Wannabe Yanks

Spectator - London | Theodore Dalrymple

[Timocrat]

The consumers of Virtual America see the affluence and are embittered that it is not theirs, but they do not understand the culture or effort that created it.

Thought this aptly described the US academic world.

[moyden2000]

When did baseball caps become white trash?

[Paul Atreides]

Virtual America will never convey the message that the Americans are, in fact, a courteous people, whose manners are (at least nowadays) vastly superior to our own.

Please, don't judge us by our trendsetters, or those who follow after any, and every, fad that comes down the road. I only wish that American filmmaking/television could be as good as is the British. I'm not saying that British entertainment is perfect, but at least they are willing to make productions of such things as Poirot, Miss Marple, and some very funny sitcoms. And, from what I have seen, they don't beat the viewer over the head with political correctness.

[HardStarboard]

Timocrat, do you have a link to the source for this article. I want to send it to a bunch of my liberal "Oh Hollywood's so clutured" friends. I like to do it over the logo of the magazine or paper where it was published.

Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving!

[Timocrat]

And, from what I have seen, they don't beat the viewer over the head with political correctness.

Watch the TV news over there, it's so left wing it thinks Tony Blair is a conservative. We get the best of their TV programs. They produce more than their fair share of trash e.g. East Enders etc.

[Timocrat]

Try this:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2003-11-22&id=3759

[Paul Atreides]

Oh, I'm sure. However, the sitcoms I have seen, if anything, are somewhat politically incorrect. I would hate to see their newscasts.

[HardStarboard]

Timocrat: I found the Spectator article thru Google. Call oof the chase! Thanks again - a great perspective.

[alex]

"The popular music is appalling and brutalising, the food horrible and the manners depicted selfish and egocentric."

Hey, this one is from Virtual England.

[Plutarch]

deracinated

Being only a dumb American, I had to look that one up.

de·rac·i·nate
tr.v., -nat·ed, -nat·ing, -nates.
To pull out by the roots; uproot.
To displace from one's native or accustomed environment.

[Plutarch]

Demotic

I thought at first that this was demonic, which is how Bush is generally portrayed in Britain.

de·mot·ic adj.

Of or relating to the common people; popular: demotic speech; demotic entertainments.
Of, relating to, or written in the simplified form of ancient Egyptian hieratic writing.
Demotic Of or relating to a form of modern Greek based on colloquial use.

[Jack Black]

When Glen Campbell got arrested wearing one it sealed it for me.

[Prodigal Son]

I thought you might perhaps be interested in this. It relates to topics we have discussed previously. The passage below from the article is a very good example of how reality becomes displaced with the copy of reality:

Last week, a friend related a story that demonstrates how completely entertainment does, or at least can come to, dominate a child’s sense and knowledge of reality. His next-door neighbours left their 11-year-old daughter alone in the house for a few minutes and she, growing frightened, suddenly feared that a fire had broken out. She decided to call the fire-brigade, and dialled the emergency number. The number she dialled was 911 — the American emergency number.

She did not know that the emergency number of her own country was 999: she knew only the number of the country in which she truly lived, at least mentally, namely TV-land, which bears a closer resemblance to America than to anywhere else, but is not of course the real, living America, only the screen version of it. If there had been a real fire, she would have been done to a crisp, thanks to her habit of watching TV.

Dalrymple is a gem. I always love readind his pieces.

[Prodigal Son]

Good article. Thanks for posting it.

[Desdemona]

And Americans, en masse, believe that their lives are what they themselves make of them.

[chesty_puller]

When did baseball caps become white trash?

When they put them on backwards. MLB catchers excluded of course.

[Timocrat]

Dalrymple is an English Psychiatrist. I sometimes get the impression from his writing that he thinks the whole country is crazy. He's certainly depressed

[Prodigal Son]

Aye. He works in the penal system.
I imagine he only sees the worst bit of the society here.

[oyez]

How is white trash Britannia supposed to dress?

[Helms]

Thank you and this plays right into the lap of some of Lotyard, Baudrillard and company and the problems of "late capitalism".