One example, hopefully not representative on large scale, is the article, “The united states of total paranoia,” by Jeremy Clarkson. Mr. Clarkson is apparently an “elaborate” planner, except that he didn’t plan very well (permits and such). How to react to that? Refer to the locals as inbred, of course:
I know Britain is full of incompetent water board officials and stabbed Glaswegians but even so I fell on my knees this morning and kissed the ground, because I’ve just spent three weeks trying to work in America.
It’s known as the land of the free and I’m sure it is if you get up in the morning, go to work in a petrol station, eat nothing but double-egg burgers — with cheese — and take your children to little league. But if you step outside the loop, if you try to do something a bit zany, you will find that you’re in a police state.[. . .]
You find this a lot in America. People way down the food chain are given the power to say yes or no to elaborately prepared plans, just so their bosses can’t be sued . . . And, unfortunately, these people at the bottom of the food chain have no intellect at all. Reasoning with them is like reasoning with a tree. I think this is because people in the sticks have stopped marrying their cousins and are now mating with vegetables.
His article is an example of legitimate complaints mixed with blaming other people for his failure to plan accordingly, and some outright falsehoods such as, “. . .you don’t need [a permit or ID] if you wish to rent some guns and some bullets.”
Well, opinions are like arseholes, no doubt about that.
—–
Richardson
Though Clarkson does recycle many lazy stereotypes of Americans that are widely held in Europe - “people in the sticks have stopped marrying their cousins,” indeed - he is a well-known blowhard and global warming denier; not worth an entry on your blog.
the link is broken. i’d like to read his actual column.
Fixed.
Translation: “Where do these lower class subhumans get off telling me, ME — an important British person — that I have to wait and get permits — PERMITS! — like everybody else?”
I was dining with a couple of European academics recently (one British, one Irish), and I tried to explain that while our economic culture is very competitive and free-market, thus very un-egalitarian, our social and political culture, conversely, is far more egalitarian than that found in England.
We do not have the kind of rigid class system where we are all supposed to “know our place implicitly” in the social and political hierarchy.
Here, you will see patrician (well, as patrician as one gets) politicians, wearing bad suits lining up to mingle with, and canvass, the McDonald-eating folk.
We have a profound respect for “the ordinary man” and his ability to determine what he wants for himself (which is why I never could be an elitist like many in the “political class”).
In Europe, many of the so-called conservatives (often monarchists or themselves nobility/upperclass or both) and even “progressive” grandees, wearing their $5,000 bespoke suits, are very much out of touch with the common folk (even as they tout “egalitarian” economic policies of wealth-redistribution).
… which is why one French newspaper described John Kerry as a very “French” American politician with his “certain elegance” (by which I think it subconsciously meant “expensively dressed, elitist and haughty” as actual French politicians are, those damned Sciences-Po graduates.).
BTW, for a graphic example of the cult of the common man in America, look no further than Bill Gates, who supposedly dresses like a slop because 1) he likes it and/or 2) his advisers tell him to dress “common man.”
Can you think of English or French industrialists who don’t dress in the finest English, French or Italian fashion? Like they are worth a billion bucks (even when they “only” have hundreds of millions of dollars)?
In contrast, many Americans who earn $50,000 a year probably dress more stylishly than Bill Gates, possibly the world’s wealthiest man (and American).
I love this country.
I agree with James Na, but I would add that there are plenty of intellectual elite and pseudo-intellectual elites, especially in higher education, in America who want badly to be European (in this manner).
You can hear them talk about burger flippers just as much.
(And for some bizzare reason, they seem to find insightful the words of wisdom from elites of a different kind like — Johnny Depp—-?????????)
There is a great scene in the movie Barton Fink that I think is terribly insightful itself into this American class of elitists –
The Fink character is a playwrite on Broadway.
He goes to Hollywood after making it big in NY.
