Jacob Christensen

One thing that I positively hate about living in this part of Sweden is that I can’t get a decent morning paper covering national and international politics. Instead, I’m stuck with Dagens Nyheter.What is wrong with DN, then? I’ll give you two reasons why I don’t exactly hold the paper in any high esteem.First, the paper absolutely refuses to acknowledge that something like 7 million people in Sweden live outside of Stockholm. According to DN, everything outside of Stockholm’s tullar is at best irrelevant, but more often seen as the result of Social Democratic pork barrel politics. If you happen to live in, say, Ume� it is because – and only because – the devious Social Democrats at some point introduced some kind of economic support draining Stockholm’s creative, entrepreneurial elite of its resources. (I should note that the editorial staff occasionally and grudgingly accepts the J�nk�ping region as a Model for Sweden. If only the people in J�nk�ping would move to the Centre of the Universe Stockholm). Reading DN is like reading a Copenhagen newspaper from the 1930s.Second, the paper pretends to be liberal and working on the basis of enlightenment and tolerance. In practice this means that the editorial and news sections advances neo-”liberal” standpoints worthy of a not-too-bright high school student while the review section indulges in “new” leftist chatter right out of the 1970s. What you meet at your breakfast table is not enlightened discourse; it’s mostly two sides yelling, screaming and kicking at each other. (To be fair, it’s not all doom and gloom – P.C. Jersild and Lars Weiss are usually worth reading. But the oases are few and far between).But the real point of this rant was to say something about Fredrik Lindstr�m’s tv series V�rldens modernaste land (The Most Modern Country in the World) or rather DN’s coverage of the series.This Friday, DN published a piece written by the literature scholar and debater Stefan Helgesson criticising Lindstr�m for something called cultural narcissism. I’ll leave aside the point that Helgesson (like most Swedes) apparently doesn’t understand satire – what really sent me through the roof was the fact that DN has finally gone tabloid. On DN’s homepage, Helgesson’s piece is presented as Attacken mot Fredrik Lindstr�m – The attack on Fredrik Lindstr�m.The point? You see, accorting to the Swedish tabloids, people no longer discuss, argue with or criticise each other. They attack each other.Just to prove my point, I did a search on attack on Aftonbladet’s homepage and came up with these examples: Hockey coach attacks his team, Angelina Jolie attacks Madonna, Carl Bildt attacks TV-reporter, Italian Industry Minister attacks lazy Italians, Enn Kokk attacks Mona Sahlin, Antiques dealer attacks tv series, Arsene Wenger attacks Premier League, Former Finance Minister Per Nuder attacks the government.No debate. No room for discussion or deliberation. Just attacks.Maybe Helgesson is right in a twisted way after all. Maybe, the Swedes – or at least those working in the media – have lost one of the defining characteristics of modernity: The ability to lead a rational discourse on any given subject. And maybe, given the nature of DN’s journalism, using the term attack instead of criticism was correct.Why a Brad deLong Moment? Follow this link and see for yourself. You have been warned.