@Sweden gets some heat this week

Sweden has been in the news recently and not in a good way. It is always interesting to read about the country we are living in and have it mocked by one of my favorite comedians, Stephen Colbert.  Curators of Sweden hands over the @Sweden Twitter account every week to a new Swede for them to tweet their experiences and show the world their perspective on life.  It has been really interesting to follow and we have been loyal readers of the various "curators" of @sweden since we moved here.  My personal favorites were the lesbian truck driver
, Hanna, and the .se technology CEO (Sweden's version of .com), Jocke.  Jocke's life motto was, "be honest and do good shit."  I like that.  For the most part, the @Sweden tweeters are interesting and generate some discussion but tend to answer questions like, "how much coffee do you really drink?" and other such benign questions.  Well...not this week.

This week's @Sweden is Sonja and she has made the news with her somewhat ill-phrased, ignorant questions.  I think that Stephen Colbert appropriately summed up the hub-ub in this video clip: http://news.yahoo.com/stephen-colbert-wants-over-sweden-video-105226066.html and his campaign to take over the @Sweden account for one week (#artificialswedener).

Instead of immediately regretting handing over the account to a racist, ignorant, outspoken ranting woman and firing the person who gave Sonja the reigns, the VisitSweden folks backed their decision saying,

"She is a controversial and provocative person for sure," said Ziv, who said Abrahamsson tweets and blogs in Swedish in a similar vein. 

"We haven't called her or told her to stop or back down. We want her to continue being herself," she said. "It's our choice not to censor anyone because we want to keep it real." 

"We want to show the diverse and multifaceted country that we are," Ziv said.

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Yeah...right.  This would never fly in the US for two reasons.

1. We would never allow one person to "represent the diverse and multifaceted country that we are" for one week at a time.  Because guess what? People in ALL countries are racist and stupid and 
2. We don't want everyone to know that we have stupid racist people.  We'd rather hide it and act superior, right?  I mean, isn't that better than proclaiming it to the world?  

Am I off track on this one?  I don't know.  The VisitSweden folks are acting all accepting of her "controversial" personality and her tweets are all being archived in the Curators of Sweden website.  Feel free to peruse at your leisure and feel your mouth gape in the horror of some of her statements and questions.

The best part of the rotating @Sweden account is that if you don't like the person tweeting, you can just check out for a week and check back in later. There are only a few days left in her Twitter week to catch her craziness so follow @Sweden if you want in on the crazy-train.

Although, one of Sonja's tweets was a real gem, "When I look at our medeavel castle I think of times when there was kings and queens in this country. Then I realize there still is. -- @Sweden/Sonja