Monday, September 12, 2005

"Down with America"

The Brussels Journal has a depressing post on the latest pop tune in Belgium, Raymond van het Groenewoud's "Weg met Amerika"--or, "Down with America." A selection of lyrics:
Hamburgers and coke, yes you already knew
But do you also know the cause of the general decay?
Short-sighted thinking, loud talking
Sticking to one-liners forever
Down with America! Down with the jerks from America
Down with America! [...]

Down with American colonialism
Down with that ugly, biting English
All the Anglo-Saxon pretence, arrogance
Yes, a hot pick up their ass
And that is that [...]

I am from the Belgian, the European panel
And I ask you: “Clear my channel! Clear my channel!”
Megalomaniac unicellular idiots
Kiss my ass, yes, kiss my balls

Luc Van Braekel has more.

Update, 12:02 p.m.: Galley Friend J.E. writes in:
The song would be funny, were it not so sadly ignorant of history. I suppose the songwriter, who decries "American colonialism," has never learned of Belgium's shameful colonialist past, resulting directly in the Rwanda slaughter, for it was the Belgians who created the artificial ethnic constructs of Tutsi v Hutu. Where, exactly, are the American colonies? Oh, and let's not forget the 18 days it took the Belgians to surrender to Hitler in 1940, nor their willingness to give up Jews, nor the liberation of Belgium by our guys, nor the loss of life at the Bulge.

Apparently, there is a large leftist moron factory somewhere in the world turning out idiots from every culture 24/7.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

both of you are concentrating on the past. though this song is tasteless and a cheap shot, it is clearly focusing on America today. what do we stand for now, not fifty or a hundred years ago? Not to mention America has some past sins, too. We have become the butt of everyone's joke...and it's no one's fault but our own.

Anonymous said...

Of course we know about our colonial past and we are aware of the crucial faults we made back then. But this song hasn't got anything to do with that... If you aren't allowed to criticise people because you made mistakes of your own IN THE PAST, the freedom of speach should be considered.
It is not a good song, and frankly speaking, it is certainly not a hit down here. I haven't heard on the radio even once. I've been browsing through some blogs over the internet, who all had posts of this particular song and, honestly, I was appalled.
Many Americans - no offence- don't knowh where to locate Belgium on a map, and yet, when some Belgian guy releases a song with some explicit lyrics, you're all over it. I've heard people say they didn't care about what Europe had to think,and yet they couldn't stop whining about this song... Oh irony... Oh irony...
The thing is, if a song doesn't contain explicit lyrics that are to be bleeped over in your country of freedom of speech, the song isn't noticed. Many more anti-American songs have been made, some are still popular now -unlike this one by Raymond... For example, the song by Boudewijn De Groot 'Sleep tight, Mister President'. But I haven't heard anybody complaining about that!
By the way, your own fantastic groups such as Green Day and Faithless have released some pretty obvious anti-American songs as well...
And does anyone of you know how we treat our past colony nowadays? Our colonial 'empire' has ended long ago, but we don't leave those people in the cold, you know! And the Belgian Congo, for your information, even though a black spot in our national history, certainly isn't the worst thing humans have been responsible for... Thank you for your attention,
a Brussel's Sprout :)