group hug

Most Americans know nothing of the location, composition, or purpose of the European Union. There is no shame in such ignorance, for most Europeans are in the same position – rather worse, indeed, given that they are the ones who are meant to be experiencing a pleasant sensation of unity. If anything, the view from the States is more precise: Europe is that Shrek-shaped landmass to the left of the Middle East, and the European Union, or E.U., must therefore be the constitutional equivalent of a group hug, designed to insure that no Finn, say, will ever launch a first-strike attack on a Greek.

Thus begins a commentary by Anthony Lane (in the current issue of the New Yorker) in which he refers to this page on the E.U. Web site, the purpose of which is apparently to set the record straight regarding E.U. regulations and/or positions which may have been misrepresented in the press. As Lane points out, there is ample and express information regarding such burning issues as pigs at play, cucumber curvature, and hardhats for acrobats – but such decisive matters as Europe’s exact geography (Turkey anyone?) and its ultimate goals (superstate perhaps?) remain as ambiguous as its constituents’ understandings of it.

Lane suggests that all the vagueness is intentional, in that it is likely to bore the people into submission. (And to what will they be submitting themselves in their half-asleep, submissive state? The European Constitution! You can’t read it even if you want to, so why not just vote yes?) There may not be any shame in such ignorance, on either side of the Atlantic, but there should be.


Photo (Brussels, Belgium, 1999) by Stephen Hughes, whom the New Yorker calls the “demure poet” of the European aesthetic, “concerning himself less with the ghastly spectacle of modern life than with the monuments of strange beauty.”