American Academic in Germany (NYT-OpEd) - Obama is too Kantian for the Germans!

[Kire]

Change Germans Can’t Believe In
By SUSAN NEIMAN
Published: July 26, 2008
Berlin

OP-ED: New York Times

WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency.

It is true that Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, featured Mr. Obama on its cover, topped by the words “Germany Meets the Superstar” — but the cover was satire, and nasty satire at that. The editors managed to find the ugliest photograph of Mr. Obama ever taken. It caught the senator at a moment that might be exhaustion but looks like conceited smirking. When Der Spiegel featured Mr. Obama on its cover in March, the cover line was “The Messiah Factor.” Must one add that this, too, was not meant to be taken at face value?

Europeans will be as relieved as 72 percent of Americans to see the end of the Bush administration, but their attitudes toward the Democratic candidate are far from being the same as the ones he arouses at home. Mr. Obama makes Europeans uncomfortable.

In Germany, politicians in front of large, shouting crowds evoke images that nobody wants to see repeated. But genuine worries about demagoguery are not all that’s at issue. The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide. George W. Bush made matters far worse than they ever were, but the neoconservatives who advised him were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams.

Not every European shows scorn for Mr. Obama. Karsten Voigt, the astute coordinator of the German Foreign Ministry’s America policies, thinks the United States is attempting a “complete renewal of its own political culture.”

But then, Mr. Voigt told me last week, he considers himself a Kantian. Very few Germans do.


More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/opinion/26neiman.html

[Mojorabbit]

1. Wow

What a nasty article.

[Demeter]

2. I'm Sure We're Going to See Lots More of It

With any luck, 8 more years!

[davepc]

3. When I was in Italy this spring all my relatives over there wanted to talk about Obama

And they we're all extremely supportive and excited about him.

[Clovis Sangrail]

4. pompous mental masturbation

"In Germany, politicians in front of large, shouting crowds evoke images that nobody wants to see repeated."

errrrr... so who was in the crowd?
non- germans who came from elsewhere?

[Muttocracy]

5. that was my question too - who were those people then?

and they looked pretty darn relaxed to me? :shrug:

[depakid]

6. What makes you think Neiman is a Hillary supporter?

Oh, that's right: she's not fawning all over Obama- and has the temerity to offer up some philosophical analysis of her own from a European perspective that doesn't comport with the shallow party line.

Ergo: she must support Hillary!

btw: her bio via wiki:

Susan Neiman (born March 27, 1955) is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. A moral philosopher, she is the author of books in English and German, including: Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy,The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant, and Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin. Moral Clarity: A guide for grownup idealists was published in May 2008.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman went on to study at Harvard and Free University of Berlin. She has been an associate professor at Tel Aviv University and Yale. Neiman has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2006-7), a Research Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center at Bellagio, and a Senior Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. Her books have won prizes from PEN, the American Association of Publishers, and the American Academy of Religion. Neiman is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She has been interviewed on PBS NOW and spoke at the Beyond Belief conference in 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Neiman

[glitch]

8. She certainly appears to be too smart to use some of the broad brush techniques she used in this. nt

[depakid]

13. Kind of a constraint of an OP Ed piece.

She has a limited number of words- though I agree, it's a bit heavy on the pigeonholing.

Nevertheless, some of her points about Europeans (and Berliners) being skeptical and jaded ring true in my experience. It's going to take many years- and concrete actions before perceptions about America (and Americans) become rehabilitated around the world.

[glitch]

17. Well, that's certainly true about the many years of rehab we face.

Not sure "messianic" allusions will move us forward in that regard.

[depakid]

19. LOL- well, that's Der Spiegel for you

[glitch]

20. At least they didn't put a golden halo around his head

like some formerly semi-respectable rags did for their little buddy Bush.

[brindis_desala]

12. kneejerk much. I agree there was no validity to the poster's

assumption that she was a hillary supporter, but the article was quite glowing in its take on Obama's idealism. Two wrongs do not a good write make. (hint: Nieman was pointing the difference between the American and German perspectives.)

