American Swedish Institute

We just sent the following letter to Stephen Colbert in response to this video.

Dear Mr. Colbert,

It has come to our attention that you’ve been angling to take over the official Twitter account for the country of Sweden for a week. We also understand your efforts up to this point have been unsuccessful. We surely wish you luck as you continue to pursue this worthy goal.

In the meantime, the American Swedish Institute, one of the largest Swedish-American organizations in the U.S., would like to offer you control of our American Swedish Twitter feed for one day this week or next. We know this isn’t quite the same as tweeting for an entire nation, but as a major hub of American-Swedish relations, we hope you will find it an acceptable short-term substitute. Who knows, maybe the actual Sweden will see the work you’ve been doing for us, and reconsider.

You can tweet in English, Swedish, or in some hilarious, fakey mix of the two. We leave the comedy up to you, sir.

For us, the timing couldn’t be better - the American Swedish Institute is hosting a “Grand Öpening” of our newly expanded facility in Minneapolis on Sat., June 30. The Swedish Ambassador to the US, His Excellency Jonas Hafström, will also be in attendance. Just sayin’.

We offer you the tweeting responsibilities for sometime during Grand Öpening week, or some other time that would be more convenient for you. Like today.

Yours in Swedishness,
(the American kind)

Bruce Karstadt
President and CEO
American Swedish Institute