And yet for all the ugliness, the deadening tawdriness of much of the American landscape and the tinny feebleness of many of its politicians – for all that nastiness and shallowness and flakiness – there is no question in my mind that to live here has been the greatest privilege of my life.
The immensity of America, the energy and the zest for life remind me sometimes of India. And as with India, where I spent some time for the BBC many moons ago, America shines a light on the entire human condition.
‘….the tinny feebleness of many of its politicians’
This, from a Brit? Pot to kettle: come home.
Don’t you think his take on the Brit politicians would be about the same?
I just wrote to my wife (who sent me the link) expressing irritation with my fellow countryman’s tone, which smacks of “an interesting time with the aborigines, what.” One can simply read the English satirical magazine [i]Private Eye[/i] to find numerous examples of the same sort of incompetence that Webb indicts.
The only phrase that rings somewhat true – speaking as a historian – is that “America speaks to the whole of humanity because the whole of humanity is represented here; our possibilities and our propensities.” The refusal to accept limits on human capacity has always been a guiding principle of the republic, for good and ill. Just because the Presiding Bishop is mistaken when she speaks of the heresy of individual salvation, doesn’t mean that such a critique cannot be made of secular culture. Half a century ago, Louis Hartz famously argued that there was no conservatism in America. The only serious attempt, by men like George Fitzhugh, became irretrievably bound up with the Lost Cause and suffered its ultimate fate. Ultimately, American conservatives remain liberals at their core (a fact that many, I’m sure, will not lament).
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
Oh for the love of Pete!
1. It is ILLEGAL to let your kid die of a preventable illness and not take them to the doctor in the U.S. Kara’s parents will probably be prosecuted. In any event, in a nation of 300 million, there is always going to be some nut who decides not to receive medical care (or give it to their kid) for some reason. He attributes this to the widespread “superstition” (read: Christianity) of Americans. I’ll guarantee you there are just as many non-Christians in the U.S. (and the U.K. too) who don’t vaccinate their kids because they’re convinced that vaccines cause autism, etc. And I’ll guarantee you there are just as many “new agers” in the U.K. who are tying crystals or something around their sick kid’s neck instead of taking them to the doctor. When he started this part of the story I was sure he was going to talk about some kid who died because they couldn’t get access to health care — now THAT is an appalling scandal. But kids who die because their parents are “too superstitious” to take them to the doctor? That’s a big problem in America?? Give me a break..just about as many kids as die from allergic reactions to cats. An utterly negligible number.
2. The eating contest was full of obese kids with acne. There may indeed be something about eating contests that draws obese people, but the British are every bit as obese as the Americans. As far as acne, that is a largely hormonal condition that study after study has shown has virtually no relationship to what you eat. But he just threw in that gratuitious insult to make the whole thing seem more disgusting. (No one in Britain has acne, of course, and if they do, we should find them disgusting.) But the whole thing is weird because who else but him has ever even seen an eating contest? I’ve never even seen one advertised. Again — why is he picking these bizarre events out of the air and talking about them as if they were some real part of American culture?
3. Re: tatto parlors — has he gotten a look at the — please pardon a very politically incorrect and outdated term — white trash that populate most of his country at the moment? Try to walk down a street in London and find a “wholesome” looking kid who isn’t covered in tatoos and body piercing. Gross? Yes. More typical of America than Britain? Not by a long shot. And there are gangs of these unemployed kids roving around looking for a bit of violence to entertain them. The British themselves are trying to find a way to keep knives out of the hands of these kids because they spend so much time stabbing themselves (and other people.)
If you want to criticize America, criticize our propensity to get into wars, to fail to provide adequate health for our children, our love affair with guns. But parents who don’t take their kid to doctors? Eating contests? Tatoo parlors? Sex scandals among politicians? How any of these are especially characteristic of America I utterly fail to see. If that represents the level of insight he’s brought to eight years of reporting in the US for the BBC, they’re well advised to send him home, for sure.
[blockquote]I just wrote to my wife (who sent me the link) expressing irritation with my fellow countryman’s tone, which smacks of “an interesting time with the aborigines, what.†[/blockquote]
Speaking as an Anglophile myself, I was heartened by the tone and would like to see not a little more of it.
We have some truly awful politicians. We have spent £1bn on an identity card scheme which has just been scrapped, yet we will not spend money on helicopters to keep our troops in Afghanistan safe – we are seeing it in the casualty rates – 22 killed in operations in Helmand in the last month. All is well apparently, according to Gordon Brown. Would that we had lions to lead the lions rather than donkeys.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/uk+soldiers+are+aposoverstretched+and+overtaskedapos/3292257
Yet there are others who do their best, do not feather their own nests and have a strong sense of duty and public service, but it seems fewer than there used to be.
The deadening tawdriness of much of the American landscape
Where did this man spend his time?
He was referring to the tawdriness of the man-made landscape. It’s those tatoo parlors again. In the U.K., all tatoo parlors are run from within 12th century cathedrals or castles.
As a Brit I cringed with embarrassment when I read this piece. Jeremy above is correct: it bears all the sensitivity of an old-fashioned anthropologist studying interesting and ‘primitive’ peoples. And as other bloggers have noted, just about everything mentioned could be found here in the UK. Not only children starving to death (there was a recent case in Birmingham, both parents Muslims, BTW) but also beaten to death (our nation has been shocked by the case of ‘Baby P’ who was killed despite many visits by social workers, referrals to police and even a paediatrician who failed to notice – I am not making this up – that the child’s spinal cord had been snapped and who solemnly wrote down on the hospital notes that the child was ‘cranky’.) These things are not typical of Britain or of the US. They are typical of humanity. Or, as we Christians might say, a fallen world.
More controversial by far are veteran religious affairs journalist Clifford Longley’s strictures about US health care policy in this week’s Tablet. He also mounts a robust defence/defense of socialized medicine. I do not know if it is available electronically but I would love the elves to put that up, and it would certainly stimulate debate. I am fairly sure most of you folks would not agree. But you would not, I am sure, find it patronizing or vulgar.
I have just noticed that here in London, Damian Thompson has been excoriating the very article that we are discussing. His headline in the Daily Telegraph blog:
BBC man leaves Washington, still patronising the hell out of ordinary Americans.
You can find it here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/damianthompson/