-Ian. …….

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020814/4358473s.htm

Global warmth for U.S. after 9/11 turns to frost Wed Aug 14, 8:33 AM ET Ellen Hale USA TODAY

OXFORD, England — On a packed train out of London recently to this historic college town, a young American woman struck up a conversation with her seatmate, a nattily dressed older British man. hey chatted amiably about Oxford until she worked up the courage to ask what was weighing on her mind:

”Why,” she blurted out, ”does everybody hate us?”

The man paused — but didn’t disagree — before proceeding to enumerate the reasons, from U.S. foreign policies to the seeping influence of American popular culture.

In the shock wave that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many Americans found themselves asking why so many people in Muslim countries hate the United States. But the anti-American sentiment has turned into a contagion that is spreading across the globe and infecting even the United States’ most important allies.

In virulent prose, newspapers criticize the United States. Politicians ferociously attack its foreign policies, especially the Bush administration’s plans to attack Iraq. And regular citizens launch into tirades with American friends and visitors.

Here in Britain, the United States’ staunchest friend, snide remarks and downright animosity greet many Americans these days. It’s not just religious radicals and terrorists who resent the United States anymore.

”Now, it’s everyone,” says Allyson Stewart-Allen, a consultant from California who has lived in London 15 years and heads International Marketing Partners, which advises European companies on how to do business with Americans. The sea change in attitude toward the United States, she says, has ”profoundly” altered her advice to clients:

She now must counsel them to resist ”taking digs” at her countrymen.

What happened, many Americans are wondering, to that wave of sympathy and stockpile of global goodwill they encountered after Sept. 11?

”It was squandered,” says Meghnad Desai, director of the Institute for Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a member of the House of Lords.

”America dissipated the goodwill out of its arrogance and incompetence. A lot of people who would never ever have considered themselves anti-American are now very distressed with the United States,” he says.

Desai and others blame what seems to be a wave of new U.S. policies that they regard as selfish and unilateral, stretching back to President Bush ( news – web sites)’s refusal last year to support the international treaty on global warming ( news – web sites).

Many are enraged by Bush’s support for steel tariffs and farm subsidies, his refusal to involve the United States in the new international criminal court and what is widely regarded abroad as one-sided support for Israel and its prime minister, Ariel Sharon ( news – web sites).

The rash of corporate malfeasance and blanket arrest of terrorism suspects after Sept. 11 further fuels critics, who say the United States preaches democracy, human rights and free enterprise — but doesn’t practice them.

Growing gap with Europe

In a recent article in Policy Review magazine, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, says the divide between the United States and Europe is getting wider than ever as the continents go their different ways — one operating on a foreign policy based on unilateralism and coercion, the other on diplomacy and persuasion.

Europeans, he says, have ”come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to (their) pacific ideals than Iraq or Iran.”

The differences, he says, are deep and likely to endure.

”Why do people attack Americans?” asks Tiny Waslandek, a social worker in Amsterdam, Netherlands. ”Because they have a big, big mouth and they mind everybody’s business.”

Bush’s plan to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ( news – web sites) is stoking anti-American hostility to bonfire levels. In Germany earlier this month, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder launched his re-election campaign by denouncing what he derisively called Bush’s proposed military ”adventures” in Iraq. In England, the new head of the Anglican Church and other leading bishops circulated a petition proclaiming that any attack would be illegal and immoral.

Linked to Iraq and Israel

”My sense is that much of the rampant anti-Americanism we see now is very much linked to a war with Iraq and the Israel-Palestine issue,” says Mary Kaldor, a London-based scholar on international relations.

In the popular Straw Poll BBC radio show July 26, Kaldor debated with Washington Post reporter T. R. Reid whether ”American power is the power of the good.” She argued that the U.S. role as the sole superpower was a danger to the rest of the world.

At the end of the program, 70% of the studio audience said it agreed with her.

Anti-Americanism is nothing new. Surveys a decade ago in Britain showed that one in four people here are what pollster Robert Worcester, a transplanted Kansan who runs the Market Opinion Research Institute, calls ”culturally anti-American.”

(According to a survey taken in 1989, one in five said they found American accents irritating.)

To some degree, the resentment against the United States is inevitable now that it’s the only remaining superpower. Even so, Desai, who says that he is ”very, very pro-America” and that people forget the United States saved Europe from itself twice in the past century, notes that America has been on top for a long time. ”So what is happening now is not the inevitable result of being No. 1.”

(Desai and many other Europeans give Washington credit for dismantling the hard-line Taliban regime in Afghanistan ( news – web sites), which harbored Osama bin Laden ( news – web sites) and his al-Qaeda terrorist network).

