» The new racism
This week Katie highlights the hypocrisy of the UK’s anti-American feeling
Here’s an entertaining social experiment for you: think back to the last time you saw a prime piece of American-bashing (comedy panel shows, dinner parties or newspaper columns are all ideal). Got it? Good – now replace ‘American’ with an oppressed racial group. There we go. Doesn’t it feel good to have a chuckle about our superiority to those lazy, ignorant, war-mongerers who can’t even find Europe on a map of the world? Good harmless fun, eh?
With so many ethnicities now off limits it’s good that we’ve still got a whole race we can take out our small-island prejudices on. In fact, slagging off Americans is the safe brand of middle-class racism you can happily bring to the dinner party without scaring the servants.
For added entertainment value, don’t forget to toss these bon mots into the conversation, preferably with a sage nod of the head:
- “Of course, those Americans don’t really get irony…” No, of course they don’t. That’s why The Simpsons never really caught on there, The Smiths were never popular, Dorothy Parker couldn’t get her poems published and Quentin Tarantino’s movies are all taken entirely at face value.
- “American TV is rubbish – that’s why they adapt all our best shows.” You’re right, American TV is rubbish. Which is exactly why Channel 4 and Five don’t prop up their schedules with American imports night after night.
- “They refuse to travel and don’t
understand world geography.” While us Brits are a nation of
seasoned travellers, all fluent in five different languages, who can pinpoint Moscow on a map within nano-seconds.
“Slagging off America is the safe brand of middle-class racism”
The sad thing is that now the government’s shot and the economy is going down the pan, being anti-American is the one thing that binds the English together. It’s a warm, fuzzy communal feeling that, no matter how bad it gets, at least we’ll never be as low as those stupid yanks.
Which begs the question – if the UK is so hugely superior, why do we insist on importing the worst excesses of US to these shores and taking them straight to our hearts?
We might have once merrily guffawed at US coffee cups with “danger: contents hot” on the side – until we fell in love with Starbucks.
We also used to rightly take the piss out of their litigious lawyer-driven justice system, but that doesn’t seem so funny now that daytime TV is routinely interrupted by no win/no fee ‘personal accident agencies’.
And what about Guantanamo Bay? We seem happy to sit by on the sidelines while our country’s Government extends the time suspected terrorists can be held without charge.
We may moan and bitch about the US, but the fact is that with the NHS in jeopardy, student loans a distant memory and a McDonalds on every corner, we could well wake up one day as the 54th State without George Dubya even having to sort out an invading force.
Pretty neat of them, huh?
