On Vacation
By Marni Soupcoff
I was recently on holiday in Southeast Asia and discovered firsthand an interesting, if not exactly novel, phenomenon: Everyone hates Americans. Well, all right, probably not everyone. But almost everyone I met.
As a Canadian, I look and sound a lot like an American, particularly to people who don't live in America. So, throughout most of my trip, I got mistaken for an American.
"You're an American," people would tell me.
"Actually," I would correct whomever I was talking to (usually a deeply tanned European, often in a frighteningly small bathing suit), "I'm Canadian."
Without fail, whatever Belgian, German, Frenchman, or Brit I was speaking with would then, upon discovering my true nationality, launch into a vitriolic anti-Bush rant. That surprised me.
Perhaps I should clarify. I was not surprised that the average holidaying European would harbor anti-Bush, anti-American sentiments. I was not surprised that Southeast Asians themselves would be less than enamored with Dubya. I was surprised, however, that both groups would be so confident in their assumption that any Canadian they ran into would surely feel the same way.
What makes people think that Canadians hate George W. Bush? I mean, besides the fact that Michael Moore seems to love Canada, what did we do to make the world assume every one of us would be a gleeful Yankee-basher?
Okay, don't answer that. As I have detailed in this very column, there have been a sad number of instances of prominent Canadians completely embarrassing themselves with anti-American bigotry and name-calling.
Canada does have an inferiority complex that tends to manifest itself in snide condemnations of its brash southern neighbor.
But as a conservative Canadian with considerable loyalties to the
United States, as well my own country, I quickly grew tired of my vacation being interrupted by excited men in Speedos wagging their index fingers in my face and calling the American President a stupid cow.
Yet there seemed, sadly, nothing that I could do to stop the phenomenon. Sure, I could express my disagreement with the screeds once they were uttered. Or, in cases where I was stuck in a confined space with one of the Bush-haters for a long period of time, I could deftly change the subject to avoid a pleasant ocean tour turning into a messed-up semi-informed international McLaughlin Group from hell.
But short of avoiding all future eye contact, there seemed no good strategy to head off these offensive, not to mention drearily boring, Americans-are-stupid-cows conversations before they started.
And then, I started carrying around a copy of the 9/11 Commission report.
It wasn't a purely defensive move. Pretty early on in our trip, I had run out of reading material (one must apparently earn a six figure salary to afford an Entertainment Weekly in Malaysia). And I had always meant to get around to reading the 9/11 Report in its entirety, rather than just the snippets I had taken in via the web.
But much to my delight, it turned out the 9/11 Report was the perfect weapon for forestalling anti-American rants. When I carried it around with me, people would eye it curiously, but wouldn't dare open their mouths about the U.S. in my presence because they weren't sure what I was doing with the report. Maybe I was an American who had lost a relative in the attack. Maybe I was out to spill the beans on the whole Israeli/American/Right-Wing conspiracy that blew a hole in the Pentagon itself then made up a story about a bunch of planes. You really couldn't tell just by looking at me. So people left me blissfully alone.
In the end, I learned several lessons from my trip:
1) People don't like to say bad things to your face. None of the
Bush-is-the-Antichrist monologues were delivered until I revealed myself as a Canadian. When people were under the impression that I was an American, they were friendly and polite. They weren't going to spit in my face. Just maybe in my Pad Thai when I wasn't looking.
2) Trying to appease your critics doesn't make you safe. Before I left home, I was told by more than a few relatives and friends--none of them normally especially anti-American or patriotic about Canada--to be sure to plaster my luggage and person with Canadian flags so that people wouldn't try to attack me thinking I was an American. But should anyone have wanted to attack me, I highly doubt they would have taken the time to examine my luggage tags. And on those few occasions when I did receive hostile or disapproving stares in Malaysia, it was because I was a woman wearing shorts--a Muslim no-no that would not have been excused had I simply made it more obvious that I come from the goody-two-shoes half of North America.
3) When trying to avoid tiresome conflicts with hyper-talkative Europeans, confuse your enemy. Preferably by wielding a copy of the 9/11 Commission's report. Trust me. It works like a charm.
Marni Soupcoff's column appears on Monday at TAEmag.com.
