MachineDesign.com: A no-win situation in Europe

An international engineering technology conference is coming up that takes place in Hanover, Germany. The editor of Machine Design couldn't pass up the opportunity to stereotype himself as a traditional conservative American masquerading as reasonably tolerant.

So-called Americanism gets blamed for a variety of woes in Europe. Most American visitors are blissfully unaware of this mind-set because they can't read periodicals written in German or French. If they could, they'd see the term 'American conditions' applied judgmentally to most social problems or trends Europeans have decided they don't like.

And this has almost nothing to do with a few centuries of the US media referring to European thinking as 'Old World'. Or the Middle East constantly referring to 'Western Culture'. Yet every foreign traveler I have the opportunity to interact with seems to have no problems with these cultural differences. In fact, if they weren't there, many of them would have few reasons to travel.

It begs the question, do media outlets use such headlines to pander to what they view as their typical audience, or do they engage in propagating xenophobia? Of course people could decide to just think for themselves and reserve judgement until they have personal experience in the matter. Maybe they could try it for a week.