{"id":67,"date":"2003-06-18T12:23:26","date_gmt":"2003-06-18T16:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/island\/?p=67"},"modified":"2003-06-18T12:23:26","modified_gmt":"2003-06-18T16:23:26","slug":"getting-with-the-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/2003\/06\/18\/getting-with-the-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting with the Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve just returned from a three weeks\u2019 teaching assignment in Vevey, a small town (pop. 15,000) in the heart of the wine country on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, a country in which adults over the age of 40 generally consider it impolite to talk politics. So \u2014 aside from one student who couldn\u2019t resist bringing it up in an informal, after-class context \u2014 the only person who spoke to me about the war in Iraq was a transplanted Syrian running a kebab shop on a small plaza off the town\u2019s main square.<\/p>\n

Having figured me as coming from the U.S., he joined me with a hostly pot of tea after I\u2019d bought and consumed a falafel sandwich, in order to express unalloyed satisfaction in the destruction of Saddam\u2019s regime. As one result thereof, his family had heard from his brother \u2014 imprisoned by Hussein \u2014 for the first time in twenty years, and had some hope, albeit faint, of recovering rights to (or getting some compensation for) a restaurant his father had owned in Baghdad until they were forced to flee the country in the early \u201880s.<\/p>\n

In his middle forties, this man \u2014 I\u2019ll call him Ahmad \u2014 felt we\u2019d conducted the war judiciously, and thought we were making the right opening moves in facilitating the reconstruction of Iraq. (All this he volunteered, by the way, after initiating a conversation I hadn\u2019t expected.) His one concern: That we apply equal standards of justice and democracy everywhere. Would we do that? he asked. I replied that I hoped we would, but we\u2019d all have to wait and see.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to imply that the Swiss are apolitical. Indeed, even their vaunted neutrality constitutes a political stance, neutrality necessarily favoring as it does the status quo. Many people I met while there were preparing to demonstrate at the upcoming G8 meeting across the lake a few weeks later. From what I saw in the Swiss papers and on Swiss television (I\u2019m bilingual, and can both speak and read French), they take their politics \u2014 local, regional, national, and global \u2014 seriously, and the level of political discussion there is consistently better informed and more substantial than what we get here as a matter of course.<\/p>\n

\"N.Y.<\/a>

N.Y. Post cover from December 7, 2006 <\/p><\/div>\n

Their mass media have become increasingly and regrettably Americanized: TV is full of soap operas, variant versions of our game shows, lots of Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger thrillers, and (go figure this) endless reruns of \u201cFriends\u201d and \u201cThe Nanny\u201d dubbed into German. But there\u2019s a lot of serious social and political commentary in prime time; there\u2019s solid, in-depth reporting by real journalists on the news shows; there are no Rush Limbaugh and ditto-head types nattering on about \u201ccheese-eating surrender monkeys\u201d; and the newspapers don\u2019t stoop to childish nonsense such as montaging the heads of weasels (or any other animals) onto the bodies of U.N. diplomats for front-page illustrations. By contrast, what passes for political discourse here in my native land seems na\u00efve and juvenile.<\/p>\n

Of course, now I\u2019ve come back home, so I have to get with the program. When people here ask what other languages I speak, I understand that according to the new social policy here in the States the politically correct answer is not French but Freedom. And that, along those same lines, when I dress up to take my girlfriend out this weekend to celebrate my return, I\u2019ll put on a shirt with Freedom cuffs, while she\u2019ll don some sexy Freedom lingerie and splash on a little fancy Freedom cologne.<\/p>\n

\"Menu<\/a>

Menu from a House cafeteria featuring "Freedom Fries," courtesy Wkipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

At dinner in a Freedom restaurant we\u2019ll have our salads with Freedom dressing, our steaks with Freedom fries and maybe a little Freedom\u2019s Mustard on the side \u2014 sopping up the gravy with slices of Freedom bread, washing it down with Freedom wine. (Assuming, of course, that the restaurant hasn\u2019t dumped all of its pricey Freedom vintages into the toilet. Several people in Switzerland did ask me why we in the U.S. considered it a boycott to buy wine and then throw it away; do we believe, they wanted to know, that the people who make \u201cthe widow\u201d \u2014 Veuve Cliquot champagne \u2014 care whether we pour it down our throats, into the bathtub, or onto the sidewalk once we\u2019ve paid for it? I couldn\u2019t think of a reasonable explanation. Bill O\u2019Reilly has one, no doubt.)<\/p>\n

Not having seen each other in a month, the lady and I will naturally start to feel frisky after such a repast. Wouldn\u2019t surprise me if we started Freedom-kissing as we walk home. I\u2019ve thought about giving her a good Freedom-polishing once we close and lock the door, as a warm-up; that always gets her going. Of course, when things get really serious, as advocates of safe sex, we\u2019ll use a Freedom letter.<\/p>\n

Then a good night\u2019s rest. Probably we\u2019ll sleep in. As for Sunday morning breakfast in bed, we\u2019ll have my favorite: Freedom toast. With Canadian (but not Freedom-Canadian) bacon. And a steaming pot of Freedom Roast coffee.<\/p>\n

Great to be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that I’ve come back home, I have to get with the program. When people here ask what other languages I speak, I understand that according to the new social policy here in the States the politically correct answer is not French but Freedom. And that, along those same lines, when I dress up to take my girlfriend out this weekend to celebrate my return, I\u2019ll put on a shirt with Freedom cuffs, while she\u2019ll don some sexy Freedom lingerie and splash on a little fancy Freedom cologne. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[45,56],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-island-journal","category-politics","tag-freedom-fries","tag-iraq-war","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/foodandtravel\/islandliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}