Unfortunately, Mr. Noer has not only refused to apologize for his hateful words about this country but has continued to write disrespectful and insulting comments on his blog in response to polite comments from readers.
I have therefore written the following email to the editors at Forbes:
On January 25, your editor Michael Noer began a series of posts on his Forbes blog, discussing his impromptu decision to send reporter Jon Bruner to Romania to stress test laptops.
Mr. Noer began fulminating imprecations against Romania from the very first paragraph, cheerfully describing his decision to send Mr. Bruner to my adoptive country as “torture” and then gleefully delighting in the “danger” that Mr. Bruner purportedly would face from one hundred thousand feral dogs allegedly roaming wild in the capital.
It seems painfully clear that Mr. Noer knows absolutely nothing about Romania or its capital Bucharest, a modern metropolis of over 2 million inhabitants. While it is true that a Japanese businessman was killed in Bucharest in 2006 after a dog attack, this was an isolated incident and it is extremely noteworthy that Mr. Noer was unable to come up with a more recent example.
Packs of feral dogs might have been a real danger in the past but the present reality is far different. Romania is an important member of both NATO and the European Union and Bucharest has hosted several high-level conferences and meetings, including visits by both President George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, all without incident.
Attempts to contact Mr. Noer via Twitter as well as via comments on his Forbes blog went unanswered. I and several other people wrote to Mr. Noer both to ask him to tone down his hateful invective as well as to provide him comparative statistics on canine attacks in the United States – which incidentally are far more prevalent than in Romania.
The only response received was more tongue-in-cheek jokes about the “dangers” Mr. Bruner faced in Romania despite the fact that Mr. Bruner himself reported he had an entirely pleasant experience and did not in fact even see a feral dog.
The tone and attitude of Mr. Noer’s writing about Romania are deeply offensive both to Romanians as well as to the hundreds of thousands of Westerners who live and work here.
I would be remiss if I did not remind you that Forbes also has a Romanian-language edition and is currently a widely-respected business magazine in this country.
As a prominent blogger and writer in Romania, I have already publicized your editor’s willful intransigence on my own website. And I have copied this email to the staff and publisher of the Romanian edition of Forbes to alert them to their American colleague’s hateful and completely unnecessary slander of this great nation.
Sincerely,
Sam
(American) Forbes email: readers@forbes.com
The editor of the Romanian edition of Forbes is Petre Barbu, whose email is: petre.barbu@adevarul.ro
All Things Romania 
Who cares really what Mr Noer says or does. He will never eat sarmale, drink tzuica or eat cozonac, so he may live his artificial life elsewhere where we can hopefully ignore him, since ridiculing him obviously requires an exercise in futility… the man has already found his salvation in his blackberry.
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So to some things up on the “‘ts all fun and games” side of this, Forbes is a sort of an Academia Catavencu or Kamikaze magazine, the only remaining problem being that obviously it’s not funny enough (thus failing in its endeavor).
So now I know. :-/
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sum*
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Let’s be honest, there are some problems with dogs in some cities, Bucharest is one of them, my hometown also. While in Bucharest I used to live near a park in sector 2 and I must have seen 50 dogs through my 2 yaers there, coming (cause people left them there) and going (cause the “hingheri” caught them). But I was not attacked cause I had a very sociable dog who befriended all the other dogs.
Now in my small town I was almost bitten twice(my purse and my jeans took it hard) just because I was passing by. And yat I don’t blame the dogs cause 90% of the dogs I have encountered on the streets used to be pet dogs until someone got bored or tired of the responsability.
We have a sort of RSPCA but is quite not existent.
But for the rest that mr. Noer wrote I think is useless to have a debate with someone who loves his idea so much…
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wow sam! i think it’s really nice of you to do this. Probably Romania is the most “made fun of ” country at the moment, but I am not surprised… like anyone, no ?
I do agree that Romanians should keep a sense of humor in this process, and not be so easily insulted with anything is said out there.
However, the bad part about these articles is that most people are so ignorant about Romania that I’m 99% sure they believe just about any crap that a journalist would write in any newspaper. Unless Romania starts to show some actual smart moves and smart policies … I think the making fun will never stop. Sorry to say this but it’s all up to Romanians to convince the world they are smart …and not just an image of stray dogs, gypsies, dirt, etc
An example that comes to mind is how they handle the whole rroma problem where most Romanians say : hey western world show us how to solve this problem cos we are incapable. Actually, Romania if you want to gain respect you have to come up with your own solutions to your own problems.
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Bucharest Life, are you a complete idiot? You make fun of a country in an international newspaper and see how funny they think it is…
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Perhaps you are trying a little bit too hard to be liked in Romania and it has affected your ability to construct an argument:
“Packs of feral dogs might have been a real danger in the past but the present reality is far different. Romania is an important member of both NATO and the European Union and Bucharest has hosted several high-level conferences and meetings, including visits by both President George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, all without incident.”
I don’t really see the connection between the dogs, NATO membership and Bill Clinton. Whether you want people to talk about it or not, Bucharest does have a dog problem and many other problems. Rather than get angry at people for mentioning them (and accusing them of being racist, yes you really have become Romanian), wouldn’t it be better to to acknowledge the problems and try to fix them?
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Was your sense of humour surgically removed when you moved to Romania?
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I vote Sam for Romania’s Foreign Affairs Ministry!
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“While it is true that a Japanese businessman was killed in Bucharest in 2006 after a dog attack, this was an isolated incident and it is extremely noteworthy that Mr. Noer was unable to come up with a more recent example.”
http://www.romania-insider.com/romanian-woman-dies-after-stray-dog-attack/18148/ Not recent enough?
Isn’t this just someone trying to be funny (for whatever reasons all magazine feature articles these days seem to have this need to be funny)? I mean I agree that it’s not funny, and just basically rubbish, but you’re giving him and his article unnecessary publicity I reckon.
I’m hazarding a guess that you could read articles in the Romanian press making similar “amusing” comments about going to Kyrgyzstan or somewhere. You can even find articles joking similarly about going to the American Deep South or Appalachia. I think by paying attention you’re just bringing further attention to it
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Bravo!
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