Yes, I know, a natural and common transition.
On her love of Oberlin College and the '60's era hippy love fest, Siebens had this to say:
[...]I just fell in love with the place. It was teeming with hippies. I was from this very proper, suburban school in northern New Jersey and I had no idea that these were my people.
Oberlin has so much flexibility. [...] The College was very amoeba-like. We went to pass/fail grading and I went off grades my freshman year. It became a little complicated when I decided to go to grad school because I had no grade point average.
I thought about dropping out. I really had doubts. The world was really screwed up and nothing made sense and why did you need a college education? Today it seems really stupid that you could be that riled up, but there was a lot of this then -- a lot of alternative communities. There was a big one in Taos, New Mexico and a lot of people were into the whole hippie thing, dropping out and going to a commune in the middle of nowhere.
Indeed, those hippies were her people--amoeba-like, pass/fail grading, close approximation of commune life--what's not to like? Of course, it was during this period of time that Seibens and many of her classmates were romanced by the radical elements then infecting American universities. She describes her experience well.
I'm a new freshman, and the next thing I know, I'm sitting in, in the [Cox] administration building. [...] It was crazy. I got politicized so quickly. I had never done anything like that in high school...so I got thrown into this and it never stopped. [There were] riot police on Tappan Square at one point. There was no tear gas, but there was the threat of tear gas.
(emphasis added)
Like many of her peers, she "got politicized" and went into journalism. They won (lost, really) the VietNam War. Made Nixon resign. Hounded Reagan. Got Clinton elected. Made excuses for him. Somehow let Gore lose. Made Bush pay for it. And for winning in Iraq. Finally, their crowning acheivement: Presdent Barack Obama.
It is on this last accomplishment that Siebens is most revealing. Being the London Bureau Chief for CBS, Siebens was concerned about not being able to affect the outcome, like her peers in the thick of things.
They [Europeans] were so convinced that [Obama] was going to win [and that is because] they don't understand the role of religion in the conservative side of the United States, even though they saw Bush get elected twice. There are always surprise twists.
I was fretting that I was going to be overseas for this election, [but] if you're in a first world country like the UK, you've got TV, you've got blogs -- it's really like you're there. By the morning after the election, all the [London Times] had a double-wide spread with a map of the United States and a state-by-state recap of what happened. The whole world was watching and I was surprised [to see such interest] because when I went back overseas, I thought everybody hated us. That it was a 'my way or the highway" approach. People really believe in the American dream. Even if they live in Kenya or if they live in Germany.
(emphasis added)
Siebens assumed the rest of the rest of the world "hated us" because that's how she and her fellow travelers in the MSM felt. On a personal note, I've lived in the UK on and off since June 2006. I've spoken with grad students, professors, and other members of the academy. I've talked politics with media types. I've discussed all things America with average UK subjects.
My sense, from all of these conversations, is that the same type of person who dislikes America and President Bush in the United States dislikes America and President Bush in the UK. That is to say, that the type of person Siebens talks to would have disliked America before Obama's election and, obviously, would like America now that he's in office.
It's called liberal confirmation bias.
