Ashley Olsen Spotted Sporting $39,000 Backpack By The Row

[Eddie Teach]

I'm anti-Swede.

[Valmy]

They are likely equivalent, as both are probably dead by now.

I know this is Languish, but saying a dead child is equal to a dead bug is still pretty low, even for you, Raz.

Wow it warms my heart to see you coming out in favor of children Marty

[DGuller]

To be fair, Marty didn't say outright whether the action required was to reduce child starvation, or to increase it.

[Drakken]

One interesting bit of trivia is that in the late 19th/early 20th century in North America, Swedes were discriminated against on the basis of their alleged stupidity. You can see references to this in the short stories of Jack London and poetry of Robert Service.

The "Dumb Swede" was a stock character.

It was also there in Stephen Crane's novella The Blue Hotel. The protagonist comes in romanticizing the violence in the West, to the point of foolishly insisting to drink with gamblers in a saloon like they were his pals, and ends dead stabbed because of it.

Same in Wilhelm Möberg's Emigrants saga. Karl Oskar's brother Robert heads west to seek gold with his pal, almost dies in the process (his pal dies from drinking contaminated water), finally strikes gold later only to be conned by having his findings traded for wildcat currency.

He comes back to his brother's farm thinking they were finally rich, only to see his brother kicking him out in fury after having being laughed at when he went to buy stuff with the paper money Robert had brought back, thinking he was the one conning him. It's less because he was a Swede, than because he was a clueless and naive dreamer.

[Drakken]

Swedes who were starving (and no, they weren't really starving to death,

Point taken. I stand corrected.

They were, but not at the level of Ethiopia or Somalia.

[Siege]

I think that if there is a billion people too many in this planet, and this billion need to go, it is better if they are from the 3rd world.
3rd world people are not as self-aware as we are. Very few of them read books, create art, new technologies, etc.
If it weren't from the West they would still eating each other waiting for their Rennaisssance Event to occur.

If a billion people have to starve, let them be the uncivilized ones that aport very little to human advancement and our ultimate goal of Reaching For The Stars becoming a Galactic Civilization.

[Malthus]

One interesting bit of trivia is that in the late 19th/early 20th century in North America, Swedes were discriminated against on the basis of their alleged stupidity. You can see references to this in the short stories of Jack London and poetry of Robert Service.

The "Dumb Swede" was a stock character.

It was also there in Stephen Crane's novella The Blue Hotel. The protagonist comes in romanticizing the violence in the West, to the point of foolishly insisting to drink with gamblers in a saloon like they were his pals, and ends dead stabbed because of it.

Same in Wilhelm Möberg's Emigrants saga. Karl Oskar's brother Robert heads west to seek gold with his pal, almost dies in the process (his pal dies from drinking contaminated water), finally strikes gold later only to be conned by having his findings traded for wildcat currency.

He comes back to his brother's farm thinking they were finally rich, only to see his brother kicking him out in fury after having being laughed at when he went to buy stuff with the paper money Robert had brought back, thinking he was the one conning him. It's less because he was a Swede, than because he was a clueless and naive dreamer.

The "dumb Swede" being extra gullable and preyed on by sharpers is definitely part of the stereotype. Though Robert Service has the "Dumb Swede" turn the tables on his tormentors in one of his poems:

Dumb Swede

With barbwire hooch they filled him full,
Till he was drunker than all hell,
And then they peddled him the bull
About a claim they had to sell.
A thousand bucks they made him pay,
Knowing that he had nothing more,
And when he begged it back next day,
And wept! - they kicked him from the door.

They reckoned they were mighty slick,
Them two tinhorns from Idaho;
That poor dumb Swede could swing a pick,
but that was all he'd ever know.
So sitting in a poker game,
They lost the price for which they sold
To that bonehead a poor dud claim
That didn't have a speck of gold.

My story's true as gospel creed
Of these bright boys from Idaho;
They made a sucker of that Swede
And laughed to see the poor boob go,
And work like nigger on his ground,
Bucked by the courage of despair . . .
Till lo! A rich pay-streak he found,
That made him twice a millionaire.

So two smart Alecs, mighty sick,
Begged jobs at fifteen bucks a day.
Then said the Swede: "Give each a pick
And let them sweat to make their pay."
And though he don't know what it means,
Folks call that Swede "magnanimous"
- But picking nuggets big as beans,
you oughta' hear them fellers cuss!

[grumbler]

The "dumb Swede" being extra gullable and preyed on by sharpers is definitely part of the stereotype. Though Robert Service has the "Dumb Swede" turn the tables on his tormentors in one of his poems:
(snip)

The Swede doesn't turn the tables at all; he "he begged it back next day," and then got lucky when they refused.  No actions of his resulted in the "bright boys from Idaho" cursing; it was their bad luck that pissed them off.

