I think this is supposed to be some sort of anti-American diatribe, but like most of these frothing incompetents, Mr. David Aaronovitch ends up unwittingly making the target of his ire look good. Behold:
Now, among nations, there is only America to fear, and it has never been difficult to get Britons to feel antagonistic towards the Yanks. There is, lurking, some kind of folk/race memory of the time when GIs came courting our girl-friends with nylons and oral sex, neither of which our boys could offer.
(Bolds mine.) Oh dear. I'm sorry to hear that, pre-World-War-Two British oldsters. I certainly hope that you have made up for your youthful deprivation... Anyway, Aaronovitch goes on to say that Americans are "pushy, insensitive, rapacious, successful and rich," and that everyone on the Sceptered Isle is pathetically obsessed with us. You know, I'm not sure he wanted to make his countrymen look like neurotic, sexually-inadequate, envious cowards. Then again, like many of these lefty Brits, he seems to think that humanity is a mirror.
(Via Give War A Chance:.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at March 26, 2003 03:37 AMuhm, actually that is an anti anti-american article written in what the brits would most likely term a very dry style. Thus all the things that you take as inadvertant slights on his own country are meant as satirical jabs at anti-americans among his countrymen.
Posted by: bryan at March 26, 2003 at 08:40 AMI have to agree with Bryan and I suggest re-reading Aaronovitch's piece.
Posted by: Geoff at March 26, 2003 at 09:55 AMTo further dispel doubts on the aim of the article, he even explicity refers to the poem as satire.
Posted by: Kerry at March 26, 2003 at 10:41 AMI don't think it is so much 'anti anti-american' as it is in pointing out some alarming aspects of British society, as it stands today in relation to America. "Same as it ever was" while highlighting what responses the British have to the war.
I have, for a very long time, been very disturbed by the apparent fossilization of British civics. I narrow in specifically on the last paragraph where he points out that marching youth is better than crabby apathetic, implying that it is really all that is left to them. THIS, from a nation that spawned the middle class and civic responsibility and the Free Englishman!
How far England has fallen! They have joined the Europeans in sneering at American volunteerism and enterprise, when it was their g-g-g-g-g grandfathers who embraced it within their own society (read any history book on 18th century England).
I worry about England. I really do.
Posted by: Sharon Ferguson at March 26, 2003 at 10:44 AMRE: The Oral Sex Issue. I guess American GI's were smart enough to know they were more likely to get their faces gashed by kissing a Brit lady on the mouth, given the slovenly state of British dental work then (and now). Best to aim lower, and everyone emerges happy and uninjured.
Posted by: Sharkman at March 26, 2003 at 12:51 PMa propos the oral sex thing, historically speaking as late as the 30's a man giving a woman oral pleasure in the U.S was as a general rule thought of as dirty and somewhat unmanly, at least from cultural materials I've seen on the subject ("tijuana funnies" and similar ephemera). So I doubt the women in the 40's england were getting too much in that department from American servicemen either.
Posted by: bryan at March 26, 2003 at 01:13 PMI see some of you missed my even drier satire. {SCORE}
Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 26, 2003 at 01:16 PMWhat IS this oral sex thing everyone talks about?
Next thing, you'll be telling me women can have lots of orgasms during a single sex act.
Posted by: Kim du Toit at March 26, 2003 at 07:40 PMKim, you're in the doghouse at the moment, right?
Posted by: Ken Summers at March 26, 2003 at 11:35 PM