American Schadenfreude (Not Exactly An Oxymoron, But ….)

“What I find interesting is that no such word or phrase exists in American English. … Certainly, there is no piecing together ‘shame’ and ‘joy’ to make ‘shamejoy,’ as in German. Shame and joy are antithetical, distant, never meant to share the same bed. That’s because schadenfreude does not square with America’s national obsession with the comeback story.”