Posted on 11/04/2004 5:44:29 PM PST by GulliverSwift
Brits to America: You're Idiots!
Well, 51 percent of you, anyway.
Americans who think post-election anti-red-state recrimination is a U.S.-only phenomenon should check out the cover of Thursday's Daily Mirror: Over a picture of President George W. Bush, the paper asked, "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" Inside, the left-leaning British tabloid headlined its editorial, "WAR MORE YEARS." In a clear demonstration of the trans-Atlantic culture gap, the paper's description of the president's beliefs—clearly intended to strike Mirror readers as a radical agenda—is simply an accurate, if crude, précis of his platform: "Mr Bush opposes abortion and gay marriage, doesn't give a stuff about the environment, is against gun control and believes troops should stay in Iraq for as long as it takes."
The Mirror wasn't the only British paper with a striking cover. The Guardian's "G2" section was fronted by a page of solid black containing just two small words: "Oh, God." Meanwhile, the Independent ran the headline "Four More Years" along with iconic images from the first Bush term: kneeling prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, soldiers fighting in Iraq, oil-drilling machinery, sign-wielding religious extremists, and a smirking Dubya. In France, Libération ran a picture of the president under the headline, "L'Empire empire"—"The empire declines."
Many of the British commentaries followed a consistent formula: We wish the other guy had won, but Bush scored a convincing mandate this time around, so we have to live with it. As the Guardian put it: "We may not like it. In fact … we don't like it one bit. But if it isn't a mandate, then the word has no meaning. Mr. Bush has won fair … and square. He and his country—and the rest of the world—now have to deal with it." In a fit of double-negativity, the Independent's editorial added: "This does not mean, however, that we do not contemplate the second Bush term with considerable trepidation. Another four years of a president in thrall to the religious right and the neo-conservatives is another four years in which the United States risks sliding back into an earlier age of bigotry and social injustice." Writing in the Times of London, Simon Jenkins' condescending sigh of disappointment typified the genre:
Mr Bush's election will give the rest of the world a collective heart attack. It expected a Kerry win. At the very least it expected Americans to somehow rein in a man it sees as naïve and dangerously belligerent. … Americans declined to rein him in. They legitimised him. The rest of the world has been roundly snubbed.
An op-ed in the Guardian went to great lengths to describe negative stereotypes of the American electorate, then rejected them much less convincingly: "Americans are seen as unsophisticated, wilfully ignorant, obsessed with such issues as abortion, guns and gay marriage, and wedded to a device which seems calculated to impede the wishes of the majority—the electoral college. … Americans are far more complicated and unpredictable than we understand them to be."
The conservative press cheered Bush's victory. Rupert Murdoch's Sun said: "The world is a safer place today with George W Bush back in the Oval Office. His re-election is bad news for terrorists everywhere." The Daily Telegraph agreed: "The triumph of his Churchillian conservatism will … strike fear into all enemies of America and the west." The Telegraph's version of the "get used to it" theme was more positive: "[America] is diverging from Europe: it is younger, more self-confident, more prosperous, more devout, more diligent, more democratic and, in short, more conservative. Europe must come to terms, not only with Mr Bush, but with the nation that has elected him." The Times encouraged Bush to let recalcitrant foreigners woo him: "The President should not waste time trying to appease or win over those who have no time for him. There is the chance, perhaps, that with the passage of time the qualities which Americans see in this politician will become more obvious to others."
In Spain, leftist El País urged Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero to "accommodate the new reality, even though the result isn't what he hoped for" and fix the country's strained relationship with the United States. "This doesn't mean turning the page or starting over from the beginning, but leaving behind the unfortunate declarative politics on both sides." Conservative ABC—in what may have been a subtle dig at the Spanish voters who elected the Socialist Party, which had pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq, after the March 11 attacks—praised Americans for their steadfastness: "[Bush is] a president firm in his convictions and ready to fight to the end, until victory, against the threats that hang over America (and over all of us, even if we don't want to see it)."
Elsewhere in Europe, France's leftist Libération got with the program: "A new reactionary majority … has cemented its hold on American democracy. The rest of the world may deplore it, but it will have to adapt to this reality." Turkey's Hurriyet also echoed the familiar grin-and-bear-it theme: "American voters have once more brought someone they deserved to the presidency. In this case, what is left for us is to bear it and to protect our own interests with maximum sensitivity." But Sovietskaya Rossiya defaulted to quaintly archaic Cold War rhetoric: "Bearing in mind that Bush's policies are prompting increasingly powerful rejection in the entire world, mankind will inevitably unite against the common evil—American imperialism."
It is the low end of the British Hate America Cult's media continuum, with the Guardian appealing to the status-seeker and investor-class middle, and recently corrupted scientific journals like The Lancet at the top. The BBC provides electronic counterparts at all three levels.
Left-wing bias in the British media is much more open and formally institutionalized than in the US, with the trotskyite National Union of Journalists as the main unfiying force for anti-American propaganda. The NUJ maintains a closed shop monopoly at many outlets, and openly supports the use of media access to propagandize for totalitarian causes.
Upon further review, we should not let their media drive a wedge between us. They have been our friends through it all.
The UK, sadly, considers themselves the good Communists at the UN and covet their UN Security Council seat.
I believe the UK's melting into the EU has de facto finished them in many ways, of course after decades of the Fabians and other 3rd Wayer influences...
Hey Northern Yankee... you're up late.
"We beat the Brits twice... some still haven't gotten over it."
Do you know any American who gives 2 sh*ts what these twice beaten losers with bad teeth think? I mean you don't hear us complaining that their government collects too many taxes from its citizens and their old and fading rock stars are belligerent. Brits who aren't on our side can BEAT IT!
Yawn.
Uh. Well. So they really didn't learn a thing from
Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill.
America to Brits: 4 more years!
US to Britain, You have bad teeth (and are more like the French than you care to admit).
Yeah, I used to think the Brits were pretty civilized. Then I saw that display they put on when their "s"-word princess died. A bunch of nutballs drinking tea all day.
idiots? do you mean like when we threw the tea overboard?
I've noticed the left has been making a concerted effort to split the US-British alliance lately by publishing articles like this.
America to Europe: The train is leaving the platform. either get aboard or get out of the way.
Not once, but twice. The good people of Baltimore kicked their cupcake backsides right back down the Potomac. Oh say can you see ...
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
America to Brits: QUIT INBREEDING!
,,, all replies to this should really be directed to Britain thru their owners, Brussels.
Please don't be so quick to rip people across the pond (or anywhere on the planet!) just because you see this nasty stuff. It's here, too! And you've got like-minded friends all across the globe. Judge individual thinking and debate political philosophy, rather than branding an entire nation as being jerks based on some left-wing tabloid headlines.
I'm just a little sensitive about this because I've found the U.K. to be populated by some wonderful people and found it to be the one place outside the U.S. that I believe I could actually live and be happy.
Well gosh golly gee .. we all can't be as smart as these elitist British snobs who think Neville Chamberlain is their hero
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