On Monday I attended a “debate” in the press room of the foreign ministry, topic Hur ser dom på Sverige? — How do they (foreigners) see Sweden? “Debate” is in scare quotes precisely because there was nothing scary to it. Everybody on the panel was über-polite to one another, agreed with everything, thought it worth adding a point perhaps or underscoring a particular sentiment while the audience snarfed down some rather fine wine during working hours. This audience consisted primarily of aging foreign correspondents, who during question time proceeded to ask questions that were really answers, to which the very polite panel listened intently.

The stunning conclusion: The image Sweden has abroad does not correspond exactly to reality. As to why this might be the case, the consensus was that there had been a miscommunication somewhere, a failure shared by both Swedes and foreign correspondents to be as accurate as they could be.

While various anecdotes to this effect were recounted over the course of an hour and a half, I devised an alternative theory, which I’ll run by you now. Could it be, possibly, that Sweden fulfills an indispensable role in national political debates everywhere as an ideal — a shorthand for an kind of polity against which to compare the local failures or successes? Perhaps American Republicans require Sweden to be a socialist suicide central. Perhaps Eastern Europeans demand that Sweden be a capitalist success. Maybe Southern Europe wants Sweden to be efficient. I can go on, put you get my point.

Against such a deluge of idealizing for local consumption, there is not much that Sweden can do, besides perhaps trying to ride on the coattails of a net positive fallout. What’s so bad about being a land of blonde athletic reserved singing nudists? It beats being a land of beery pedophiles, right?

If my theory is right, then a far more interesting (and difficult) question to answer is, Why Sweden? Why has Sweden, and not Finland or Canada or Australia, become a global yardstick for measuring progress, especially if, arguably, Sweden itself does not measure up to the myth? I don’t know the answer, but I think, in part, it has to do with historical accident; and once Sweden was typecast as the Jean-Luc Picard of nations, boldly going, it was a role so compelling that subsequent career turns just haven’t registered. There needs to be a Sweden on the world stage; if it didn’t exist, they’d have to invent one.

If Sweden ever wants to opt out of this role, it will not suffice to write more letters to the editors. Drastic measures will be needed. Drastic measures like… “When Good Swedes Go Bad!” the TV show, from the people that brought you “When Good Pets Go Bad!” and “When Chefs Attack!” I envisage the pitch would go something like this:

A fascinating, frightening program that shows what can happen when sweet, doting, responsible Swedes revert to their natural behaviour. Amazing, never-before seen footage of shocking real-life incidents will show ordinary members of Swedish society letting their true instincts take over:
 
— A CEO savagely guts his company for personal gain
— An unemployed loser turns on his foreign minister
— A tame village pastor murders his wife once too often!
— An alcoholic shoots the prime minister in the back
 
These are just a few of the horrifying events that are caught on camera and give us all a lesson in what can happen when government fails to act responsibly and treat its citizens humanely. Earth’s best friend? You will never look at Swedes in the same way again after you see what happens ÎWhen Good Swedes Go Bad’.

That should do it.

An advertising campaign by the Swedish contruction worker’s union has the temerity to suggest that preventing immigrants from competing on price helps them avoid exploitation. Basically, by not working, you’re not being exploited, goes the reasoning. Of course, unions, like any other interest group, should look after their members, so if Swedish construction workers want to lobby the government for mercantilist laws to protect them from having to compete with eager hardworking Poles and Latvians, let them; but they must not be allowed to get away with baldfaced lies: They are not on the side of the poor; immigrants are not being exploited when they undercut Sweden’s union rates. Instead, it is Swedish consumers who are being exploited by high prices when they cannot access competitive labor markets.
 
The whole point of free trade and the free movement of labor — indeed, the raison d’être of the EU — is that countries specialize in producing those goods and services they have a comparative advantage in. For Poles, their advantage is price. For Swedes, it is technology. Both countries will have far more winners than losers when they trade goods and labor, but it is important to realize that you cannot have those winners without the losers. The solution is not kneejerk protectionism, it is training those who lose out so they can find new jobs. A generous welfare state makes this solution all the easier.
 
No luck getting this message across in Europe. Except for Ireland and the UK, all current EU member states will prevent acceding member states’ citizens (except the minuscule ones) from looking for work on their turf when they join, for up to seven years. Read this Guardian Special report. It reads like an ode to callousness.
 
And it is the perfect recipe for disillusionment. Take one EU, problems and all, then throw out the redeeming bits. Now stuff it down the newcomers’ throats. The upshot: Belgian EU citizens can work in Sweden because they are already rich. Polish EU citizens cannot, because they are too poor.
 
At least the British government “says it expects economic benefits from migrant workers,” according to the Guardian. Why can’t anyone else see this? Jean Monnet is turning in his grave.Under helgen bestämde jag mig redan att jag skulle skriva här på svenska om Byggnadsarbetareförbundets annonskampanj som jag märkte up i tunnelbana förra veckan. Idag, lyckligtvis för er som pratar bättre svenska än jag, skrev Peter Wolodarski på DN allt som jag ville säga, men i mycket bättre svenska och i mer detalj. Kampanj är skamlig.

