Overweight, Superficial and Stupid: America’s Negative Image

Europe’s image of the United States is based mainly on prejudice: Americans are superficially friendly, stupid, trigger-happy, terminally ignorant and equally arrogant. A correction is in order.

When George W. Bush was president, the world was still in order. With the Texan in the White House, everything could be neatly divided into white and black, good and evil: Bush and his neoconservative hawks were evil, and everything else was good. Anti-Americanism reached an unprecedented high point during the Bush years, and bad-mouthing the United States suddenly became socially acceptable.

Barack Obama briefly made us rethink our image of the ugly Americans, but not permanently. The African-American who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just months after taking office — mainly because he wasn’t George W. Bush — embodied our hopes for a better America. The great, charismatic leader enchanted us with his campaign and his unique rhetorical talent. Time Magazine theorized that his slogan “Change we can believe in” was less about change than it was about belief. Obama was imparting the same thing that JFK gave people — here in Europe as well as in America — namely, confidence, hope and the belief that under his guidance, everything would get better.

Foreign policy disappointment

Four years later, we’re left with disappointment, here in Europe and also in the United States. Guantanamo remains open; there’s still no dialogue with Iran or North Korea; after 10 years, Afghanistan remains a Taliban stronghold; the Middle East problem has yet to be solved, and even the neoliberals have managed to turn the United States upside down — the very birthplace of capitalism, with its liberalized and deregulated policies, returned to a Keynesian model due to the economic crisis.

And the old, biased European images of the U.S. remain — of stupid, overweight and superficial people who think the rest of the world revolves around them, when in fact, they’re a trigger-happy bunch, terminally stupid and equally arrogant.

How superior we Europeans are with our culture, our history and our outstanding knowledge: We can even instantly find Romania on a world map with no difficulty. We have a bit more trouble locating Montana, however, and it’s more than 1.5 times the size of Romania.

One has to live in the United States for a few years to know that Americans are better than their reputation. Take the supposedly superficial nature of American friendliness, for example. It makes co-existence far easier, and besides, one doesn’t go to the supermarket to make new friends. Nobody in America gets abusive if the waiter is a bit slow, and the sales girl keeps smiling even after the customer has rejected the 10th pair of pants she’s shown and sends her back for more. Disagreements between neighbors are the exception, because everyone respects the individual and doesn’t think he’s the best judge of how neighbors should keep their yards.

This friendliness also has its practical side: American families move every five years or so on average. If one isn’t open and hospitable, neighbors are likely to have moved away before one ever got to know them. And the newcomers are always welcomed with a backyard grill marathon. Superficial? Some long distance friendships survive and some don’t, just as in Austria.

Poor education system

There’s no disputing that the American education system can’t keep up with the Austrian one. But it should be noted that in American schools, more emphasis is placed on personality development. From grade school onward, children are taught to respect other people and their opinions. This results in Americans who don’t disparage others — another concept that’s generally foreign to an Austrian. American students are taught not to laugh at the mistakes their classmates make, and teachers will always find something praiseworthy in even the worst answers. Such a teacher is undoubtedly more motivating than one who reacts with groans and eye-rolling. The results of such teaching methods is clearly visible in the Pisa Study: American students may come off worse in mathematics and reading than their European counterparts, but they far and away lead in the category of self-confidence.

That might also explain why so many innovations come from the United States, why people more confidently found businesses and take risks. In Austria, the surest way of getting stuck in a mediocre job is to drop out of school. In the United States, school dropouts include such people as Apple founder Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Sure, there are dunderheads in America as well: The nationalists whose horizons don’t extend beyond the Maine or California coastlines; the obese, the unfriendly and the trigger-happy. And there’s much that’s irritating: The lack of solidarity, for example.

But Bill Clinton said it best at his inauguration ceremony in 1993: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”