Oh, come on Dana:

To say that all Americans are obese slobs who sit and watch little screens all day while being pandered to by overlarge entities is a pretty cheap shot. Would you have said the same thing about any other nation? Last I checked, this is one of the few that gives you the privilege of speaking your mind consequence free. And even that is changing... Say anything nasty about certain candidates for president and you are either racist or sexist...

I recognize that the Slate tends to be a left-leaning liberal screed, but it does not need to creep its way into movie reviews...

"Would you have said the same thing about any other nation?"

The fact is it doesn't as accurately describe the citizens of any other nation. Every foreigner I meet talks about how shocking it is too see how many fat people there are in this country.

Just go to any mall and look around.

Well, certainly a lot of TV and movie critics are fat. Roger Ebert, Tom Shales. Harry Knowles.

Or more to the point: flabby, pale and out of shape.

About ten years ago, Roger Ebert asked a group of (male) film critics to sit around a table with him and debate Kubrick's final film "Eyes Wide Shut."

It was depressing. Obese, pale, worn-out middle-aged looking men in lumpy sweaters talking about a movie about SEX.

Of course since then, there has been more of an effort to recruit younger, more telegenic critics for the tube (Roeper, for instance.)

That is not to say that many nations aren't doing their worst to catch up to us. And it really is just more of a result of human frailty combined with a profit-at-any-cost motivation which mines our lowest impulses in search of a quick buck, and the cycle of self-exploitation it creates. But certainly America is leading the way in this regard and these poisonous aspects of our "culture" are spreading worldwide.

It is cheap. I can go on about how Germans smoke like chimneys and are too self-absorbed to bother to maintain a sustainable birth rate. You want to talk about people addled by comfort-seeking complacency?

From what I've seen, I saw it more as an overall human commentary rather than any nationalistic jibe.

LOL! Since we're trafficing in stereotypes now I have to laugh at the idea of German "complacency". The people most noted in the world for their work ethic (which isn't the same as spending the most hours per week at work). I think maybe you meant the French.

They're not your father's Prussians, I'll tell you that much. My point is we all have our weaknesses. They are literally dying out because they're too caught up in their own lives and narcissism to think about having a family. Most of their internal political struggles are because the thought of actually paying for the great bennies they get offends them.

As the concept of nation states becomes more and more irrelevant (obsolete) it won't matter too much, but it certainly is symtomatic of the same human disease. Victims of our own "success." Who can afford to have kids when you've got to have a bigger HD TV than your neighbor and eat for recreation? We'll likely get the smackdown from nature before things go too far however. And I ain't talking about just global warming. There are any number of ways for "corrections" to occur in a system.

Baldone66

I'm with you. I actually thought I was making it through a Dana review that couldn't possibly make any snide remarks about America or Americans.

Guess not. Pigs will fly out of my ass before that ever happens.

The fact is that there is good and bad in every "nation" on Earth. We have our good points (Yankee ingenuity; more freedom than you can shake a stick at) and our bad points (obsesity), like anybody else.

I'm certainly not going to get into a pissing contest with anybody about who's better. I left the 5th grade a long time ago.

But was it really necessary to ruin an otherwise good review with that? Out of a friggin' Disney movie?

I mean, it's her right to say it, but she forgot to ask if she SHOULD, which most people usually do which is why so many say stupid things out loud instead of keeping it to themselves.

So, fuck you, Dana. I'm not an obese American staring at ads all day. Yes, I'm posting now, but since I'm an attorney and make my own hours, I can do whatever the fuck I want right?

Now I'm going to get back to work, go for my WORKOUT tonight, and have fun with my kids on the weekend.

Cheers.

Did Dana make a crack at Americans? Yes!

But the key thing, in my humble opinion, is that Dana is one of us (Americans). C'mon! It's not like she's some snide foreigner looking down her nose at us - which, I agree, is ungracious and often obnoxious. We can joke about ourselves - even critique ourselves! I'm sure the French and Germans poke fun at themselves. Heck, did anyone see that recent NYT article about the Japanese agonizing over their national waistline?

