I was at a party last week and met an Irish woman who mentioned she has a friend living in San Francisco and has visited her a couple of times. I asked her what she thought of the city and she said she liked it, that she especially found the surrounding areas (Napa, Marin, out to Yosemite) quite beautiful, but she didn’t at all like the people in San Francisco. “They’re so shallow and phony,” she said.

Wha, wha, what??? I had already told her I was from San Francisco, which is why we were even talking about it, and she said this right to my face, with many other people sitting around and listening. I felt challenged, in a bar-fight kind of way, except I was sober and it was a really nice garden party; in other words, there would be no punches thrown at anybody.

When I asked why she had such a poor opinion of my peeps in the City by the Bay, she said something about going out to bars with women friends of her friend and how they only faked interest in conversation with her while blatantly checking out men or whatever they were REALLY interested in. She listed other reasons that were along the same line, basically that everyone in San Francisco is so clearly on the prowl for the next best thing, they can’t possibly appreciate the organic realness of what is right in front of them.

As I was sputtering my objections, someone at the table piped up with, “Yeah, well, if you think that’s bad, you should go to Southern California, which is the Eden of all that is phony and shallow.” Or something to that effect. There was general complaining about how Californians “hug too much” and “ask ‘How are you’ when they don’t even care.”

Helloooo! Born and raised there!! How rude! Okay, yes, we are kind of huggy and we do say, “Hey, how are you doing?” a lot but so do other cultures; one of the first phrases I learned in Norwegian was, “Hvordan går det?” which means “How’s it going?” I was also taught to say, “Hvordan går det med deg?” which means “How’s it going with you?” and is to be used WHEN YOU REALLY CARE how it’s going, not just when you’re (apparently shallowly) making small talk. So, hmmph, it’s not just phony Americans!

Anyway, I did my best to defend my homies until someone changed the topic and, later, Irish left the table. Of course I jumped up and gave her a hug before she walked away. I enjoyed that.

Normally, conversations like this don’t bother me too much, but this one left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m quite used to people bashing America but this time they were talking smack about California, MY state, and much, much worse, about San Francisco, MY TOWN. Where many of my very-not-phony friends live. It hurt my feelings. It made me mad.

Later, I was droning on about this to a Norwegian friend and she said, “I know how you feel. A lot of my immigrant friends often say negative things to me about Norway and Norwegians. I try to understand their frustration but it can be very hurtful, especially when what they’re saying isn’t true about anyone I know.”

Oh, crap, guilty! I’ve thrown out my fair share of gross overgeneralizations about Norwegians, especially in my first few years after moving here. I don’t do it so much anymore, except to insist that they’re terrible drivers and horrible at waiting in line, but I can’t deny I’ve been there, done that. As, I suspect, have most of you, about one culture or another.

During the bad E. coli scare in Germany earlier this month, I read a comment in the New York Times from a Spaniard complaining that, of course, Germany blamed Spain for spreading the illness with its dirty vegetables. “As always,” he/she wrote, “Northern European countries are pointing their accusing fingers at the southern European countries. The typical opposite clichés of the ‘hard-working, thrifty and efficient German’ and the ‘fun loving, slothful, dishonest and unproductive Spaniard.’ Nevermind that the average Spaniard works longer hours than the average German.” And, of course, it turned out that the E. coli came from an organic German farm!

It wouldn’t be difficult for me to list twenty totally false “truisms” about twenty different nationalities from all over the world. Probably you can, too. Well, I’m going to use my unfortunate anti-San Franciscan party experience to remind me not to do the same to other people anymore. No more stupid generalizations! No more idiotic clichés! And the next time someone looks me in the eye and utters some nonsense about my people---Americans, Californians, San Franciscans, women, even Norwegians---I’m going to get right back at them and remind them that, although they may have experienced behavior A, B, or C with some people, it is absolutely wrong to blanket an entire people with any accusation. And then I’ll give them a hug. Because that’s what I do.