[Kire]

18. I agree, too. No validity.

And I am the poster who made that assumption. Luckily I was able to edit out my mistake. I'm sorry I stirred the wrong pot. I was reading several things this morning and I got confused.

[Kire]

16. apparently, from what I was looking at, I was wrong

I read her bio on the Huffington Post, and I thought I saw something I can't find there now

she's actually quite supportive of him in her blogs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-neiman/#blogger_bio



She praises him for being the type of man who would come home from saving the world from black market arms-dealers, and have to stop along the way to get ant-traps so his wife could focus more on the children:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-neiman/obama-and-ant-traps-the-f_b_109699.html




And she is mildly critical of Hillary and her ironic image as working class heroine in this post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-neiman/across-the-great-divide_b_102513.html





Luckily, after I wrote those links above,I realized that I could still edit the post. I was terrified that I was going to get it wrong. Whew!

She's actually kind of interesting, but just the fact that she deduces that NOBODY is excited about Obama in Germany because she can't find any of her German intellectual friends who are, is kind of ugly. I got my emotions confused with an earlier post I saw about something called Pumas, which I hadn't heard of until recently. I'm not saying she's not a Hilary Clinton supporter at all, I really don't know much about her, so I should just keep my mouth shut, which is kind of hard to do on a message board.


I'm very sorry, just really glad I was able to edit that post. Please forgive me.

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. Evidently a lost soul, totally disoriented. Anyone who collects degrees, fellowships,

all sorts of bizarre worldly accreditations, etc, bestowed by eminent professional establishments on their own kind, is never, by any stretch of the imagination, going to be quite the round shilling. Outside of medicine, anyway - though even that's not guaranteed.

[depakid]

25. Anti-intellectualism is alive and well I see

Which is why places like this exist:

http://www.ias.edu/

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Your misuse of the root word "intellect" is sad. If the highest worldly intellect is not nourished

by an emotional intelligence worthy of the name, then the individual concerned will plumb the very depths imbecility. It's a matter of every-day observation.

Hunter S Thompson, speaking about the extraordinary power now residing with the TV stations, once described TV journalists in this way: "For the most part, they are dirty little animals with huge brains and no pulse". Now that man was a genius, but his honorary doctorate, which, of course, he didn't seem to take too seriously, was from a strange church called the Universal Life Church. Not exactly Ivy League or Oxbridge. It seems to have been a tongue-in-cheek joke by him.

However, just recent history is littered with the names of half-witted politicians with first-class honours degress and/or doctorates. What we do not apply our minds to, can be, and often is, a positive reflection of our level of intelligence, as much as what we do choose to apply it to. A bit like crosswords. Many people find them to be enormous fun, and good exercise for their minds, but it is arguable that, by their nature as a diversion, they are a means of NOT exercising our minds. In much the same way, one is at much greater liberty to reflect on the imponderables of life, as well as those more accessible to our understanding, working at repetitive manual jobs than say, as an accountant.

To my mind, unless they have a practical application, such as in scientific fields, collecting academic accreditations reflects a butterfly kind of intellect. I knew a chap who translated 23 languages, but you wouldn't compare him for intellect with another one, with a mind that really does put you in mind of a steel trap, who taught himself Arabic from newspapers, had chosen to go to a provincial, red-brick university, rather than Oxbridge, and only translates from four. And he's a very, very witty bloke to boot.

But there's always a trade-off of some kind. It's the way we're made. Look at our Albert. Turned down for a post as a junior lecturer and worked as a functionary in a patents office. The brain is not what it's cracked up to be. It's a reducing valve for survival in time, though it's chief beneficiaries generally like to cast their worldly intelligence almost as the sovereign virtue!

".... I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight."

For a long time, I couldn't help thinking that that wasn't much of a compliment, but of course, Christ was aware of the sovereign status and worth of the emotional intelligence.