The moral is more about the "smart Alecs" outsmarting themselves than the actions of the Dumb Swede.

[Slargos]

One interesting bit of trivia is that in the late 19th/early 20th century in North America, Swedes were discriminated against on the basis of their alleged stupidity. You can see references to this in the short stories of Jack London and poetry of Robert Service.

The "Dumb Swede" was a stock character.

It was also there in Stephen Crane's novella The Blue Hotel. The protagonist comes in romanticizing the violence in the West, to the point of foolishly insisting to drink with gamblers in a saloon like they were his pals, and ends dead stabbed because of it.

Same in Wilhelm Möberg's Emigrants saga. Karl Oskar's brother Robert heads west to seek gold with his pal, almost dies in the process (his pal dies from drinking contaminated water), finally strikes gold later only to be conned by having his findings traded for wildcat currency.

He comes back to his brother's farm thinking they were finally rich, only to see his brother kicking him out in fury after having being laughed at when he went to buy stuff with the paper money Robert had brought back, thinking he was the one conning him. It's less because he was a Swede, than because he was a clueless and naive dreamer.

[Drakken]

Yeah, it's Moberg. However, everything's cooler with ümläüts. 

[Malthus]

The "dumb Swede" being extra gullable and preyed on by sharpers is definitely part of the stereotype. Though Robert Service has the "Dumb Swede" turn the tables on his tormentors in one of his poems:
(snip)

The Swede doesn't turn the tables at all; he "he begged it back next day," and then got lucky when they refused.  No actions of his resulted in the "bright boys from Idaho" cursing; it was their bad luck that pissed them off.

The moral is more about the "smart Alecs" outsmarting themselves than the actions of the Dumb Swede.

It is true that he hits the motherlode by dumb luck (and hard work), but he "turns the tables" on the slicks by "magnanimously" offering them jobs on his gold mine, just to rub it in.

[Slargos]

If I may speculate, for a moment, it wouldn't at all surprise me if the "dumb Swede" stereotype comes from the fact that Swedes in general are relatively naive and trusting. Stemming, most likely, from the odd 600 years of very thorough religious indoctrination. The idea that what we're told by schools, journalists and politicians (or earlier on the priesthood and the king) can actually be counter-factual, and (even more horrifyingly) questioned often seems to be anathema.

I like to think of Ned Stark, for instance, as very, very Swedish. 

[Razgovory]

They are likely equivalent, as both are probably dead by now.

I know this is Languish, but saying a dead child is equal to a dead bug is still pretty low, even for you, Raz.

Wow it warms my heart to see you coming out in favor of children Marty

I genuinly don't see why Marty was unhappy.  A dead human and a dead bug are both are dead.  A dead bug is actually worth more since you can sell it to hungry Chinese.  It's illegal to sell parts of a human body.

[Drakken]

Here's a modern retelling, thanks to Unsolved Mysteries, however it's painfully real this time as it's still unsolved. Even though it's true crime, it's the sort of things a modern Stephen Crane or Robert Service would have learned of and muttered "dumb Swede".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f37BN502_hg

Watching it at first, I never thought of this as "dumb Swede" per se. But now in hindsight it's true that the two were repeatedly advised not to hitchhike due to the risk, by American and Swedes alike, and they shrugged it off thinking they would be allright.

I wonder if UM did pander to that character stock template in the way they constructed and edited this segment, by focusing on the fact that they were Swedish and, thus, naive. Why them, and not the gazillions of girls hitchhiking and getting napped each year in the US?

[Razgovory]

Would anyone have even noticed if Sweden had extremism?  Maybe it had extremism, but in the real world nobody noticed or cared.  Didn't half the country break away and become Norway in 1905 or something?

Even that was fairly benign, it was more of a divorce than a secession. Besides, odds are Sweden would have lost a Reconquest war with Norway.

Swedes who were starving (and no, they weren't really starving to death, just witnessing a long series of drought in a backward society) had one big neon-beaming option - leaving for America, where settlers were wanted and invited. Somalian starvers, not so much. No one wants colonies of flies in their backyards, and migrating somewhere else in Africa only means a continuation of starvation in the desert.

One interesting bit of trivia is that in the late 19th/early 20th century in North America, Swedes were discriminated against on the basis of their alleged stupidity. You can see references to this in the short stories of Jack London and poetry of Robert Service.

The "Dumb Swede" was a stock character.

Well they did come across the ocean from Sweden and settle in Minnesota.