Another gem from the Financial Times. Americans visiting Rome were shocked, shocked they tell at us at the level of vitriol directed at the President’s visit to Italy.
A family from Tennessee tells the tale:
For the Cooper family, from Knoxville, Tennessee, visiting Rome was supposed to be the highlight to their two-week vacation in Europe.
Instead, they arrived on Saturday to find some of the Eternal City’s most famous streets and piazzas packed with tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators protesting against a visit by President George W. Bush on his way home from a G8 summit.
“We come from a place where you just don’t see this kind of street protest,” said John Cooper, watching with his wife and two teenage children as demonstrators passed nearby waving communist flags, chanting “Yankee Go Home” and brandishing banners that compared Mr Bush to Hitler.
As Mr Cooper spoke, a skirmish erupted between protesters and riot police, sending the family fleeing for safety down a side street. The violence flared for the next two hours, finally quelled by thousands of baton-wielding police and several bursts of tear gas.
and of course the corporatists are in charge preventing a true accounting of the war:
Avoiding the issue has become easier since Europe’s two most strident war critics – Gerhard Schröder, former German chancellor, and Jacques Chirac, former French president – have been replaced by Ms Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, who are more Atlanticist in outlook.
But while Europe’s leaders may have decided to look beyond the war, Saturday’s protests showed that many ordinary Europeans, particularly the young and left-leaning, still view the US through the prism of Iraq.
Most U.S. tourists felt the protests were aimed at Il Presidente rather than the U.S. But young Ms. Cooper was in a bit of a tiff about the Anti-American rabble on the street:
But Mr Cooper’s daughter, Sarah, admitted feeling resentful. “It’s tough to take when you see people being so disrespectful of our president,” she said.
Me, I’m learning the words to O’Canada for my next trip abroad.
The full article (firewalled) is here: We don’t take kindly to yer type around here
For a further view of how Skeeter, I mean Mr. Cooper, and his family can’t see beyond the daily talking points from Fox and the Vice President’s sockpuppet, or as he likes to be known, Senator Lieberman, I refer you to NLinStPaul’s excellent diary:
Facing the fear: a journey out of authoritarianism