In recent months, polls have shown a less-than subtle change in attitudes toward Americans, U.S. foreign policy and, in particular, the president from Texas. British newspapers reported Thursday that secret polls commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair ( news – web sites) revealed ”spectacular unpopularity” for Bush among voters here.

In April, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that less than half (48%) of Germans consider the United States a guarantor of peace in the world, compared with 62% who did in 1993. Nearly half — 47% — rated Americans as aggressive rather than peaceful (34%). And 44% called them superficial.

Meanwhile, in an April poll for the Council on Foreign Relations, based in Washington, Europeans proved highly critical of Bush and what they label his unilateral approach to foreign policy: 85% of Germans, 80% of French, 73% of Britons and 68% of Italians said they believed that the United States is acting in its own interest in the war on terrorism.

Philadelphia transplant Susan Steele, head of Forum management company in London, has noticed that many Europeans have started using the phrase ”that’s American,” which is shorthand, Steele says, for ”not taking anyone else into consideration.”

”People here were truly shocked and horrified by Sept. 11,” says Marjorie Thompson, an American who runs the consulting group C3I in London. ”But since then, they’ve come to believe that the United States is using that as an excuse for a unilateral foreign policy, and they’re starting to make sweeping anti-American comments.”

‘Oppressed opinion’

Even British pop star George Michael and tennis pro Martina Navratilova have taken swings at the United States. Last month, Michael declared he was ”definitely not anti-American” after receiving criticisms for his new single, Shoot the Dog, which lampooned the relationship between Bush and Blair.

In June, Navratilova, a Czech native who became a U.S. citizen 20 years ago, had to defend herself after writing an article for a German newspaper in which she said that the United States now ”oppressed opinion” and that decisions there were based ”solely on how much money will come out of it.”

That the United States is suffering an image problem abroad has become obvious at home. Two weeks ago, the White House announced it would create a permanent Office of Global Communications to enhance America’s image around the world. At the same time, the House of Representatives approved spending $225 million on cultural and information programs abroad, mostly targeting Muslim countries, to correct what Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., called a ”cacophony of hate and misinformation” about the United States.

Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations simultaneously issued a biting report warning the Bush administration that it urgently needs to upgrade its efforts at public diplomacy to counteract the country’s ”shaky” image abroad.

It called for a range of actions, from increased spending on polling of foreign public opinion and more training of foreign service officers to giving journalists from other countries access to top U.S. government officials.

‘Ominous’ consequences

The consequences of neglecting such public diplomacy are ”ominous,” warns Peter Peterson, chairman of the council and of The Blackstone Group, a New York private investment bank. He says bin Laden has ”gleefully exploited” the United States’ poor public image.

”Around the world, from Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and contemptuous of others,” Peterson says. ”This is not a Muslim country issue. It has metastasized to the rest of the world and includes some of our closest European allies.”

New Yorker Julia Magnet, a journalist who just moved to London, found that out when she decided to throw a Fourth of July party for British friends. Between grilled sausages and chocolate cake, her friends launched an attack on Bush and the United States. They called Bush a ”homicidal maniac” and ”stupid” and the United States the ”world’s biggest terrorist.”

Magnet, 22, was forgiving, and she labeled their assault ”uninformed” and ”ignorant.”

Nevertheless, she was surprised by the venom in their words.

”What I hear from people all the time now is that we’re going to go to war with just about everyone and we don’t need a coalition to do it,” Magnet says.

”It’s obvious they are very, very disturbed by the power America now has.”

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We meant it, ma’am

Next month sees another jubilee – 25 years since the Sex Pistols cut through the pomp and stood up for another England. The band’s manager Malcolm McLaren recalls the hysteria of 1977 – and says that it’s punk, not royalty, which we should be celebrating.

Malcolm MacLaren Sunday May 19, 2002 The Observer

Twenty-five years ago, at the CBS record-manufacturing plant in England, workers rescued some of the contraband records from being melted by hiding them in their coats – copies of the Sex Pistols’ new single, ‘God Save the Queen’. Just one week after signing the Pistols, A&M had rescinded on their contract and attempted to destroy all the records. Now my office had to field unsolicited calls offering to sell illicit copies of ‘God Save the Queen’ at the extortionate price of £20 a copy. I was naturally a bit reluctant, but after some thought, I purchased several boxes. A few weeks later, I signed the group to Richard Branson’s Virgin label. The excitement from Virgin’s employees was such that they wanted to conspire with me and create an alternative celebration to the Queen’s silver jubilee by hiring our own boat to follow her flotilla down the Thames.

