Finland, followed by France, offers working people the most statutory vacation, at more than six weeks per year, the report, an international snapshot of how much paid leave people get by law and in practice in 21 countries, says. The United States is the only country where employees have no statutory leave, and they get about half as much time off in reality as Europeans get, according to the report, compiled by the Washington-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. 'The United States is in a class of its own,' the report says. 'It is the no-vacation nation.'

The Europeans Do It Right: I applaud a whole continent shutting down for a month. The only way we can really shut down and enjoy time off is with our colleagues' help.

The recent presidential elections in France have been a renewed opportunity for most of the American MSM to display a permanent feature that is to be found in many articles reporting on our country: an obsession which translates into an incessant set of criticisms about how France is run, particularly its economy. Above all, the 35-hour workweek, the 5-week paid vacation and the free and high-quality healthcare and educational systems seem to be particularly unbearable to those many journalists, columnists and reporters who also seem to have trouble understanding why the labor market is regulated, why workers are entitled to social rights and protections, and even sometimes are allowed to go on strike.

# Perceived American religiosity.
# Perceived American obsession with guns and violence.
# The death penalty.
# The perceived excess and superficiality of American capitalism and (non)culture (i.e. fat people, the super rich, SUVs, fast-food, M-TV/hip-hop culture, Hollywood, corporate scandals, buy-outs and "excessive" profits.)
# Perceived social inequality in the United States (i.e. amerikanische Verhaeltnisse, poor Americans are starving and freezing to death or at least struggling with 2-3 jobs and no health insurance while the rich live it up. Perception that America has no social safety net or a woefully inadequate social safety net.)
# Perceived American unilateralism/exceptionalism (i.e. Iraq, Kyoto, ICC, Guantanamo)
# Perceived American "hurrah" patriotism or "hyper" patriotism (i.e. flag-waving).
# Perceived American paranoia/overreaction about terror and obsession with security and the "war" on terror and the perceived willingness of Americans to sacrifice key civil liberties (the Patriot Act has become a favored target) and take extrajudicial actions involving torture, renditions, etc.
# The perception that the Bush administration controls (or at least dominates) the media and can somehow intimidate media into following the party line. The perceived view that there is a lack of diversity of opinion in US media and that FoxNews, talk radio and blogs are the menacing conservative vanguard of what all US media are becoming or have already become. (i.e. US media are "gleichgeschaltet" or in lock-step.)
# Anything that casts a negative light on the US military (i.e. Abu Ghraib, trials of US troops, bombings or killings of civilians real or imagined).
# Anything that casts a negative light on the Bush administration.
# Iraq is a disaster-quagmire-catastrophe-debacle perhaps unparalleled in human history. Iraq = Vietnam = defeat and humiliation for America, the US military and Bush.
# The perception of the US as an imperial hegemon out to expand its global power and military-industrial complex while using democracy as a convenient (yet false) excuse to do so. Oil = blood = Halliburton = war.

Opinion polls cite widespread dismay with the Iraq war, our dog-eat-dog social model and the arrogance of an imperial superpower that places itself above international law. But behind the surveys about "why they hate us" lies a reservoir of goodwill waiting to be tapped among foreigners who would prefer to see the United States succeed rather than fail. This love-hate melange has perpetuated four modern myths about transatlantic relations that deserve to be debunked.
1. The French hate us:
There is scant evidence to suggest that exploiting anti-American attitudes wins elections. During the French campaign, Sarkozy was often derided by his Socialist opponents as "an American neoconservative carrying a French passport." (...) In Germany, where anti-American views have hardened in recent years, Merkel has not suffered because of her support of the United States. Indeed, she has steadily increased her popularity with high-profile visits to Washington. (...)
2. Europeans look down on the American way of life:
Young Europeans are more eager than ever to work and study in the United States. A brain drain from France and Germany has sent some of their best and brightest to the United States. (...) When I spoke last year with about 50 Germans studying at MIT and Harvard, not one of them expressed a desire to return home. They all wanted to live and work in the United States, where, they said, opportunities are far more abundant.
3. "Old Europe" no longer matters because China and India are the future:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Europe supposedly lost its relevance. Not true. In fact, Europe and the United States still act as the twin turbines of the global economy, accounting for 60 percent of all trade and investment flows. Americans invested five times as much money in Germany last year as they did in China, and U.S. firms in total have poured four times as much money into tiny Belgium as they have into India. Europe provides three-quarters of all foreign investment in the United States, creating millions of American jobs.
4. Europe loves only Democrats:
Most Europeans loathe George W. Bush, and his departure from the White House will be cheered in capitals around the world. But that doesn't mean that Europeans want a return to the kumbaya-ism and humility evinced by President Jimmy Carter and the early years of the Clinton administration, when the United States failed to lead in stopping genocide in the Balkans.

the immediate post-invasion demands for all sceptics to apologise because the defeat of Saddam had taken only a few weeks and the 2004-05 insistence that occupied Iraq was really a good news story that a twisted media refused to report. The latest mantra, now that it's clear the whole enterprise is a frightening mess, is: stop gloating.

Schadenfreude is something you feel when you are happy about the misfortune of somebody else. It is not Schadenfreude when you are happy that somebody finally tries to correct a (perceived) error you told him about time ago. There maybe a certain "toldya so" factor to it but it's not Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude would be stupid since U.S. failure in Iraq would not be to the advantage of Germany, quite the contrary. A "failed state" of Iraq does not help anybody, not even trade. A Middle East in chaos does not inspire Schadenfreude to anyone.

My feeling is that there isn't much gloating because the European media is simply not used to gloat about much. They are used to criticize heavily, whether it's American policies or European policies or French policies. Cheerleading media, as exists here (Fox, NY Post, etc…), doesn't really exist in Europe. They have their opinions, but they don't cheerlead.