It's nice that in an everchanging world that some things remain constant. Like Brent Bozell is a censorious moron who can't tell the difference between fact and fiction and feels that somehow he is entitled to decide for the rest of us, many of whom speak more languages and have been a lot more places than he would ever dream of, what we can and cannot see. That he is so obviously dopey as to fall for this latest episode of Clintonian triangulation merely reinforces my view that there are only the most flickering signs of life above his neck.

Core convictions seem so few and far between with the Clnitons in general, but at least on this issue, David Geffen seems to be taking the threat to both Hollywood and the entertainment world in general seriously.

$5 says she never produces any legislation innimical to hollywood. $10 says she won't forswear against taking money from hollywood.

cjm:

I'll bet she votes for the Bush FCC nominees and takes Hollywood money. Not her fault they're sycophants.

oj: the fiendish wench :)

When foreigners think about the USA, don't you think a great deal of their animosity is formed from what they've seen on the silver screen?

why would they feel animosity from the movies ? that would imply that they are so simple minded that they think movies are "real". do you feel anything different about india because of their movies, or hong kong because of their kung fu movies ?

mostly i think people in other countries have much less choice in their source of news, and so get a very narrow and slanted view of the u.s.

All this talk of Hillary moving to the right on many moral/ethical issues..

Reminds me of Erik Idle saying something, followed by his "Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, Know What I mean?..." to his Pythonistas.

Believe it or not, millions of non-Americans do think they understand the United States because they've watched American movies. I certainly found this was true for Chinese when I lived in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

What highlighted this again for me was an astounding comment one Chinese university student made to President Clinton at a question-and-answer forum he held while visiting Shanghai. She said that she felt she really understood Americans because she had seen the movie "Titanic," and criticized Americans for not understanding anything about China! I was surprised that neither Clinton nor any American journalist picked up on the ignorance this arrogant comment revealed as well as how much impact it showed American movies had on China.

Yet, think about it. This was a student who was one of the elite few who had been handpicked to ask a question of America's President. Anyone who has ever lived in China knows that someone in her position has to know more about the outside world than most other Chinese. But she sincerely felt she could say she understood America because she had seen a Leonardo diCaprio movie. If a member of the elite believed this, what about the rest of China's less well-informed millions?

x: you have made my point nicely. this profoundly ignorant university student only had the movie "Titanic" to go by, not any of the myriad other sources of news that might have given her a fuller view of life in the u.s.

in any event, if people are so foolish as to think this way, do you think they are redeemable ? born a fool, die a fool.

cjm, actually, as one of the elite in China, this student would have had access to many other sources of news that, outside of Guangdong and Fujian provinces, most other Chinese didn't have. Foreign textbooks, newspapers, novels, and such were available to her. If she was studying English, many of those sources would have been from America. As a student at one of China's top universities, she would also have had chances for personal contact with visiting American professors and lecturers. But like countless Chinese, the one thing in her own words that had the deepest impact on her, the one thing that convinced her she understood Americans was a Hollywood blockbuster.

As for your question, I do think people are redeemable. But I will say I don't think that ignorance of other cultures is a uniquely American phenomenon, and the incredible power of movies to convince people of the truth of false realities can strengthen that ignorance.

In my own experience, most Europeans and Asians are as ignorant of America and other nations as often as Americas are of other peoples. When I lived in China, I often saw Europeans ridicule Americans for the short history of their country. But when I would in turn say to the Europeans that my culture was millenia older than theirs and that their ancestors were painting their rears blue while mine were constructing the Great Wall, they would have no reply and fall silent. I would then follow up by saying that the age of one's culture means nothing. As old as China was, I observed, Egypt was even older. So what?

x: i guess we have a new "weapon" to use on our enemies :) maybe ben afflek has some usefulness after all.

you say she was exposed to these other sources but they had no impact. are you sure she wasn't attending an american university :)

why did she think americans don't understand china, we have several million americans of chinese ancestry here. just out of curiosity, in your opinion, what aspect, what reality, of the prc do you think is misunderstood ?

i appreciate your putting things into perspective vis a vis smug europeans :) i agree completely that the age of a culture is unimportant; what have you done for me lately, baby ? the thing i find absolutely incredible about pharonic egypt, is that they managed to maintain a stable culture for almost 2500 years -- mind blowing.

cjm, my recollection is that all the students at the question-and answer session with Clinton were attending Chinese universities. They were not students who had temporarily returned to Shanghai from American institutions. There are no American universities with their own independent campuses in China.