The Sex Pistols were banned from playing on land, and their song ‘God Save the Queen’ banned from being played on the airwaves. So the only place left was the water. One of the most delirious memories I have is of seeing crowds of artful dodgers – punk rockers – jamming London’s bridges, hanging from its lampposts, screaming and shouting merrily, throwing bottles and empty yoghurt pots down on to the boat as it blared their favourite song out across the Thames: ‘God save the Queen/she ain’t no human being/ she made/you a moron/ a potential H-bomb/ God save the Queen/ we mean it maaan!’ It was a frenzied, chaotic, cacophonous, exhilarating, inspired moment. A ticket to a carnival for a better life.

We confronted the River Police. The boat was driven back to Charing Cross escorted by the same. I was among the many arrested when we disembarked and spent the night in jail. Somehow, I never saw Richard Branson. He just seemed to disappear. In front of the judge, I felt something in the air had truly changed. His dutiful air of smug importance made me laugh. I was made to feel a criminal, to beg forgiveness, and furthermore, he said, if I were to ever appear before him again, for a similar offence, he would have no hesitation in sending me to one of Her Majesty’s Prisons where I would spend a term of no less than three months.

On that same fateful day known as the silver jubilee, the media fell in love with the Sex Pistols, with the money they could potentially make, with the power they could potentially wield. That day, the Daily Mirror placed our portrait of the Queen – a modified version of the famous Cecil Beaton photograph with a safety-pin pierced through her nose – on its cover. The official portrait was relegated to page 3. The media preferred to love ours instead.

The media’s innocence and virginal attitude at that time seemed to provide us with the power of God or government or both. And with it, the ability to change the way people thought about things. It made me feel reasonable when demanding the impossible. And thereafter, it suddenly became forbidden to forbid.

Pop culture had made a difference. Punk rock’s musical revolution was open to everyone. You didn’t need to have the necessary skills to compete with your forebears. The old stars were driven back to hide in their country houses. It was a do-it-yourself phenomenon. For a moment everybody was an artist. The culture had been de-mystified. Its old properties, once controlled and considered important by an industry, were now worthless. It was a blow against the commodification and the pop brands that purported to have control of the culture. Punk rock fans didn’t need to buy anything – they just had to be . This was the most frightening idea of all for the record industry. They were simply out of control.

That week of the silver jubilee, it was nearly impossible to buy the record. It couldn’t be purchased in the majority of high street stores. It couldn’t be heard on the radio, except on rare occasions as a news item. The record was banned from advertising itself. The commercial TV stations refused to accept our homemade ads. London Transport refused to allow our posters on the Underground. Yet the record was undoubtedly No 1. The national charts were falsified by the record industry itself. A Rod Stewart track was put at No 1, even though ‘God Save the Queen’, sold by the same record distributors, was outselling it by two to one. How did it ever achieve such status? This was against all normal marketing rules. It broke with such traditions and clear economic values. The consumer was an alien that they didn’t understand.

When my young son, Joseph Corré, went to WH Smith and looked up at that store’s own record chart, he saw just a blank mark at the number one spot and asked the saleslady what was the No 1 record. She replied, ‘We don’t sell that record here.’ He didn’t understand. ‘But why have you got a blank spot? Isn’t the No 1 record ‘God Save the Queen’ by the Sex Pistols?” ‘We don’t wish to talk about it.’

The day after the silver jubilee, everything in the media was under the critical eye of the new generation. The silver jubilee was a turning point, a moment whose impact is still felt today. Because it opened up the door to all the disenfranchised – the young, the everyday common outlaw. The culture had been reclaimed by them. Anything seemed possible after that. This generation of punk rockers responded to an irresistible urge to choose between love and creation. They chose creation. Instead of getting married and settling down in a normal respectable job, they sought adventure, provocation, and with it, to change life. All independent minds blossomed. Independent film companies, independent record companies, independent TV companies were born. Advertising changed to accommodate the new mood – ‘less is more’, ‘small is cool’.

Anti-fashion had become the last repository of the marvellous – and all its designers, the last possessors of the wand of Cinderella’s fairy godmother. With my partner at the time, I was thrilled at how our anti-fashion ideas (the bondage trouser, the ‘God Save the Queen’ T-shirt, rubber skirts) created a whole new feeling; clothes created not to sell. Things new made to look frighteningly old-fashioned became an idea, a statement of intent and not a product. A useful tool to create debate. This fed into a desire never to return to normality again. Does passion end in fashion? Or does fashion end in passion?

