
> unemployment. And he writes that "achieving economic
> justice in
> America is an imposing challenge, but no more
> imposing than the
> Wizard of Oz's command that Dorothy and her
> compatriots bring him the
> broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West" - never
> mind that Oz's
> command is that of a humbug who simply wants to send
> Dorothy and her
> friends off on a wild goose chase.
>
> Not surprisingly, the writing in "The Eagle's
> Shadow" proves as
> flabby as its arguments. Mr. Hertsgaard exhorts us
> to "fight to
> restore fairness and fiber to our democracy" -
> Grape-Nuts, anyone? -
> and he concludes this embarrassing book with a
> dreamy vision that
> equates the United States with a lava-spewing
> mountain. "If volcanoes
> can be beautiful as well as deadly," he writes, "why
> can't America be
> wise as well as powerful, generous as well as rich,
> magnanimous as
> well as proud?"
>
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