Travel Writer Bill Bryson: Condescending Liberal Elitist?

A much crisper, more detailed version of the article is available here.

http://www.americandaily.com/article/11513

Of course, I welcome all comments, praising and detracting

Thanks for the story, Jim. I think my favorite part is where Bryson won’t throw the Philly bums a dime. Then later, Ari, ever the compassionate conservative, rewards the homeless black man with a few bucks for complimenting him on his uber-patriot baseball cap. Oh, brother….

Well, the stories are not exactly supposed to mirror one another. The point of the homeless man in DC was to show how many african-americans are VERY patriotic, even though many of the racial dividers would lead you to believe they feel the USA is a slave-owning, racist country that somehow STILL owes them something. My grandparents were in the Holocaust and I don’t ask my German friends for freebies.

To see cultural elitism personified, read this Washington Post piece:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013001608.html

Name-calling as a proxy for intelligent discussion is an amazingly common denominator among Bush supporters, Ari Kaufman included.

They’re proud of it, too.

A mindless litany of rants against those he labels “liberal”, “leftist”, “elitist”, et cetera is repeated in an interesting application of Goebbels’ Big Lie technique.  That is, if you repeat nonsense often enough you will find not-too-bright people who will bellieve you.

Those who support a president and an ethically-challenged supporting cast who invade a sovereign country on the basis of well-documented lies should contemplate their values (or lack thereof) instead of criticizing a travel book.

That has nothing to do with what I wrote. Leave the War on Terror out of it. How do you know I am a Bush supporter?

I’ll link my next article on Bryson when it is published next week. Let me leave you with a quote (one of many I documented) from this apologist:

“Occasionally, there were nicer houses – white people’s houses – with big station wagons in the driveways and a basketball hoop over the garage and large, well-mowed lawns. Often these houses were remarkably close – sometimes right next door – to a shack. You would never see that in the North. It struck me as ironic that Southerners could despise blacks so bitterly and yet live comfortably alongside them, while in the North people by and large did not mind blacks, even respected them as humans and wished them every success, just so long as they didn’t have to mingle with them too freely.”

Thanks for publishing this article! Glad to see someone else noticed Bryson’s leftist mindset.  I am currently reading The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, and I am also quite disgusted with his blatantly liberal view of the world. My first Bill Bryson book was “A Walk in the Woods,” and I thoroughly enjoyed it - I recommended it to all my friends. As a writer, he is brilliantly witty and obviously does his homework on the facts and figures of the places he visits. I’ve read a few of his later works as well (A Short History of Nearly Everything is excellent), so I thought this older book on America would be a good read too. I’m about half way through it, but I’m finding it very hard to finish. I am a proud, conservative southerner, born and raised in South Carolina (Bryson found it “boring”), and find myself quite put off by Bryson’s take on the south.  Perhaps he has learned since this earlier book to leave politics out of his writings. I understand that he lives in New Hampshire now - and that’s a good place for him if you ask me. Or perhaps he should move back to grand old England.

How’s that war working out for you?  Funny how your dads fought againt Fascism in WWII and you’re electing the people who bankrolled them.

Thanks, Jake.

Osisbs, funny how the radical leftist feminists are angry over fighting a war against Islamo-fascists. Keep loving your wonderful like while others keep you safe.

Your site is very useful.

Osisbs,

We’re still fighting fascists, Radical Islamo Fascists. Remember?
Ugh, the next time I hear a Bush hater deem these Muslim fanatics who killed 4,000 on 9-11 fascists instead of our leaders will be the first. Very telling and incredibly pathetic.

Instead of squeezing out a thousand or so words of very average prose, it probably would have been easier for all concerned if Ari had just run with “America love it or leave it”.