In much the same way, the chauvinist in me wondered about the compliment to the Virgin Mary, uttered, I think, by her cousin Elizabeth, "Blessed are you among women (not among mankind). But again, it's a higher compliment, since while women may match men in worldly intelligence, they generally seem to excel us in terms of emotional intelligence.

In the next life, Enstein won't have the least advantage over a person who had suffered in this life from the severest cretinism. Without a spiritual underpinning, the greatest worldly knowledge is clearly a contemptible nothing. And even with it, the trade-off will mean that the greater connatural status will be possessed by the poorer folk, "... whom God made rich in faith". Which actually equates to love, the "sine qua non" of salvation, more than anything. "The devils believed and tremble."

[glitch]

7. Holy moly this is ugly. I think it should be K & R front and center so that everybody can see it.

"Mr. Obama makes Europeans uncomfortable" ?!? This passes for journalism at the NYT?

[Beregond2]

9. The author should have asked

the 200,000 screaming Obamafans in Berlin what they thought, not his closed circle of dried-up pseudo-intellectuals.

[depakid]

15. First of all, the author isn't a "he"

and second- unlike Americans- most Europeans tend to be both educated and informed- so its no surprise that many aren't impressed or express some disdain for what they may see as campaign showmanship.

[bemildred]

10. Charismatic politicians scare the heck out of the DC establishment crowd.

It the only real threat to their power, other than their own incompetence.

[Glorfindel]

11. What a bleak, hopeless life that person must lead

And what a shame she finds it necessary to expose the rest of us to it. ;(

[DavidDvorkin]

14. She doesn't seem to know much about Germans or their history

Here's an article about East German crowds calling for an appearance by Willy Brandt:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942220,00.html

This article includes a picture:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=106

[Joe Chi Minh]

21. "The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama

in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide."

Alas, the poor girl would live in the gold-fish bowl of the right-wing media's chattering classes, and is projecting their dearest wishes, albeit deeply anguished - hence the rancorous tone. Satire requires a light touch, which those morons are clearly incapable of. Well, it's a truism, anyway, that satire requires the right wing. Though, in fact it would be the owner's line that the press have to follow, and many of them privately could show a genuine pulse.

[MasonJar]

23. All I can say is that I do not believe it. The Europeans despise Bush and they

love Clinton. They will in turn love Obama. Europeans are more cultured and worldly than the majority of Americans. They have faced two world wars on their continent and have faced many terrorist attacks. They do NOT curl up and destroy their liberties; they soldier on with verve and enthusiasm. They are weary of war, and who could possibly blame them. The writer of this article is obviously deluded at best and disingenuous at worst. The big question? Why did the NYT print this absurd piece of nonsense?

[Hav]

24. Wow, that's just bad journalism.

First, one can't talk for all Europeans like the author does and neither do I want to do it. But before his speech in Berlin, several people were interviewed and they were interested and excited to see him. Look at the pics and one can see the good mood of so many people. They didn't feel uncomfortable at all. That doesn't necessarily mean that there was "Obama-mania" in Europe as some said, but it's just a lie to say that there is hardly anyone who would like to see Obama win against McCain. The poll the author referenced was not in a comparison with Bush but the question was who they would like to win, Obama or McCain. And stupid implications behind sentences like "Not every European shows scorn for Mr. Obama." just sound like opposite day.

"Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams."
That's the kind of bullshit one always hears from the right and it's insulting. One good aspect of Obama's speech was that, without directly attacking the current Administration, he showed them that there can be a different America (opposed to Bush's America) and that they share similar ideals and dreams despite all the irritaions of the past years. He got applauded whenever he highlighted the things that unite the US and Europe and not the things that separate them. I suppose there was some kind of relief that not every American President will handle things like Bush.

Concerning the articles and covers from "Der Spiegel", I wonder who else saw it as "nasty satire". Both articles were pretty objective and I believe she either didn't read them or she didn't understand anything.

Finally, I have to repeat what MasonJar said in post #23 because there is no better way to describe this "article": is truly is an "absurd piece of nonsense".