5.10.2006
Cover Story: Upping the Anti (Listener.co.nz)
by Joanne Black
When British PM Tony Blair said recently that the Americans are sometimes difficult friends to have, he was not telling New Zealand anything new. The invasion of Iraq and now warmongering over Iran are the latest subjects to fuel anti-Americanism here.
The full text of this column appeared in the NZ Listener (May 6-12 2006).
When she was an 18-year-old student at the University of Victoria, Mele Wendt remembers wondering why her new American friend was being relentlessly harassed by New Zealand students.
Wendt had met Janine, an exchange student from Montana, in the university hostel where both lived. “She was the sweetest, quietest, most polite person you could meet and she got a lot of flak for being American. This lovely woman did bear the brunt of quite a lot of crap from students,” says Wendt. It was 1986, the nuclear-ships row with the US was fresh, “and it very much influenced people’s attitudes towards Americans”, she says. “I remember writing home to my parents, being really upset by it, but also questioning it and asking them to explain why.”
(More ... Cover Story: Upping the anti by Joanne Black | New Zealand Listener) ¶ 07:45
When British PM Tony Blair said recently that the Americans are sometimes difficult friends to have, he was not telling New Zealand anything new. The invasion of Iraq and now warmongering over Iran are the latest subjects to fuel anti-Americanism here.
The full text of this column appeared in the NZ Listener (May 6-12 2006).
When she was an 18-year-old student at the University of Victoria, Mele Wendt remembers wondering why her new American friend was being relentlessly harassed by New Zealand students.
Wendt had met Janine, an exchange student from Montana, in the university hostel where both lived. “She was the sweetest, quietest, most polite person you could meet and she got a lot of flak for being American. This lovely woman did bear the brunt of quite a lot of crap from students,” says Wendt. It was 1986, the nuclear-ships row with the US was fresh, “and it very much influenced people’s attitudes towards Americans”, she says. “I remember writing home to my parents, being really upset by it, but also questioning it and asking them to explain why.”
(More ... Cover Story: Upping the anti by Joanne Black | New Zealand Listener) ¶ 07:45
