Rating: 
Summary: A surprising case for hatred
Review: Reading this I came to a stunning realization that the US is just full of bad people that need to be hated and deserve to be punished. They should all be bent over the knee and spanked by Monsieur Jack Chirac and Swedish people (or was it chefs?) because we supported the overthrow of no-name regimes, didn't obey the almighty righteous high-court of the Great International Order (which didn't fall under the jurisdiction of the US Constitution, but I probably missed that too), sell hamburgers worldwide in defiance of international sanctions banning the US government, create TV shows about ourselves, don't by-and-large speak Afrikaans, Swedish, or français (ou pas beaucoup), and support awful human-rights violators like Israel who attack organizations that blow up Jewish girls on school buses every other week in celebration of Arafat's goodwill which in turn is supported by EU-sponsored states like Syria who have as much goodwill toward the Jewish peoples that their European friends had during the expansion of US military hyperocracy called World War II.
But the authors rightly point out that we are to never mind the good things of the US (are there any? - come on the Marshall Plan could've been more). This is the epitome of "fair and balanced." I mean even Fox News Channel could not do any better, but lest we forget all American media is BAD. (Remember: the Devil does NOT exist. Our enlightened friends in Europe taught us this in their wonderful works of art called Euro-Enlightenment Sexuelles. Maybe if us dumb Americans would stop actually having more than 15% of us attend church, we could be more like the French who prefer to pass laws banning the wearing of crosses and Muslim headdresses, and fund police surveillance of "very" religious people, because the belief in God will cause more economy, more evil.) But never mind that enlightening footnote by myself (by which somehow I think the authors would've been proud of me). The US is now just an economic hyper-empire ruled by presidents. Somehow these presidents have just ruined the world and Americans are just so evil they can't see that we must elect people more like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain, Fransisco Franco, the great gone Kaiser, and Monsieur Jack Chirack, because ultimately a world ruled by Chirac's friend, Saddam Hussein, is a better world than that ruled by Cowboy George W. and Hyperpoweralist Himself Bill Clinton.
In summary remember that, to make good with the Milk of Humanity, the US must:
1. Disband its hateful economy to make way for the next hyper-empire, L'Union Européen, and third world countries which are third world because McDonalds exists, not because the dictators starve their own women and children so he (or she - we must be PC folks) can import rare carpets and anti-aircraft missiles from La France, and landmines from Sweden.
2. Disband Israel and deport the noble citizens of that country back to southern Germany, uh, I mean "Schröder country." Give "priority funding" to Hamas and Hezbollah, the UN guardians of Peace in the Middle East.
3. Cut our defense budget to $25 billion - enough for a national police force to roam the streets putting in jail all card-carrying tyrants of the loathed Republican party, and teaching the misinformed but well meaning Americans français (Vous-ête français tout le trois?), and send the remaining money to help rebuild the French-ravaged nations of Africa.
4. Disband the WTO and reinstate the Kyoto Protocol so Americans can't even operate a gas powered lawn mower while progressive African regimes rightly operate smoke-belching, river-waste dumping, hyper-industrial complexes. Don't worry: we promise they aren't making WMDs. We don't deserve to mow our lawns anyway.
5. Begin WMD inspections in Montana and disband the US ICBMs and sell them via the European Central Bank to third world countries and use the money to compensate Czech families deeply hurt, emotionally, by unfair US globalization.
6. In the name of Henry Ford, dismantle the evil McDonalds hyper-corporation.
7. Demand a public apology signed by all US citizens over the age of 18 and include a public denunciantion of all US presidents after Monroe.
8. Have His Divine Egalitarianness Kofi Annan staff a desk in the Oval Office and have unlimited veto power.
9. Appease L'Union Européen et tout le monde with annual payments starting in the billions of euros for McDonalds-ravaged Italy and her poor neighbors.
10. Assimilate the Supreme Court into the Hague New World Order Hypercourt filled with honorable, but goofy-looking judges.
11. Demand the un-airing of all shows like "The West Wing" and any John Wayne movie because they are just ugly, terrible lies that fly in the face of organized pacifictic EU-humanism. In their place demand indoctrination programs hosted by Bill Moyers and Noam "I supported the Cambodians" Chomsky. Likewise disband all American "music" and Hollywood, too. From now on we watch Frog flicks.
12. Immediately learn français (pourquoi pas?), Swedish, Italian, and three Micronesian languages of your choice. Remember you are not cultured, and I don't really own 175 classical CDs of European composers (actually I do own them, but don't tell THEM because they might think I am more cultured than they), so I am sure the Europeans have one on me about Beethoven or Schubert. Plus the languages will be useful during your UN-required indoctrination trips to L'Union Européen and obscure Asian islands of your choice.
13. Demand the US to never win another Médaille Olympique. Their teams are supported by the evil McDonalds, bedfellow of the US government.
In short, Americans should be hated just because hate is okay and it makes everyone feel better when it's all out in the open. Hatred of Americans is always justified if you live in L'Union Européen or were a former Saddam Hussein regime collaborator because the US is just hate-worthy. Bless you haters. I will repent from my atrocious crimes against humanity perpetrated by the hate-worthy. For where there is hate, there is undoubtedly McDonalds and The Cowboy.
