"A Little Levity"

It’s difficult facing the truth about oneself. I ran into this problem last year, but I bravely took it on...

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

I'm A Bigot

I just realized that I’m a bigot. All my life I’ve had a hatred of the German language. Not all German people, but their language (and their TV soldiers). It has to go back to when I was a little boy. We used to sit in front of the television watching shows like “Gallant Men”, “Combat”, and “Hogan’s Heroes”, where the good guys were American soldiers in World War 2.

Inevitably there would be German Officers who would come on the screen speaking either in bad English or German. They would bark out orders to their troops or sometimes to the Americans themselves. This was upsetting to me. How dare they shout at an American soldier? Someone working to save Democracy?

Was I influenced by post war propaganda? You bet I was. Did I buy into the idea that German TV soldiers were evil? Uh huh. Did I let those deep seeded feelings turn me into a bigot? Apparently so.