Of course there are some people who don’t like LA. But to say that he is trashed/hated/loathed/etc., etc., on this side of the pond as a rule/in general/etc., etc., just isn’t true - do you believe everything you read in the media. I do hope not ;-)

LA is as much hero-worshipped in Europe as on your side of the pond. Indeed, I’m not sure there isn’t a week goes by without him being hero-worshipped in Cycling Weekly over here. So much so the mag gets letters reminding the editor that other world-class cyclists do exist :-)

Perhaps your version of Europe is about as accurate as life in USA is as depicted in "Dallas" Whaddya mean JR was fictional!;-)

Cheers, helen s—wafflycat

Re: Armstrong doping question
Tue, 05 Apr 2005 18:12:55 GMT
Stephen Harding <smhard...@verizon.net>

Yeah we keep hearing how Euros aren’t "anti-American", they just don’t like our President, feel our political system is corrupt, elections Third World, our businesses anti-Green, our news media uninformed and shallow, and our citizenry over-weight and stupid.

I’ve been to Europe on many occasions, have European friends, and realize like the US, Europe is a big place with a large variety of opinion and viewpoint.

I just believe it is more unified in its anti-Americanism now days. These dislikes were always present, they’ve just gained wider, more vocal following in recent years.

As far as Lance goes, I think he’s somewhat caught up in all this. The assumption of guilt and the demand that he "prove his innocence" is a manifestation of this situation.—Stephen

Fancy that! We Europeans aren’t all left-wing-commee-pinkos after all ;-)—wafflycat

Certainly the war on Iraq with its lack of those WMDs & lack of links between Saddam & Osmotic Bin Liner did nothing to endear Shrub (or Teflon Tone, Shrub’s poodle) to an awful lot of Europeans, and indeed, IIRC there’s been quite a few Americans object to the war in Iraq too. Perhpas they are all Europeans in disguise ;-)

Cheers, helen s—wafflycat

I think you’ll find some of the vehement anti-Americanism comes from...Americans.

Always been that way.

Well Clinton seemed to be Tony’s "poodle" during the Kosovo thing so a role reversal seems only fair.—Stephen

We don’t like our Prime Minister either. A lot of people were not at all happy about the idea of invading Iraq, and that had no connection with their views on other political issues of the day.

We don’t think your businesses are anti-green. We do think your President is, but we have evidence for that. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that he’s an oilman, a global warming denier and apparently hell-bent on using all the oil before anyone else does.

Is your electoral process corrupt? Even W’s best friends surely could not think that Florida 2000 was anything other than fishy. Just as our PM’s best friends could not pretend that the postal votes fiasco looks good.

Is your citizenry overweight? You said it, not me. And Greg Critser said it in Fat Land. The idea that the US is the world’s most overweight nation is not some kind of invented prejudice, it’s a documented fact - and all the documentation is coming from US doctors who are concerned about it.

Are Americans stupid? Nobody said they were. Misled, sometimes, but no more stupid on average than the sheeple of any other country.—Just

And last year we kept hearing about anti-French sentiment -- how Americans were refusing to buy French products, how some places were re-naming French Fries to Freedom Fries, etc. Some of that did occur -- I got a really good price on two Michelin tires for my wife’s car from a shop that was discontinuing Michelins because they are French. But I checked imported champagne sales during the early days of the Iraq war, and found they were up, when domestic wine sales were down.

America is a diverse country with many differences of opinion; Europe even more so.—Mike