Saint or paraiah, hard to tell

Comedian Eddie Izzard has a line about Adolf Hitler that I just love: "He was a vegetarian and a painter, so he must have been going, 'I can't get the fuckin' trees...damn, I will kill everyone in the world!"

Austrians do not think this line is funny.

I can't really figure out what the attitude toward Hitler is, actually. Jokes, in any form, are right out. I get called "the Grammar Nazi" a lot at home, but that would be a serious insult here. I have no idea how they handled the Soup Nazi when Seinfeld was on.

So Hitler is not funny. He is serious. Very serious.

But that doesn't mean that he's really hated.

I think the Austrians are aware they're supposed to hate Hitler. He gets compared to Bush a lot, so there must be some hatred. Sometimes, though, it's Bush that comes out the worse in that little race. (Which brings to mind a Margaret Cho quote: "George W. Bush is not Hitler. But he could be if he fucking applied himself.")

Anyway, I think there's actually a good bit of ashamed admiration floating under the ostensible wrath and disgust for Hitler. Not that they want him to return, or even to admit that he was, in fact, born in Austria, but a sort of, look-our-boy-is-the-most-hated-man-in-history, it's-not-having-the-empire-back-but-it's-something attitude.

In the end, I think that's the reason there's so much anti-Bush/anti-America sentiment here. Austria and Germany have been held up for so long as the examples of how government can go terribly wrong that they're defensive, even of Hitler. They're tired of being the whipping boys, so they're all too happy to point fingers at the U.S.

I have to admit, this attitude annoys me. I feel like the best thing for them to do would be to say, "Look, clearly we're not the world experts on good government, because...yo. But, hey, we're trying to do better and you're hurting our feelings," instead of this constant barrage of "Americans are stupid and so are you."