Mr. Speaker, last Sunday during the Emmy awards, I realized that one of the most popular new comedies about domestic life in America is Desperate Housewives, and one of the most popular ongoing…
Mr. Speaker, last Sunday during the Emmy awards, I realized that one of the most popular new comedies about domestic life in America is Desperate Housewives, and one of the most popular ongoing dramas about domestic life in America is The Sopranos. And even though a majority of Americans still have regular contact with church, one of the few shows that actually shows contact between a family and religion is The Simpsons. Now, it is not my intention to try to bash television shows or Hollywood, but these are hardly adequate or accurate views of America, and this inaccuracy does have policy implications.
If the image of America is derived from the popular culture and not the reality of what America is, it has an impact on our foreign affairs. Let me try to illustrate. In the year 2003, I was part of the Congressional Study Group on Germany and had the opportunity, with others, of representing the United States in Berlin with the German Government, which at the time was, shall we say, not a big U.S. supporter of U.S. foreign policy.
In fact, that particular German Government had just a very narrow election by doing a significant amount of America bashing to get there. But the tone of that government would have been more acrimonious were it not for a senior SPD member, Hans Ulrich Kluse, from Hamburg, who, at considerable political risk, put his reputation
on the line to insist that his government try to make more cooperative pragmatic relations with the United States.
At the time, I wondered why somebody would spend so much political capital to be pro-American, until I also realized that the references he always gave when he was speaking about America were to his experiences in the 1950s as a foreign exchange student in Clinton, Iowa. I also realized his experiences with real American families gave him an insight and friendship that no one can ever gain by watching America as purported by television and the movies.
As I traveled that year as well as last year to Germany, I realized that those places in Germany that are extremely pro-American are those where they have the greatest contact with Americans. And in like manner, where anti-American attitude develops and proliferates is in those areas that have the least amount of contact, which may be one of the reasons why the Ambassador from the United States at that particular time was undertaking a prolonged and expensive initiative to try to increase the contact between Americans and Germans, especially Germans of school age. Such contacts, he thought, were the only way to improve Americans' image abroad and mitigate anti-American attitudes where they may be growing in the future.
In fact, I found one constituent, who did not know my interest in this area, who wrote me. Martha, from Park City said, ``At a time when youth in strategic parts of the world such as the Middle East are confronted with dangerous cultural misunderstandings about the United States, youth exchange programs are uniquely suited to allow young people to experience an America unfiltered by Hollywood. These exchange participants frequently take home an understanding and often appreciation for America's people, society, and values.''
She is right on. Every year we have the opportunity of sending 30,000 ambassadors out into the world. And for 19 years, the host families of those 30,000 potential ambassadors have been receiving a tax deduction of $50, which is nice. But that is why I am happy to have joined with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) and nine others to sponsor H.R. 1504, which will change that $50 to $200. That is not enough to cover the expense of host families, but it is enough to encourage families to open their doors so that more kids can have the opportunity to experience an American way of life, which may indeed be the smartest foreign policy decision we could possibly make.
With America and America's way of life under constant attack, both literally and rhetorically, it would be wise to do everything we could to encourage students of the world to experience what this country has to offer, return home, and then watch that influence tend to grow.
If our image abroad is important to the spreading of democracy and to the defeat of terrorism, and I think it is, it is good to get the good kids of the world with those good families in America. And the payoff will be improved foreign policy options and relations 10 and 20 years from now. Such an investment would be wise.
I would urge my colleagues to look at the details of H.R. 1504 and join us in planting seeds that can be reaped to the benefit of American foreign policy in the future.