He prides himself —- and tells everybody about it ad nausem —- on being a friend of the working man…..the champion of the common folk…….how he is creating art out of the life of the common man…the way things are……as we would say today - keeping it real.
In this scene — he is going through this long set spiel in front of the John Goodman character who is a traveling salesman.
Goodman has tried 3 or 4 times to tell Fink about real life stories.
But, Fink just ignores him and keeps on talking.
I haven’t described it well —
but the scene is really good at showing Fink couldn’t care less about the stories of the common man.
His love for the common man is nothing more than his self-love of the idea of being in love with “real people” -
when in reality — he’d rather be boiled in oil than have to sit with much less listen to the average Joe.
That sums up much of what I’ve seen from a good chunk of the American intellectual elite…..
FYI, (assuming it’s the same one) Jeremy Clarkson is frickin’ hilarious on Top Gear, a car show on the BBC. However, bits of “look how much better we are than those savage colonials” sometimes peeks through. For example, on one bit, he excoriates the interior of the Ford F-150, and turns that into a generalization that Brits (or perhaps Europeans more generally) are just more civilized than Americans.
As for his contention that the US is over-regulated, Clarkson is hardly one to throw rocks. I’ll just note that when I went to London, there was a closed circuit TV camera on just about every single goddamned corner. Oh yeah, and also that the BBC is funded by a mandatory TV license fee (http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/index.jsp; http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/).
“The BBC is funded by a mandatory TV license fee.”
Long may it continue to be so.
Americans can be every bit as guilty of employing sweeping and inaccurate generalizations of “Europeans” (don’t you think this is a very inadequate categorization for a group that includes people as diverse as [some] Turks, Finns, Portuguese and Irish?) as Europeans can of Americans.
Mr. Na, to say that Britain still has a “rigid class system where we are all supposed to ‘know our place implicitly’ in the social and political hierarchy” is simply no longer true. Yes, class still plays a role, but very few of the top tier of the current Labour government (Tony Blair excepted) went to Oxford or Cambridge. These days, there is, if anything, an inverse snobbery going on that holds that people who attended the likes of Eton, Harrow and Oxford are inherently elitist, out of touch with reality and so unqualified to hold a high post. The fact that the current Conservative - yes, Conservative! - party leader attended Eton was a major black mark on his candidacy.
And as for “English industrialists who don’t dress in the finest English, French or Italian fashion,” off the top of my head, Richard Branson, the boss of the Virgin empire and proud wearer of scruffy jerseys.
Could British journalism actually be worse than Korean journalism? Say it ain’t so.
I think the American media should end the facade and just go European.
Instead of trying to hide their political leanings (hiding it even from themselves) in favor of pretending to be “objective” - the US media outlets should just openly acknolwedge where they fall on the political spectrum (and it ain’t the middle for most) and just openly endorse one or more politically oriented groups.
CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC openly promoting support for the dems and FOX News for the reps…
The NY Times is taking the lead. Let’s have the Brit press or the likes of Le Monde set an example for us.
Stop the lie….
I’m not going to say that this is for every British person, but as there are peculiarly American sins, so there are peculiarly British sins. The author of the article is practicing one of those that I’ve seen in action.
The arithmatic in Britain is different, but the eqution is the same for British middle class. There is judgement on accent and location of birth, but now it favors the areas previously seen as low class, including the Irish but excepting the Americans, because they have been denied their power and so on. The arrogance and the close mindedness (open mouth, sealed brain) is really tiring when you see one of those little engines going. I could actually hear one of a number of British voices and actually picture the face of few folks who have given out some really patronizing lectures. I realize its my bad luck to have run into a disproportionate number of them, but it was tiring to finish the article. “A fire marshall who did a due diligence check and found out the number I gave the immigration guy was bogus came out to monitor me while I fired a .50 caliber, the renting of which was seemless because it was left up to someone else no doubt. The nerve of some people.” That one won some serious style points with me.