Look, I can take a joke same as anybody else.

But she's been known to make other "cracks" that are simply not jokes. They are not well meant or meant to be funny. They are meant maybe not entirely maliciously, but they aren't usually meant to be nice jokes.

Especially coming from a website that is entirely liberal and I find liberals to be, if not hateful of, then disdainful of this country in many ways; i.e. people clinging to guns and God - what a moronic statement.

If you are an American you should be proud of our "diversity" and that includes the ole crackers that like to go to Church and go target shooting and don't like it when people come into this country illegally, get social services, and then bitch about being here.

To be clear, liberals are not disdainful of this country, but rather, if at all, are disdainful of certain people in this country. Liberal Americans are, after all, Americans, too.

And there's nothing unAmerican about disdain for other Americans. The Framers - man, they were some opinionated bastards - couldn't stand each other either! One marvels that we were able to successfully establish a nation at all... and let us not forget the Civil War...

I suppose all that means is that the only thing more "American" than disdain for other Americans is... disdain for furriners like the Brits!!! LOL!

Yeah, I'm disdainful of bigotted Americans, whether they are bigotted about someone else's race (be it white, black, brown, yellow, purple, whatever) or religion or lack thereof (be it Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, whatever), etc.

If you can say the same, then we are in agreement.

But many liberals are disdainful of white, Christian, gun-owning Americans for only the reason that they are white, Christian and gun-owning. That's bigotry and I don't like it.

If you are a liberal, fine. We'll agree to disagree on many things, but we may find ourselves good friends anyway because we have other things in common (I have good friends that are both liberal and conservative, across the continuum).

But liberal friends don't have a disdain for white, Christian, gun-owning Americans. They may believe in higher taxes for the wealthy and universal health-care. In other words we disagree on ISSUES not because of bigotry. I even have friends that disagree with the Iraq War but do not demonize soldiers and actually really do support the troops, not just be wanting to bring them home, but by donating to places that help our soldiers while they are over there. And again, not demonizing them as baby killers.

Granted, I am not saying that YOU are saying any of those things, but others here have and that's the distinction I'm trying to make.

Jeff Foxworthy makes fun of rednecks, but he is a "redneck" and it's all in good fun. And it's funny, because, some of it is true.

The Japanese measuring themselves, yes, it's funny, but not in a malicious, racist way.

Even other races making comments about the culture of other racists, if all in fun, is also fine. There are many comediannes that do this and it's not malicious.

What Dana says is not meant to be funny except to a small group of elists liberals that find that kind of stuff funny (like Americans who cling to God and guns - I heard the tape and heard the chuckles. Oh those poor little rednecks sure don't understand that we know what's best for them) .

Loyal Americans acknowledge their differences, agree to disagree, but still pledge to fight to the death to protect the right of the other to say those things (in particular, our soldiers have always done that).

They acknowledge, even as Hilary Clinton did, that sometimes the Right may have something - like PREVENTION of pregnancy so that abortions are rare and not only legal. Of course the next step is for the Right to acknowledge that people are going to have sex no matter what we tell them and why not provide info about contraception, but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, this is getting horribly off-topic. The point is that Dana is not making jokes so we can all "ha ha". She's making a jab. We are not all fat and lazy. Quite the opposite, thank you very much.

I agree with one of the fellows said above about the Europeans - they stay in school longer and retire earlier, work 35 hour work weeks, have 6 weeks mandatory paid vacations - and we're fat and lazy! Well, our portion sizes need to come down, but we are hardly lazy. Hardly.

As a matter of fact, I wonder if Dana really is American because it's the kind of thing an ignorant outsider would say about us without actually getting to know us.

Isn't that why there is so much hatred in this world? We don't bother to get to know individuals and instead we blame citizens for the things their governments do, whether democratically elected or not.

Cheers.

I'm sorry, but I think that people who actually still use terms like "liberals" or "conservatives," as if people can be neatly subdivided into 2 categories, haven't really thought things through very well.

Can't you find something important to be upset about? Stop being such a victim. It's pathetic.