Love me, love me, say that you love me

Whenever megastars, often American, visit Sweden, may they be recording artists or actors, we need to hear that they have enjoyed their stay here and that love the country. It doesn't matter whether the visiting Messiah is Bruce Springsteen, Britney Spears, Al Gore, Merryl Streep, or as was the case this weekend, Lady Gaga. I will not dwell further on the.. phenomena and freak-show that is miss Gaga; that will likely be a topic for future considerations. I will just point out how far Swedish tabloid journalism will go to get a comment on the stars' approval of Sweden. Yesterday one of the superstar's bodyguards had to do, when he stunningly reported that "Lady Gaga like it very much here". Stop the presses.

But we, or at least tabloid journalism, need those headlines. They are present every single time when a very famous person visit Sweden; each story is a carbon-copy of the previous. The question is it is only a feature of our mass media, or if it represents something deeper within Swedish culture and psyche? It has been said that Swedes are never shy to harshly criticize their own country and its system, but whenever a foreigner enters the conservation the tone swiftly changes. We are rarely proud of our nation, except for when the national team in football or ice-hockey is playing, but even then flag-waving is modest; it has instead been claimed by racists and right-wing extremists. We can however not stomach criticism to the Swedish way of life from the outside, then our pride and defense of the Swedish steps in and turns on like a light-switch. I follow this pattern myself and always tend to the defend the Swedish system more in conversations with non-Swedes. We need to be loved and admired by the world; another example of that is that we always feel pride whenever we are mentioned in American media or popular culture; even we are ridiculed or made fun in The Simpsons or Family Guy we love seeing it. Why is this? I don't really know, but an attempt at an answer leans me towards the Swedish tendency of insecurity. We need to know that we are doing is the right thing, whether it is the policies of our welfare state, foreign policy, or popular culture. It seems as if if other nations do not see the same quality in the Swedish that we do ourselves, we will start to question their validity, and then the whole foundations of our society will start to come down. It is a peculiar behavior, but perhaps understandable coming from a small country on the outskirts of continent, who with quite an own way of doing things has larger ambitions and will to be seen than its actual size and reach. Sweden is Lionel Messi in Barcelona, the little kid who no one thought would amount to anything, and so need to show the world that he can do it on his own.

The song quoted in the headline says a lot about this - Lovefool.