British Disease
It doesn't take more than a
cursory glance at late-night
television to grasp the rather
obvious fact that the United
States remains a subjugated
colony of Great Britain. In the
particularly arid patches of the
tube's vast wasteland—betwixt,
say, the final In the Heat of
the Night rerun of the day and
the next eagerly anticipated
reunion of Mama's Family—the
American patriot is likely to be
confronted not only by
infomercials yammering on about
the relative advantages of
great desert pasta") or the
mostly reversible side effects
of the newest breakthrough in
fat-blocking technology. He or
she is also likely to be
accosted by brown-toothed shills
with English accents, touting
the latest space-age solutions
to credit card
fraud and semen stains in
delicate clothing.
Look, there's a bow-tied Brit
frenetically explaining in the
Queen's English precisely how
the Rocket Chef vegetable slicer
pays for itself halfway through
the first 2-pound bag of
carrots. Switch the channel and
you'll encounter the reformed
Borstal Boy extolling the
portable Red Devil Grill's
ability to bake pineapple upside
down cake with an exuberance
usually reserved for reciting
Rupert Brooke's poetry or
kicking French soccer fans in
the face. Just try to avoid
Audrey, that ubiquitous,
post-menopausal Mary Poppins, as
she pedantically explains the
Iron Quick and Fat Free Express
"systems" to her uncomprehending
stateside stooge.
How bad is the situation? In an
age where the sun has
definitively set on the British
empire, US TV nonetheless
regularly airs Slender Secret, a
diet infomercial featuring
doughboy Robin Leach, whose
chest-to-waist ratio confounds
traditional mathematics even as
it conforms to standard UK
morphology. That the pear-shaped
parasites' only credential to
speak authoritatively is their
British accents simply drives
home the point that Americans
reflexively genuflect whenever
they believe themselves to be in
the presence of the English.
Champagne kisses and caviar
dreams indeed.
Signs of cultural occupation are
everywhere: There's the
Teletubbies invasion, one of the
most gruesomely successful
attacks on national sovereignty
since the Redcoats burned DC
during the War of 1812; the high
praise ritually accorded Rhodes
Scholars, as if winning a
fellowship named for one of the
most outspoken racists in
history and routinely given to
protean geniuses such as Kris
"Jesus Was a Capricorn"
Kristofferson should garner a
response other than dismissive
laughter; the fact that Madonna,
who rose to stardom by grunting
like the unapologetic Motor City
hussy she was, now affects an
English accent; stores sincerely
called Ye Olde Shoppe in every
corner of the contiguous United
States and, likely, in Alaska
and Hawaii; the esteem
inexplicably conferred on
editorial starfucker Tina Brown;
the growing use of Britishisms
such as "bloody" and "cheers,"
even by natives of Brooklyn, New
York; wannabe Spice Girl Gwyneth
Paltrow pretending to be a royal
subject in films such as Emma, Shakespeare in
Love, and Sliding Doors; the
continued brisk sales of
so-called English muffins; the
recent anointing of Shakespeare
as the "inventor of the human"
by bovine critic and New Yawk
native Harold Bloom; and on and
on.
To be sure, Anglophilia of all
stripes is hardly a new
phenomenon. In the early days of
the colonies, artists and
businessmen in particular
regularly returned to Mother
England to hone their skills, to
make contacts, and to search for
more and better whores. (As
colonial diaries filled up with
disappointed entries, such as
"endeavored to pick up a whore
but could not find one," London
newspapers carried
advertisements along the lines
of, "Wanted. A Woman [with]
bosom full and plump, firm and
white, lively conversation and
one looking as if she could feel
delight where she wishes to give
it.") During the 19th century,
boring, flatulent novelist Henry
James bemoaned the provincialism
of America, headed east across
the pond, and eventually
achieved his lifelong dream of
becoming an Englishman (an
aspiration that indelibly marked
him as quintessentially
American). In a bid to erase his
scandalous birth and childhood
in St. Louis, Missouri, T. S.
Eliot became a British subject
in 1927 and a devoted member of
the Church of England. The
modernist poet H. D. fled the
New World for the Old and became
a different type of British
subject: She entered into a
golden shower-infused liaison
with eminent sexologist Havelock
Ellis—a relationship that
concisely sums up the
traditional cultural
relationship between England and
its former charge.
Give these Benedict Arnolds
their due: At least Great
Britain was in some way great
when they supplicated themselves
like so many peasants. England's
post-World War II history—the
high points of which include
30-plus years of the Dr. Who
television series, a bulimic
princess who inspired perhaps
the worst best-selling song of
all time, and more than a decade
of Roger Moore playing Agent 007
– should have been more than
enough to erase any illusion of
national cultural superiority.
Certainly, the parallel
experiences of Brit Hugh Grant
(caught with a hooker in Los
Angeles) and American Eddie
Murphy (caught with a
transvestite hooker in Los
Angeles) should indicate who's
currently blazing trails.
And yet the cultural
mercantilism continues: We ship
over raw blues, for example, and
see them returned as finished
products played by heroin
junkie-cum-bespectacled
professor of rockology Eric
Clapton. We give them T. S. Eliot
gratis; they send back Cats. We
kill a Beatle; they export
Oasis.
However, there are signs that
the relationship is finally
righting itself, especially as
the United Kingdom slides into
Third World status and becomes
more openly a colony of France
and Germany. Austin Powers:
International Man of Mystery,
the brainchild of Canadian (that
is to say, US citizen) Mike
Myers, not only physically
abused English icon Michael York
but suggested that the British
are, in fact, twits with rotten
teeth. Tony Blair openly rose to
power by pursuing a less
testosterone-heavy version of
Bill Clinton's politics
(reversing the terms of exchange
by which Ronald Reagan won
office by pursuing a less
testosterone-heavy version of
Margaret Thatcher's). And
Princess Di memorabilia are
starting to go south on the
Bradford Exchange.
Whether such promising trends
augur a wholesale revision of
centuries' worth of cultural
imperialism remains to be seen.
But whenever Massachusetts-born
Emeril Lagasse beats Robin Leach
in the ratings on the Food
Network, whenever a Beach Boy –
even Al Jardine, fer chrissakes
– outlives a Beatle, whenever –
God help us all—Hanson
outsells Oasis, every real
American should stand up and say
the Pledge of Allegiance. And
whenever infomercials, which
will doubtlessly emerge as the
quintessential American art form
of the 21st century, are purged
of their English-accented
barkers, the United States will
finally earn the title of the
world's only superpower. After
all, the ability—and
willingness—to unilaterally
and indiscriminately bomb
foreign countries means precious
little indeed if your citizens
feel themselves somehow inferior
to the likes of Prince Charles.
Nick Gillespie is editor-in-chief of reason. This story originally appeared in Suck, and can be viewed in that format here.