Views of America

http://mirthandmatter.blogspot.com/2008/10/german-view-on-america.html

This link directs you to a blog written by S. Czuratis, a German who is curently living in America. In his blog he talks about how Americans have asked him how they are percieved in Germany - to answer their questions he created a survey which he sent home to his friends and family back home in Germany to gain an honest and unbiased German opinion of how they percieve America. The main results were that Germans percieved Americans to be stupid, fat and heavily armed. However this is only the opinions of a small amount of Germans, he then goes on to explain why they feel this way - Americans are percieved as stupid mainly because good education is expensive and so leaves the less fortunate younger generation uneducated as they cannot afford a decent education. Americans are also percieved as stupid as they seem ignorant of other cultures and countires - whereas he then goes on to say from his experience that Americans are very curious about other cultures and countries even though he has been asked questions like 'do they have electricity in Germany?' Really?! He states that the main reason Americans seem to only know about themselves is because they do not have good sources to information and news, for example American news stations only cover stories that involve America and local news rather than world news.

However the statement that America is ignorant of other cultures and countries is flipped (as discussed in this website - http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/anti-americanism-in-europe-is-fueled-by-ignorance/) which talks about how most information which the world thinks about America is wrong and exaggurated, for example the site says that 80%of Britons believe that the US sold Saddam Hussein more than 25% of his weapons when in fact the US only sold 0.46%, whereas countries such as Russia (57%), France (13%) and China (12%) supplied far more.

The previous blog also goes onto discuss that one of the main things that Germans think about America, is that all Americans are fat. But they justify this by saying that this is becasue hamburgers from a local McDonalds in the states only costs 49 cents whereas an apple from their local stores will cost them far more - $1.29.
The other website also talks about hte eating habits of Americans by saying that the French are well known for their hatred of American fast food such as McDonalds. However the site points out that one out of every two French people visit McDonalds at least once a year and that McDonalds in France is the second biggest money maker in the world after the USA!