I met Billg in person in 2003. He looked and dressed like a nerdy college professor. I imagined Billg to be tall person but he was my height and meek in public with only 1 body guard (it was in MSFT campus). This is what I love this country - the richest man in the world acting like typical middle class without pompous gestures.
And yes, British are NOTORIOUS was BAD tabloid like journalism. It’s National Enquirer multiplied many times. Only legit publication is Financial Times.
“Old grandpa’ shouting at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn”-kind of journalism is this. The sad thing about this is, that the newspaper actually prints it. If he wants a “immigration-challenge” then come to my home country of Denmark, but dont expect anybody to care. I dare you!
Touche, as the French would say.
I was referring to Europe in general, not just Britain. I am aware that our British cousins seem to be following our model of the “virtue of the common man” politics (the 1999 House of Lords Act and all that), but the reality is that class still matters, not simply politically, but also socially.
Of course it still plays a role!
And what about the bureaucracy, eh? Unlike in the U.S., the national bureaucracy in the UK is “permanent” and has considerable power (as do civil servants in general in most of Europe)? Where do these folks come from, eh? “The Oxbridge tutorial system,” anyone?
And then there is the ultimate symbol of the class system: the royal family and the affiliated landed nobility.
Leaving aside Britain for the moment, look at France. If you look at the French political and civil service elite, you are basicially looking at the alumni club of Sciences-Po.
Branson is an exception that proves the rule, isn’t he? Surely you are not suggesting that he is a typical British (or European) industrialist?
That now there are brashy, risk-taking, casually-dressed entrepreurs popping up everywhere speaks volumes about the recent influence of American entrepreneuralism and its symbolism.
Oh, and speaking of the British view of America, see this.
“And what about the bureaucracy, eh? Where do these folks come from, eh? ‘The Oxbridge tutorial system,” anyone?’”
Of course it still plays a role! I’m not denying that Oxbridge types continue to occupy a disproportionately high number of top posts in such institutions as the civil service and the bar. What I do object to is your characterization of the U.K. as being shackled by a “rigid class system where we are all supposed to ‘know our place implicitly’ in the social and political hierarchy.” It may be comforting to subscribe to hoary stereotypes, but that doesn’t make them any more true. It’s a few years old, but please take a look at the following article; you may be surprised (and please note the number of captains of industry who attended neither Oxford nor Cambridge):
http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1477687
“And then there is the ultimate symbol of the class system: the royal family and the affiliated landed nobility.”
The royal family wields no power, and is treated with indifference or derision by most Brits. The only time anyone gives a shit about the Windsors is when one of them dies or gets married, and even that interest is dwindling.
Ditto the aristocracy, may of whom are now so impoverished that they have been forced to - gasp! - open their estates to the prying eyes of plebeian tourists. Either that or give up their property altogether and get real jobs.
“Leaving aside Britain for the moment, look at France…”
No arguments here, but I won’t elaborate as I’m trying to cut back on my France-bashing. At any rate, despite an overweening tendency among Americans - and certainly among K-bloggers - to ascribe all manner of characteristics to “Europeans,” we are actually quite different, you know.
“Branson is an exception that proves the rule, isn’t he? Surely you are not suggesting that he is a typical British (or European) industrialist?”
No, I’m not. And surely you are not suggesting that Bill Gates is a “typical” American industrialist?
“That now there are brashy, risk-taking, casually-dressed entrepreurs popping up everywhere speaks volumes about the recent influence of American entrepreneuralism and its symbolism. ”
Fair enough. I’d be the first to argue that alongside the vapid sitcoms, irritating neologisms and Starbucks invasion, U.S. cultural imports have had some good effects too.
There are many imitators and Bill Gates-wannabe’s. American capitalism today is far more Bill Gates than British capitalism is Richard Branson. That was my point.
Like good dental care?
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself seeing as how I subcribe to “comforting,” “hoary stereotypes.”
“Like good dental care?”
Touche.