I never heard the term before reading this article from the Daily Telegraph describing the over the top teeth gnashing of the Australian left in the wake of President Bush’s visit to the Apec conference hosted in Sydney:
THERE is a two-word phrase that is so uniquely Australian that its very utterance evokes cliched images of a sunburnt country and the like.
I’m talking, of course, about cultural cringe, which is so woven into the fabric of the Australian psyche that it pops up with little effort at all, even at a time when you thought it had been discarded, finally, as last century’s baggage.
It hasn’t. When the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, flew into town last week for the 19th annual APEC meeting, the Cultural Cringers couldn’t help themselves.
There they were, the determined self-flagellators, flooding the talkback radio lines moaning about what they saw as Australia’s and Prime Minister Howard’s misplaced but slavish devotion to the US and President Bush.
What’s wrong with us, they whimpered, wailing even more when the President said America had no better friend than Australia. They whined about the inconvenience of roadblocks caused by the presidential motorcade: did he really need that many gas-guzzlers? they griped.
One wondered why, out loud on radio, the President brought his own chefs as if the local talent wasn’t good enough. I’m not making this up.
There were those who even asked why Australia had to host the President at all.
What they all seemed to have collectively ignored was that Australia, and Sydney, in particular, was also hosting 20 other nation members of the APEC community, 11 of which have been attending APEC meetings since they first began in 1989.
Why now, why here? Because it was our turn, not because Mr Howard was kissing up to Mr Bush.
So obsessed are the Cringers about feeling inferior to the US on Australia’s behalf they acted as if those 20 other nations didn’t exist.
The focus was singularly anti-American and prescriptively anti-Bush and anti-Howard. And it was embarrassing.
Cultural Cringe. It’s a good term and it describes the American hating leftist behavior here as well as in Australia. Read essays like this one from DailyKos or this one from Pandagon and you’ll realize that many people are simply embarrassed to be part of the west and hateful of it’s leaders due to years of liberal pablum spewed from left leaning teachers and talking heads of the media. Pam Spaulding should get a special regard, as it takes real visceral hatred of Bush and America combined with emotional immaturity and intellectual dishonesty, to cite Pravda who in turn are citing the Stalinist, Pro-Milosevic Worker’s World.
She’s got a raging case of cultural cringe. I just made that up, and I’m going to use it ad nauseum.
h/t No Pasaran