Rob Bishop: “last Sunday during the Emmy awards, I realized that one of the most popular new comedies about domestic life in America…”

“last Sunday during the Emmy awards, I realized that one of the most popular new comedies about domestic life in America is Desperate Housewives, and one of the most popular ongoing dramas about domestic life in America is The Sopranos. And even though a majority of Americans still have regular contact with church, one of the few shows that actually shows contact between a family and religion is The Simpsons. Now, it is not my intention to try to bash television shows or Hollywood, but these are hardly adequate or accurate views of America, and this inaccuracy does have policy implications. If the image of America is derived from the popular culture and not the reality of what America is, it has an impact on our foreign affairs. Let me try to illustrate. In the year 2003, I was part of the Congressional Study Group on Germany and had the opportunity, with others, of representing the United States in Berlin with the German Government, which at the time was, shall we say, not a big U.S. supporter of U.S. foreign policy. In fact, that particular German Government had just a very narrow election by doing a significant amount of America bashing to get there. But the tone of that government would have been more acrimonious were it not for a senior SPD member, Hans Ulrich Kluse, from Hamburg, who, at considerable political risk, put his reputation on the line to insist that his government try to make more cooperative pragmatic relations with the United States.…”