— Moira Breen’s piece on FOXNews.com is on a theme that drives my Brit wife up a wall. Breen says:
A common theme in blog-land over the past few months has been the persistent misperception of America as some adolescent version of Europe by opinion-writers across the Atlantic. Even some pro-American British writers appear to believe that America comprises two types only: the Anglo-Saxon gentleman and the yokel.
and she quotes from the Spectator and the Telegraph to support her point. The trouble here, according to my expert source, is that these papers occupy a tiny niche on the ideological and cultural spectrum that’s not truly representative of anybody’s views except for their miniscule readership and staff. British newspapers don’t make any pretense of objectivity; they flaunt their ideology and people buy the ones that reinforce their prejudices. There is a segment of the British population that sees the leveling of the class system as a horror, just as there are orthodox Hindus in India who feel that caste-mixing is the mother of all crimes, and such people have to assign Americans to a low plane in the social hierarchy. One shouldn’t overgeneralize such attitudes.