jlh | by the way, non-Americans . . .

You know what I'd love to see? I'd love to see a lot more of you all yammering away about your own fucking politics and what you like and don't like about them, and a little bit less about how you think our voting system is stupid, because, not so much with the helping. (I'm mostly exempting our friends from Oz who have been wailing quite loudly about their recent election and I say, go you! Keep wailing! I am so with you!)

But I'd love to know what, internally, in your country is good or bad. I don't remember hearing much about the Hutton commission report. I don't remember hearing any outrage about Rocco Buttiglione possibly being the new EU minister for justice. Haven't heard many opinions about what Arafat dying could mean in the Middle East. As far as I can tell from my flist, the US is the original horrible country and the source of most of the evil in the world, while Europe is a bunch of happy people who all hold hands around the campfire and sing kumbaya every night. Educate me. I feel like we are an open book relative to you. I know what I hear on the BBC, what I read on some news sites, but what do you think?

By the way, this post from

anw about actors that have played both gay and action heroes reminds me of a very interesting article recently in Entertainment Weekly about a Denzel Washington project that was scrapped. Know why there aren't more black action heroes? Because while those movies will take in plenty of money in the US, they gross almost nothing overseas, making them financially unviable. We might be horribly insular Jesus freaks, but at least we don't demand that our films have only white people in them.