Swedes Are Bores

The Swedes are angry with America in general and President Bush in particular, and this has me feeling really blue. Almost as blue as when Uncle Joe Stalin croaked on March 5, 1953.

Like most people, the Swedes take themselves extremely seriously, but it's their sanctimony that makes me want to vomit. Throughout the Cold War the Swedes remained unaligned, just as they did during WWII. There's nothing wrong with neutrality?after all, peace is better than war?but there's something very wrong when America and the evil empire are held to moral equivalence by the cowardly and hypocritical Swedes.

I have only visited Sweden once, in 1973, to buy a beautiful sailing boat. Stockholm was a handsome and clean city, but without a soul, and in my opinion without charm, just like the Swedes. Before I sailed her down to the Med I spent some time gathering up a crew and finalizing details of the sale. One night, while out drinking with a girl, I remarked that the greatest Swedish composer, Sibelius, was of course a Finn, and somebody from the next table took umbrage and began to insult me. Back in those good old days I could take care of myself, so I threw caution to the wind and told my tormentor that just because all Swedish women traveled to Greece to find sexual satisfaction, he shouldn't hold it against me. Alas, he took it very badly, and stood up ready to attack. As did I. The trouble was that I'm 5-foot-9 and he was 6-5 or taller. I weighed around 155 pounds back then, and I figured him for 250. Then a very strange thing happened. The disparity in our size made me laugh out loud, and that is when the rest of the Swedes turned against me.

I will not bore you with the details, but things could have been worse. I didn't win, but I didn't do too badly either. When I refused to pay for the damage as it was the big bully who had started it, the fuzz was called. I ended up paying because I was a foreigner who had disturbed the peace. So much for Swedish fair play and all that, but what I really minded was that the broad I was with had slipped out during the altercation between David and Goliath.

Mind you, one cannot condemn a people because of a drunken incident in some dive, but the constant criticism of anything American by various lefty Swedish prime ministers does get tiresome. So tiresome, in fact, that it had repercussions even here, in the Big Bagel. My very close friend, Roffredo Gaetani, a noble Roman and probably the only titled person to become a pro boxer, brought a beautiful model to my house for dinner. This was about 10 years ago. Although quite stupid, she was very opinionated and very left-wing. So I did a Taki, and it cost my friend Roffredo a night of ecstasy and lust.

While she was banging on and on about the evils of capitalism, I interrupted her and told her that the happiest day of my life was when I heard that Olof Palme (the Swedish prime minister and arch-critic of Uncle Sam) had been gunned down. It was in very bad taste, I admit, but I was only joking. Ula, or whatever her name was, went nuts. She first began to throw things, then demanded that Roffredo beat me up, and finally ran out of the house threatening to call the cops.

Call the cops for what? Back then this was still a free country, but you wouldn't know it looking at Roffredo's face as it dawned on him that the fuck was off. It was that look of utter despair that made me collapse with laughter, and thinking back as I write this I still cannot control hysterical giggles.

Another encounter with an unpleasant Swede took place in the European karate championships of 1974, in Crystal Palace, London. Ted Hedlund, the Swedish captain, had reached the finals of the world cup in Tokyo the year before, and as luck would have it I, as captain of the Greek team, drew him on the first round. He was awfully confident, and I was awfully scared?yet again it was David-and-Goliath time?but I quickly scored on him with an ushiro geri (back kick) and he only managed to tie in the last seconds. (A tie is possible in team matches, not in individual competition.)

I was extremely satisfied with the result, and when I saw him in the locker room I went over to him to chat. We almost came to blows right there and then. He made a disparaging remark about my style?I would call it hit and run?and said it was the worst he had ever fought. I reverted to type, saying that I, too, had a very bad day, as I was exhausted by having to service too many Swedish women in Mykonos all summer.

Hedlund turned to refereeing after that, and five years later, at the European championships in Belgrade, he suspended me for giving the finger to a rowdy Yugoslav crowd that was booing me. (For once he was right, but to this day he remains the most unpleasant person in the karate hierarchy.)

So, dear readers, although three Swedes do not a whole country make bad, the Swedes do make the most boring movies, they do walk around naked?at least in my country?and are as boring as they're sanctimonious and socialist. So there.