P J ORourkes Innocents Abroad Summary - Article Example

P.J. O’Rourke uses stereotyping humor to the extreme to awaken and teach the “Ugly American” about other cultures and tolerance. Some of the stereotypes are:1. Violent British Sports Fans2. French men as bad, effeminate dressers3. Loud drunken Australians4. Peevish Swiss5. Poorly dressed Japanese6. Saudi men “getting dresses caught in revolving doors”7. Thick body Germans8. Bengali eternal students9. Miserable (Poor, but enterprising) African exchange students10. Cement headed Warsaw Pact bureaucratsCultural bias in understanding systems and opportunities leads to harsh judgments.

Mismanaged bureaucracies suggest the clerk is stupid, not that the system is different than ours. The African exchange student marketing wares like at home instead of in a retail outlet seems dubious. The Bengali who remains in school to collect credentials.The thick-bodied German’s genetics are attacked as different, and therefore, inferior. The article points out the foolishness in judging everyone by a very narrow cultural baseline that is the American ethic.