http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2004-03-31/cityofwarts.html/1/index.html
>...He found the American left similarly clueless. When he and his grad student friends read leftist journals from around the world, they found that leftists had a distinctly funny, irreverent quality -- except in America. "In European, Scandinavian, and Australian countries, the left was humorous and fun," he says. "When I came to the US, I found that the left been Sovietized: dour, lacking any sense of humor or irony." Even today, as he lectures around the world, he still finds that American leftists have a unique predisposition for dogmatic articles of faith and bizarre conspiracy theories. "Most of the craziest questions come from white American college students," he laughs. "There's nothing that says since we're leftists, we have to be insane."
Michael Pugliese