Just as the Muslims around Europe felt a sigh of relief because of the news that the massacre in Norway was not an act of Islamic terrorists, the Serbian media informed us that the killer praised Serbs who were killed in 1999 and that his idol was Radovan Karadžić. Those Breivik’s observations were among the twenty theses which CNN singled out from his 1500 pages manifesto.
If we had kept on reading we would have found out that he had idols in most of the European countries, but then WE wouldn’t have been the leading news. Or at least we wouldn’t have believed it, because it turned out that not so many people took the silly writings of a crazy man seriously. Even though they again had an opportunity, just like CNN, to portray Serbs as the bad guys.
The American comedian that made bad jokes about US triggered expected reactions of barroom and Internet forums, but also a reaction of the Serbian diplomats. Just to let them know that we are following what people are saying about US. The people expected that, certain that we became the central topic of American media and that even our country needs to get involved.
After some great events where WE were really the protagonists, it gives us more pleasure to read what the international media said about US than we enjoy, for example, the sport triumphs that were the cause of the reports. That kind of obsession with the need for US to be the news, to hear what the others are reporting on what is happening with US and about US, has closed us off in an glass dome into which we don’t allow any news without the tag “Serbia”.
We are not even interested in what kind of threat of bankruptcy was the United States under, how the nuclear plants are being shut down all around Europe and how the capacities for the production of renewable source energy are being raised, we missed the launch of the space shuttle into retirement, just like we overheard that Pluto is no longer a planet. Am I in there? No? Change the channel. Flip the page.
The events on the north of Kosovo has put us back into the reports of major TV networks, but the burning down of the border crossing and the death of the policeman has made us the bad news. We received the marketing, but it won’t do us any good in the negotiations about Kosovo and in the fulfillment of the new conditions for the European integrations, which some of the countries are already mentioning. Because, Hadzic i Mladic, as good news, have been upstaged.
We wanted to be the headline and we got it. Now we can only wait, eagerly, for Djokovic to start his appearances on his North American tour, before the US Open. If he wins in New York, we will be the good news, even on CNN.
