THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

For the last fifty years, when Europeans spit in our faces, we said they were just giving us their exotic point of view. It wasn't hate. It was American Fashionable Opinion.

All those years I noticed the American attitude was the same as the attitude of the guy in the cartoon who looked up at a bird in a tree and said, "Go ahead, everybody else does."

The difference is that the guy looking at the bird was disgusted. Americans cheered wildly while they got dumped on.

You can only hate minorities. All of Fashionable Opinion has said that for decades and we have paid them to say it.

Then came a new era. During the Iraq War, Europeans grabbed us by the ears, looked us right in the eye, and shouted, "LISTEN, YOU STUPID ASS, I HATE YOUR GODDAM GUTS!"

Suddenly Americans had a Revelation. "You know something, they said, Europeans really don't LIKE us!"

Then something else began to occur to the American public. Americans began to realize that all those insults they had cheered and paid for down the years were actually not nice at all

Don't worry, Fashionable Opinion. Americans have the memory of a fly on LSD. They will soon forget they resent anything Europe ever said.