Jag vill bara stryker under några saker. Jag kan förstå att Byggnads vill tillvarata deras medlemmars intressen, och att det betyder att de inte vill ha invandrare som jobbar för mindre pengar här i Sverige, därför att Byggnads inte är konkurrenskraftig med invandrare. Men Byggnads ljuger helt enkelt när de påstår att de vill hjälpa invandrare undvika utnyttjande. Invandrare som kommer till Sverige som byggnadsarbetare tjänar mer pengar här än hemma. Det är inte dumpning. Dumpning betyder sälja under kostpris för att ödelägga konkurrensen.

EUs utvidgning bevisa att det inte är invandrare som utnyttjas, det är vi svenska konsumenter som är utnyttjat av Byggnadsarbetareförbundet. De är för dyra i den nya EU.

When it comes down to it, if somebody were to put a gun to my head and credibly demand to know my one favorite bar above all others or else, I’d have to go right ahead and betray Bouche Bar in favor of International Bar, on 1st between 7th and St. Marks.

Yes, the place looks like a biker dive, with cheap-beer neon in the window to scare away tourists; yes, it has blinking Christmas lights strewn year-long along the length of the railway carriage shaped space; and yes, it has a yellowed map of the world in the back on which Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union are forever forces to be reckoned with; but boyo what generous cheap martinis! And the jukebox is the best in NYC — it’s where I first heard Stereolab — and they let you bring pizza slices into the bar to have with your drinks on rainy winter sunday afternoons… And the bartenders all just walked off the set of a Suicide Girls shoot.

One of them used to bartend at Downtown Beirut a few blocks up the roadThe perfectly adequate but tame bar Standard has taken its place., that legendary but now defunct punk rock bar from a time when the East Village still scared people. She took her attitude seriously: When American moviestar Buddhists successfully ignited the Free Tibet campaign in the late-middle nineties, she put up a sign behind the till that read, “Free Tibet (with every drink)”. To me, that line will forever nail our jaded end-of-the-millenium take on the world, from a time when people still smoked and 911 was a Porsche model.

Fast forward to today’s Swedish papers, which ganged up on their king for comments he made while visiting a fellow monarch, the Sultan of Brunei: King Carl Gustaf thought Brunei a lovely place, “a country which is much more open than one may imagine,” with an absolutely delightful host of a Sultan who “holds an open audience where anyone who wants to can come and present his wishes, and presumably his complaints also.”

The problem? The Swedish government considers Brunei to be a dictatorship, and King Gustaf, politically neutered by law, is not supposed to make normative statements about anything weightier than the weather, unless it’s about global warming, in which case he better shut up and not sweat either.

Except that Brunei, an absolute monarchy, is filthy rich, and the Sultan has more than enough money to rule his 350,000 subjects through patronage. The human rights situation in Brunei, compared to all the other countries of the region, is really quite good — certainly better than any other Muslim country that I can think of — and improving. The 2002 Amnesty International country report documents the release of evangelical Christians who were held as prisoners of conscience. The 2003 Amnesty annual report does not bother with Brunei at all; few countries manage that featSweden isn’t one of them. Both the 2002 and the 2003 Sweden country reports document police brutality, deaths in custody and a suspicious police killing. Going by Amnesty’s numbers, then, you might want to go live in Brunei — and imagine, they have no income tax..

So perhaps it was bit opportunistic to criticize the king for being publicly grateful to his host, especially if in a narrow sense, his comments are not factually incorrect. It is certainly the case that we are not in a situation where the oppressed Bruneian masses are yearning to breathe free, like they do in Tibet; and this in turn frees me to revisit, just for the evening, my jaded views of yore: To all those members of parliament who paraded in front of the cameras, condemning in the strongest possible terms the evils of the Sultan’s regime in a country they had to look up on the map this morning, go ahead, buy yourself a Free Brunei T-shirt, or mug. I’m selling at cost, since the Brunei Relief Fund is not short of cash. It should go nicely with that previous icon of jaded chic — the Free Winona T-shirt:

I suspect this whole affair has absolutely nothing to do with Brunei, and everything with the monarchy. Let’s face it: Monarchs, be they Belgian, British, Swedish or Bruneian, have more in common with each other than they do with their subjects — they are born cossetted rich parasites through no fault of their own, but choose to remain so in their adult life, and that is inexcusable. Monarchies symbolize the superiority by birth-right of one man over another. If the monarch also wields power, as in Brunei, this at least makes sense according to some internal logic. But in a constitutional monarchy, this symbolism is a jarring anachronism, because ostensibly, democracies are meritocracies.

Maybe I’ll go make some Free Belgium T-shirts…