Qatar-based media company Al Jazeera released a video on its social media site AJ+ mocking Americans as they celebrated American Independence Day.
Not surprisingly, it wasn't well received in the USA.
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The slickly produced video features an electric guitar playing "America, the Beautiful," as young actors tout several areas where the United States leads the world.
It starts off sounding laudatory, mentioning that America leads the world in Olympic medalists, Nobel laureates, and billionaires. But it then turns sarcastic.
"Not to brag, but we have the most incarcerated people in the world," a woman in an American flag and bald eagle T-shirt says. "God bless the prison-industrial complex."
A man waving a small flag says, "When it comes to obesity … a third of us can't even see our own toes." Another flag waver say that America is No. 1 in cheese production, "specifically, probably Wisconsin," though she doesn't explain why cheese production is a negative.
Another actor fires off finger pistols and says, "we've got 90 guns per 100 persons. Sorry, Yemen, we beat you in drones and guns!"
"Americans consume 80 percent of the world’s painkillers," another says. Makes sense though, right? I mean racism in this country is a big pain in the ***."
The video also claims America produces and watches the most pornography, has the largest per capita amount of teen pregnancies, has the largest credit card debt and most people killed by lawnmowers.
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commenter Adam Sternberg summed up most Americans' reaction, saying: "Interesting stone throwing from that glass house of yours Al Jazeera ... a network owned by a country where women have no rights, you can go to prison for criticizing their leader, and stoning someone to death is legal and practiced regularly."
He also pointed out that Al Jazeera America is "the #1 channel in the U.S. to be sued by its own executives and employees, mostly because their hierarchy resents women, is racist, and anti-Semitic."
Other users said the video was a mean-spirited jab made worse by its release at the July 4 holiday.
AJ+ executive producer David Cohn responded to critics, saying, "we definitely take shots at other countries."
He told one user who said he was unsubscribing to the channel, "Sorry to hear that. You should keep in mind the spirit of this video is not necessarily 'liberal' or 'conservative.' It's both meant to be a bit of fun (light humor) as well as criticism. But criticism of our country isn't a bad thing. In fact, you can argue it's patriotic. Hope all is well."
Al Jazeera America has struggled with ratings since buying out the contract of Al Gore's failing Current TV in August 2013. It also has been sued twice by former employees alleging anti-American bias and discrimination against female employees.
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