AMERICAN PRIMITIVES EXPLAINED FOR YOU: Professor Herfried Munkler of Berlin’s Humbolt University, interviewed in Der Spiegel, explains American celebrations at the death of Bin Laden. He adds: “For European observers, these kinds of public gatherings are indeed somewhat embarrassing, because they demonstrate a kind of unthinking naïveté, and also because there is something provocative about them.”
Added: Professor Bainbridge says “the Germans are annoying me.” Me too. Not all, of course; Professor Bainbridge quotes a bracing 2008 interview with former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.