Whether Chinese-Americans might or might not be able to contribute to greater American understanding of the PRC isn't easy to answer. As with many immigrant communities, Chinese-Americans are badly divided by differences of generation, geographic origin, language, and political allegiance. What makes things even more complicated is that the mainland Chinese regime aggressively courts Chinese-Americans with appeals to ethnic and racial solidarity. Think of a Chinese Communist version of Nazi Germany's propaganda work among Volkdeutsche in the Americas before World War Two, and you'll have some idea of what's going on.

As for which aspects of the PRC are commonly misunderstood by Americans, that too is complicated. But I can point to two very common myths in circulation.

One, the idea that the Chinese government thinks in terms of centuries. Presumably, this is a Chinese variation on the old and now discredited argument that Japanese corporations are superior to American companies because they don't plan in terms of quarters, but for the long term. This idea is especially popular among Americans who know a little something of Chinese history and are impressed that China is the only great ancient civilization that endures. But just as it is with a price on the stock market, they forget the past isn't always the key to the present or the future. In actuality, the current Communist regime is far more worried about today than about hypothetical 100-year planning cycles, because it is so frightened of losing power through a violent revolution today, not a hundred years from now.

Two, the idea that the PRC is now driven by economic imperatives rather than by politics. This idea is espcially treasured by MBAs, CEOs, and certain sections of the US State Department, who are now more Marxist than China's Communists are in their naive belief in simple economic determinism! It has a powerful intuitive appeal, because the cause-and-effect seems so straightforward to many Americans who believe that the pursuit of material success is the key to human behavior. But the Party can't afford to think that way. It can't ignore politics because it no longer has any legitimacy. It knows that ideas are important. It knows it owes the Chinese people an enormous blood debt. It knows that far more Chinese were murdered and died under its dictatorship than were killed by the old warlords, Japanese Army, and KMT combined. That's why it's trying so desperately to wipe out the Falungong and the underground Protestant and Catholic congregations that are growing by leaps and bounds. Having a lot of money doesn't do a Party leader any good when you know you might be strung up at any moment by angry and vengeful Chinese who aren't interested only in the pursuit of money and who now worship very different gods.

My apologies for changing the topic under discussion in the comments from the original post.

How important are the centrifugal forces in the PRC?

1. There are great disparities in wealth inside regions and certainly from region to region. There are some areas where life is little better than it was 1000 years ago and there are others where people are living a cutting-edge lifestyle. But there are millions and millions of people living on a subsistence level even there.

2. What strikes me about the PRC is the Pushmi-Pullyu character of their policies particularly when there is a risk to their economy as a result. During the spyplane incident, it became clear that the PRC was going to play hardball until the initial stirrings of a consumer boycott of PRC-manufactured goods manifested itself. Then, the PRC backtracked hard. One gets a sense of different high-ranking types making decisions and then getting vetoed or undercut later by other high-ranking types. One general may want to get tough with the US, while another is worried about losing that contract to make tube socks for Wal-Mart.

3. China is historically divided as you've pointed out. If I remember correctly there have been as many as 7 different nations in the area now ruled by the PRC. What chance is there that the various internal conflicts of the leadership will combine with the uneven quality of economic development to cause a new fracture of the Middle Kingdom? And isn't much of the Taiwan saber-rattling an attempt to unify disparate parts of the PRC under one goal?

the change in this thread's topic is a good example of speciation -- it's the "X" factor :)

i know the prc is recruiting people here, but i also know that huge numbers of people in the prc would love to live in a u.s. like country. the influences flow in both directions but our system is not as susceptible to subversion as their's is. so in that sense a generous immigration policy spreads u.s. influence abroad.

and i think that when prc officials (or anyone in the prc) comes into contact with the truth of american society, it undermines their ability to be true believers in their own system. they won't become pro-american but they will lose faith in the existing system of govt.

america, its a disease without a cure.

cjm,

There isn't any halfway decent math or science or engineering faculty in the US without a few people who've fled the 'Middle Kingdom' for the 'Land of the Golden Mountain.'

Bart, as I once said in one of my comments here, the idea of one China is certainly not written in stone. Who knows? There are certainly many potential nations just waiting to emerge in the territory currently called the PRC. My read is that there are as many, perhaps more, forces tearing the PRC apart as there are holding it together. An interesting and little-known aside is that in Mao's early youth, before he became a Marxist, he himself was a fierce Hunanese patriot who dreamt of a Hunanese nation! (Hunan is a province just northwest of Guangdong province.)

Oops, the last comment was by me.

X,
As an aside, my favorite restaurant in NYC's Chinatown was the Hunan House at 45 Mott. One time I went there with some friends and Daniel Ortega had just been feted there by his supporters in the rather spare upstairs dining room. My assumption is he went there for the Ho Chi Mein.