Rating: 
Summary: mostly shallow
Review: The topic of this book is interesting and important, and there are some interesting arguments and facts in it. However, perhaps because the authors view Americans as being informed largely by TV situation comedies and Disney movies, they did not aim for an audience which requires depth, fairness, or in many cases accuracy.The main arguments are: US culture dominates the world. US economy dominates the world. US has culture of domination, from roots in European Crusades, to displacement of American Indians, to current operations throughout the world. Presumably this book was written to explain terrorist attacks against US interests, but the authors do no attempt to investigate the attitudes of terrorists. The point that the USA manipulates the world economy is made repeatedly with limited evidence. The lack of the authors' understanding of the economy and in particular the trade deficit is betrayed by (for example) their statement (pp 195-196) that there is "free uni-directonal movement of goods and services from America to the rest of the world." Also, "there is no restraint on the US's ability to print its own currency" (p 196) can only make the thoughtful reader wonder about the authors' understanding of inflation. Many of the most specific "facts" have no references, such as the ridiculous statement (p 82) that the US could provide basic nutrition and health care for everyone in the world for $6 billion. Those willing to put up the weaknesses of this book will find some interesting arguments and facts, but the reader better verify the facts, and the references which would help are often missing. And any fact that tends to refute their arguments are omitted.
Rating:
Summary: Stupefyingly bad
Review: There aren't all that many things in this world that I absolutely loathe, and very nearly all of them are represented in this book. It gets two stars just because I think the authors are making a genuinely sincere attempt, however egregiously misguided, to answer their titular question. It gets no stars for anything else.
Even the question is misstated: the book should have been called _Why Do Leftist Academicians Hate America?_ Only in the first few pages do the authors even bother to cite a survey of opinions outside the U.S.; the rest of the book is delivered from their navels.
The writing is pretty uniformly horrid; the entire thing reads as though it came from the Postmodernism Generator. There's a lot of stuff about narratives, and texts that code things, and suchlike. (And they could have cut the length of the book in half by deleting every occurrence of the phrase 'as Richard Slotkin argues'.)
The content is pretty Po-Mo as well. We're repeatedly given to understand, for example, that it's a tremendous mistake for America to assume that _our_ concepts of liberty are _everyone's_ concepts of liberty -- but this weird relativism doesn't protect _us_ from the judgment that we're unambiguously wrong to make such assumptions. That's par for the Po-Mo course.
The big items on the Hate America List are hamburgers and cowboy movies. The hamburger gets a particularly vigorous workout in an extended (and badly forced) metaphor having to do with U.S. culture, or something -- but confusingly, actual hamburgers also seem to be at issue every now and then.
I like hamburgers. These authors are wrong when they say hamburgers don't have any nutritional value and aren't really food. But if people in other countries don't want to eat fast food, why, then, they don't need to. Are we seriously to believe that most of the world hates America for selling them hamburgers? Why are they buying them, then?
Plus we get all the usual uncritical acceptance of, and complaints about American indifference to, such 'threats' as global warming (which is very nearly their only example; we're constantly being told that the U.S. ignores otherwise unspecified stuff 'such as global warming'). At one point our authors seriously suggest that people living in the South American rainforest think we're hypocrites because of the way we fail to protect our own wetlands. Again, did they actually _ask_ anybody about this stuff? Does anyone really think that people living in jungles are scratching their heads trying to figure out why Americans drain swamps? (Or that the Americans who drain swamps are the _same_ Americans who fuss about preserving jungles?)
Consistency is not their strong suit. On one page they'll accuse the U.S. of thinking the entire world's interests coincide with its own, and on another they'll get mad at George W. Bush for expressly stating that he's putting America's self-interest ahead of the rest of the world's. Which is it?
And why do they just assume that it's somehow wrong for the President of the U.S. to put U.S. interests first? That's _exactly_ what I want my president to do. You go, George!
There's quite a bit of other stuff that the authors just assume is wrong (and assume we'll agree without discussion). For example, in one passage, the authors carry on at length about the tremendous size and effectiveness of the U.S. military. I was feeling pretty proud about that until I realized the authors thought it was _bad_. Not that they changed my mind or anything; it's just that, at that point, I realized they were _really_ (though not deliberately) arguing that people hate America for our virtues.
Their understanding of economics is nonexistent. They seriously contend -- you may want to sit down for this -- that the U.S. _makes other countries poor by selling them goods at low prices_. I'm not making that up. Sure, the sudden availability of cheap imported widgets may force the local widgetmaker to look for another line of work, but it frees up some of everybody else's income and thereby adds to the total wealth. By what leap of illogic do our authors expand the widgetmaker's temporary misfortune into a permanent condition of an entire community? (And they seem to think there's something indescribably malevolent about ever selling goods below their cost of production. Haven't they ever bought a remaindered book?)
In addition to being annoyed by our high standard of living, they're also pretty incensed that the U.S. refuses to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because we don't recognize a 'right to food'. That there might be a _connection_ between our belief in self-reliance and our great economic prosperity doesn't seem to occur to them; they think, in effect, that the way to keep people from drowning is to declare that everybody has a right to float.
Enough. This isn't serious analysis of anything at all. Skip it unless you want a few good laughs.
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