Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

The Very Cruel Poll & Mr. Rumcove's 4th of July

[published on July 4, 2006]

Actually the title of the Yahoo.com article from which I am preparing to quote says it all: "Britons Tire of Cruel, Vulgar US:  poll."  The results of the poll, published in the Daily Telegraph, include (but are not limited to) the following:

[quote begins here]:

As Americans prepared to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence on Tuesday, the poll found that only 12 percent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.

A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks.

With much of the worst criticism aimed at the US adminstration, the poll showed that 70 percent of Britons like Americans a lot or a little.

President George W. Bush [link in the original] fared significantly worse, with just one percent rating him a "great leader" against 77 percent who deemed him a "pretty poor" or "terrible" leader.

More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.

US policy in Iraq was similarly derided, with only 24 percent saying they felt that the US military action there was helping to bring democracy to the country.

[quote ends]

"God is an Englishman. (He lives upstairs---but we don't mention him)."

  (published on August 12, 2005 in "The Flatland Oracles")

With one or two exceptions, all of the English people I’ve personally encountered seem to regard God as if he were a slightly senile Uncle who lives in the attic and whom you must keep around out of common decency until he’s gone but whom you never to mention, also out of common decency.

             “Why not?” I asked.

              “I just can’t,” said my husband. “I don't.  I’m not comfortable talking about these things. I find it tasteless.”

             “Tasteless or distasteful?” I asked sullenly.

            “Both, actually, now that you mention it,” he said. “When people bring up God in the middle of a conversation, I’m embarrassed for them.  I don't know where to look.”

            “As if they were dropping names,” I said, thinking of a line from one of Salinger’s novels (Franny and Zooey? Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters? One of those two.)

The Glaring Game (Part 2)--Nature or Nurture?

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles" on August 11 2005]

The author of Dick Jones' Patteran Pages  has very kindly commented in response to my previous rant to set me straight about a couple of points of distinction between Yanks and Brits.  I had complained at surprising length (I mean that the length was surprising to me personally) of the English deployment of the glare as a weapon of social chastisement.  I was actually on my way to building up--as a separate issue---to a further complaint about the British preference for addressing solecisms by what an English friend refers to as 'polite and tactful indirectness' and I was planning to refer to as 'passive-aggressiveness.'  This note anticipated the issue and sorted it all right out. 

As an Englishman I might be able to help you with the glaring issue. There is an inbuilt assumption amongst the English ....that all sentient beings beyond a certain age (10, 11, 12?) should know, through a combination of race memory & nurture, what is acceptable & what isn't. Amongst their own, when the glare alone fails to communicate (& only deep sleep, advanced drunkenness or, of course, blindness could account for this), a sotto voce murmur of "Not appropriate, old chap/m'dear" would be used. A friend of mine of noble blood said that her Great Aunt employed - with merciful rarity - the word 'unsuitable'. When my friend was on the receiving end of this deadly word (an unequivocal glare gaving failed to register), the mortification was extreme.

I'm afraid that the kind of directeness & candour that you represent as admirable in your fellow Americans would be simply inappropriate in decent society.

'Very accurate,' said my husband, when I read it to him.

(I Know All There is to Know About) The Glaring Game

[first published at "The Flatland Oracles" on August 8, 2005]

  I adore the English. My late husband Don was English and my husband Nick is as well. My best friend is English. I’m as literal an Anglophile as it’s possible to be. But there are some drawbacks.

The English tend to be more diffident than Americans, to apologize more often, and to be much less assertive about their wants. On the other hand….

On the other hand, they still mind when they are unhappy. Of course they do. It’s just that if you’re the cause, you’re less likely to hear about it. Which means that you don’t have the chance to do anything about it.

It took me a long time for me to realize that part of the English idea of politeness is---I’m quite serious----not to complain even when they are unhappy with things. They don’t in general seem to have a program for complaining politely or tactfully. If they complain, they are likely to be extremely blunt and ungracious. In general, though, they register dissatisfaction through indirect/ambiguous signals that it’s quite possible to overlook or misinterpret, even for other English people.

          

English placenames: the Cirencester Problem.

   [first published on July 13, 2005 in "The Flatland Oracles"]

Don't kid yourself; they were laughing in their sleeves. Or if you were me, in your face.  Is it time for hapless tourists to take a stand?  Yes.  Yes, it is.  My bold and innovative campaign to impose logic where the English have simply let their love of confusing tourists go too far.

While visiting here recently, an English friend remarked on the difficulty of some of our Florida place names.  E.g.,  Octahatchee, Appalachicola, Lake Okeechobee, Withalocoochee State Forest, Alachua County, Lochloosa, Chinsegut National Wildlife Refuge, Itchetucknee Springs, Weeki Wachee Springs, Istachatta, Chassahowitzka Wildlife Refuge, Useppa Island, Osceola County, Immokalee, Kissimmee, Spongeorama. (He didn’t think the last was difficult to pronounce, he just didn't on general principles think there should be a place anywhere called ‘Spongeorama’).

                Please. This from an Englishman?