Shopping today has become the new cultural ideal and occupation of the planet. Shopping is art. Everyone has become their own curator. The church back in the Middle Ages sold salvation; sold the ability for people to feel they didn’t have to acquire things. Later, the museum replaced the church. And then, the department store replaced the museum. There is a new word to describe this phenomenon: ‘Shoppertainment’. Shoppertainment is the satisfaction you get when you go shopping. The entertainment is not in the spending, but when you get home and believe that in shopping, you have acquired self-knowledge, salvation, fulfilled your desires and dreams. Of course this sense does not last. So you go back to the shops the next day and spend more.

The same ‘God Save The Queen’ T-shirts sold back then in Sex, my shop in the King’s Road in Chelsea, are today sold in stores in Beverly Hills. Twenty-five years on they appear on the backs of Kate Moss and Lauren Hutton, photographed in Vogue. It could be said that it’s now the antithesis of what it originally stood for, and its imaging inadvertently could be said to help promote the brand, the royal family, the ‘Firm’ (as the Duke of Edinburgh is so fond of saying – actually a term often used to describe a criminal gang), the Queen.

The royal family is a story about hypocrisy and at the same time, a story about England. The royal family is a celebrity brand with an immense PR machine behind it. It’s just another business, except we pay for it and they profit by it. A neat trick. However, the royal family is England’s biggest show business act. They are people who are brought up to a certain way of life, who are given the means to extend their knowledge and to extend their understanding. But they are not given the opportunity to use their minds in connection with it. They are a brilliant metaphor for all that is pretentious, deluded, selfish and insincere about England. They made me finally face the fact that I had to be a rebel in this society – to be an outsider – with all of the penalties this would entail, or else accept the hypocrisy of England and its monarchy.

On golden jubilee day, will those TV cameras, acting as part of some Ridley Scott production and image-making apparatus, eventually burn the Queen out? Maybe the media will top itself and ultimately become responsible for turning the monarchy and its golden jubilee celebration into simply another super-expensive beer commercial for fascism? And include the rest of us as unpaid extras on the most expensive theme park on the planet. This is show business: Paul, Mick and all will no doubt be there for Ma’am.

I was forced to stand in line in the streets at the Queen’s coronation in 1953. I waved a flag as she went past in her golden carriage. I think then a great deal of the population thought the Queen had been chosen by God. And in those days, if you didn’t believe in God, God help you. We were taught, of course, that England was not just this tiny little island, this muddy hole, but all of this candy-coloured pink mass across the globe. The country was still a Christian land. The Union Jack, the Queen, the Government, and the Church of England were the pillars of all our thinking and supposed wisdom. You were made to feel culturally moribund without such beliefs.

Fifty years on, how many people in England actually believe in God? If you break that into an educated population, what percentage actually believes in a personal god? In an impersonal god? Or a force that is necessarily good? How many people go to church? And yet, everything connected with our establishment remains based on an assumption of belief – swearing on the Bible, ‘So help me God’. What about all the people who don’t believe in it, who are paying for it, who still accept it? These are encumbrances which damn few people have the will to reject. The alternative is to encourage people to be willing to take the consequences of standing up as individuals. Not saying ‘I can’t take up a position on this because I don’t know enough’ but ‘I do take up a position because I just know all of this isn’t true. It hasn’t a function at all.’

Yet last week Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols’ singer, said he had lobbied the palace to perform for the Queen at her golden jubilee party, that he was never ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ monarchy and that while we’ve got a monarchical system it might as well ‘work properly’. Then there’s my former partner Vivenne Westwood, who has accepted both an OBE and a Queen’s Award, and now thinks the monarch is great. This confuses me. I don’t understand how their views could have changed so much. I still feel much the same as I did in 1977. There are two words that might sum up the oppositions of our culture today. One is ‘authenticity’ and the other is ‘karaoke’. Karaoke is miming the words of others. It is a life by proxy, liberated by hindsight, unencumbered by the messy process of creativity. And not having to take responsibility from the moment its performance ends. I feel we live today in a karaoke world. You might say Tony Blair is our first karaoke Prime Minister.

There is, however, a counterpoint to all of this – an unquestionable desire and thirst for the authentic. What is it? Where can we find it? I found it that silver jubilee day on the Thames: those punk rockers strung out on the bridges of London, those ‘God Save The Queen’ T-shirts, that Daily Mirror front page, that hysterical laughter in front of the judge after my night in jail, those were all part of an attitude that expressed itself in something that could best be described as real – something that was authentic.

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