Thomas Koppel dead
Thomas Koppel, Danish composer and musician, has passed away at the age of 61. During his too long life, Mr. Koppel was known in Denmark for his life-long support of all things foreign, except, that is, if they were American. When younger, Mr. Koppel took his band on tours of the communist world and Albania was often their destination. There they declared their solidarity with Enver Hoxha and his romantic revolution, which cost numerous human lives and untold human suffering. The people of Albania are no longer very sympathetic to Mr. Koppel though he supported them for all those years; ingrates I suppose.
Recently, he and his wife declared themselves against free speech, a move puzzling to observers since they seemed to use their right to free speech quite extensively. A quote from the late Mr. Koppel:
The case of Greenpeace being a case where Greenpeace as an organisation was fined 50000 DKK for breaking and entering in order to protest the manufacture of Gene Modified crops and the case of "Forening Oprør" (The Rebel Association) being a case of a website being ordered off-line because it was soliciting funds for terrorists organisations, such as FARC in Colombia and Hamas in the Palestinian areas.
This, of course, was all it took for Mr. Koppel to think that "all is fair in love and war" and to ordinary Danes it became increasingly clear that he was not on their side.
Though Mr. Koppel was often accused of oichophobia, he is quoted to have said: "I don’t have a problem with Denmark, I just don’t like Danes…."
Though he had a problem with the United States, he resided there for the last years of his life, enjoying the God-given constitutional rights of that country over the oppression of Red China, with whose politics he was infinitely more attuned. He did reside in California, though.
Rest in pieces and don’t come back, Mr. Koppel.
Piss be upon you.
:-)
Comment by whodares — February 27, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
What does “oichophobia” mean?
Comment by martin — March 2, 2006 @ 3:40 pm
Oichophobia - usually used as the opposite of xenophopbia. Hmmm.. The spelling is usually oikophobia… But the meaning is the same. Fear of all things known.
I see Uriasposten has a nice definition in Swedish.
From the Times in the UK, here is the original definition from Roger Scruton:
Oikophobia — the repudiation of home — is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But, as George Orwell pointed out, it is a stage in which intellectuals tend to become arrested. When Sartre and Foucault draw their picture of the “bourgeois” mentality, the mentality of the “other” in his “otherness”, they are describing the ordinary decent Frenchman and expressing their contempt for his national culture. When the European Union inveighs against “racism and xenophobia” it is not referring to the Islamist movement in France or Holland, but to those who wish to live by the inherited national loyalties that define the political condition of Europe.
Comment by Administrator — March 2, 2006 @ 4:32 pm