idva da pokaje, che dosta balgari v USA naistina ne se ogranichavat samo s "ujas" i t.n.

It was a calm and cold Wednesday morning in New York City and I used a few spare minutes to check the news on the website of the newspaper I have always held great respect for, namely, The New York Times. To my greatest surprise, amidst the articles covering every possible aspect of the standoff with Iraq, lay a short editorial column, written by the renowned publicist and Pulitzer price holder - Maureen Dowd. Beneath the seemingly innocent, yet somehow alluring title Bush's Warsaw War Pact, I found two pages of excellent sarcastic value, which unfortunately also provided patently erroneous information regarding the country of Bulgaria and its inhabitants. Being utterly appalled to find a column of such questionable value in a respected newspaper, cited all over the world and expected to be one of the most reliable sources of information, I would like to address the author and her argument in this letter.



In order to provide a more comprehensive critique, I would first like to start with citing some of Ms. Dowd’s incorrect points, which I hope were a result of a poorly done research rather than a genuine desire to stain her reputation as a writer. First, in terms of the ‘sketchy’ facts that “rattle’ around, Ms. Dowd failed to explain to the NY Times reader that only three team members were expelled at the 2000 Olympics, the rest of the Bulgarian team received an official apology after the incident. Secondly, and perhaps, more importantly, the well educated Catholic columnist apparently does not care very much about the Pope or for updating her information database for that matter, since she also neglected to mention the fact that last spring, on his first official visit to an ex-communist country, the Head of the Catholic Church absolved Bulgaria of any links attributed to the country as regards the assassination attempt (http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/05/24/bulgaria.pope/?related). Furthermore, it will probably be a subject of interest for Ms. Dowd to note that one of the Bulgarians (Sergey Antonov - an official at the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome) charged with complicity in the pope assassination case has never been able to recover after his trial and is suffering from severe mental and psychological anxiety, despite being acquitted of the charges and despite the recent statement of the Turkish assassin that the Bulgarian link was a pure insinuation.



I would also like to point out that I was shocked upon reading the column not because I oppose the right of Ms. Dowd to form her opinion about Bulgaria and the ‘little’ country’s citizens or the Bush’s administration’s policies, but rather because I could not believe or accept having to read anything in the NY Times that not only uses false information to make offensive statements, but also uses language that does not conform to the standards of respectable newspapers as well to the columns of renowned Pulitzer prize winners in the above-mentioned newspapers. In fact, attacking an entire country and its citizens on ungrounded facts by using words or expressions such as “lowest of the low”, ‘sycophant”, “lapdog”, ‘thick necks’, and “sketchy facts” that ‘rattle” around is not only disrespectful because it substantially deviates from the truth in certain cases, but is also extraordinarily arrogant and blatantly biased criticism against small countries that happened to be run by Stalin in 1944-45 after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill surrendered Eastern Europe at Yalta. In addition, I also found it very unfortunate that among the famous Bulgarians, Ms. Dowd chose to cite an obscure allegorical heroine in the “Casablanca”, which only served to help readers miss the point related to Bulgarian girls offering themselves in exchange for airline tickets.



In addition, I would like to provide Ms. Dowd with a couple of easily accessible sources of information on Bulgaria that go beyond narrow explanations of the country’s utility limited to sending canned tomatoes or rose oil. The following links may shed some light at other famous Bulgarians or at the fact that Bulgaria happens to be one of the oldest countries in Europe (it has existed since 681 AD) with rich enough cultural traditions, which help its journalists abstain from using blatant offenses against other countries and disparaging them because of their size in newspapers: http://inventors.miningco.com/library/inventors/blatanasoff_berry.htm, http://bb3.beautifulbulgaria.com.ayde.com/en/city1.php?cityid=17, http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~kalina/bulgaria/people/atanasoff.html. The following books may also be very helpful in this regard: The fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews survived the Holocaust: a collection of texts (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 2001) and A concise history of Bulgaria, Crampton R.J., Cambridge, CB ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997.



Finally, I would like to say that I remain committed to reading the NY Times, a newspaper I utterly enjoy, and I hope that in the future columnists would use better prepared arguments and judgments to attack the current policies of Washington as opposed to resorting to slinging mud at small countries and discussing historical legacies and regime actions that not only have nothing to do with the citizens in the afore-mentioned country, but also are indefinitely less significant in magnitude than certain actions undertaken by the US government in the same period of the Cold War