Quote: British Paul Carr on American Paranoia

“This is of course typical American paranoia of all points foreign. ‘The natives are savages! We won’t be able to walk the streets in safety!’”

I love British people or, rather, I love British humor…which is a little ironic since I seem to get a disproportionate amount of British people who hate me and stalk me around the China blogs I frequently comment on, itching to flame me for something or another. Paul Carr, former columnist for The Guardian and a weekly writer on staff for top-tech-blog TechCrunch, is one of those British people with the British wit I so very much love, and is definitely one of my favorite reads each week.

This week, Mr. Carr takes to task Brazilians and Americans in a post aptly titled, “WITN?: Brazil nuts, American idiots and whoever else I have to upset around here to keep my job“. In short, he bitingly ridicules the Brazilians who took offense a complaint by fellow TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy (whom we’ve mentioned before here on CNR) over Brazil repeatedly failing to deliver her approved visa, the visa she needs to travel to the country and do research and reporting on Brazil’s tech start-up industry. He also castigates Americans for their general paranoia regarding the safety of foreign countries, albeit somewhat vindicating the premise with an undeniably true observation. He says a lot more, dressing the entire post with layers upon layers of multi-faceted, humorous, even poignant points.

TechCrunch is, of course, not a blog about China and Mr. Carr’s post is not a post about China. However, in the spirit of being mindful of ourselves before being too mindful of others that I like to bludgeon CNR readers with, I felt his post was both tangentially relevant enough and entertaining enough to link to here.

It is difficult to appreciate Mr. Carr’s humor without reading in the context of his entire post, but here’s an excerpt containing the above quote:

So if it wasn’t the visa issue, or the flag, really the only justification I could find for the Brazilian commenters’ rage was Sarah’s remark that her husband was worried about her traveling to the country due its reputation for violence.

This is of course typical American paranoia of all points foreign. “The natives are savages! We won’t be able to walk the streets in safety!” they whine, in a hideously unfair characterisation of a gentle, welcoming people. No wonder some Brazilians were upset with Sarah, to the point where they posted comments threatening to spit in her face and rape her.

Don’t miss the rest of the hilarity by reading the entire post over at TechCrunch »