Disaster strikes as the scales finally fall from American eyes: not all Brits are gentlemen
For the past 200 years or so, Englishmen who aren’t faring too well in the home country have had the option of moving to the States. Thanks to their inferiority complex, our American cousins labour under the illusion that we are more intelligent and better educated than them. You only have to deign to notice them and they are pathetically grateful, something particularly true when it comes to the fairer sex. Men who would not attract a second glance in the nightclubs of Mayfair are treated like movie stars across the Atlantic simply by virtue of having a British accent.
Unfortunately, it looks as if the well has run dry. In the current issue of Reason, an influential American monthly, there is a ‘rant’ by journalist Michael C. Moynihan about ‘the feral packs of lager louts’ arriving on American soil by the jumbo jet-load, thanks to the falling dollar. ‘Take a look around New York, Boston or Los Angeles and spot the omnipresent gaggle of chavs, waddling through the Adidas shop, shouting drunken insults in local Irish pubs, converting the currency on every product within reach,’ he writes. It won’t be long, he concludes, before these ‘pale-skinned men in Manchester United shirts... correct America’s long-held misperception that the English are a nation of Inspector Morse bit-players — sophisticated, fastidious, snobby — especially when compared to us rubes’.
If this is true, it is a catastrophe. As an Englishman who has lived in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, I can attest that life in those cities would have been intolerable if I had not been able to exploit this ‘misperception’. Without the myth of the English gentleman to fall back on, I would have been just another newly arrived immigrant, forced to take my chances alongside the Pakistani cabdrivers and Mexican busboys. I don’t suppose I would have persuaded a single woman to go to bed with me.
What makes this turn of events tragic is that it was avoidable. Those expats who have been benefitting from this snobbery have always made a point of warning new arrivals that it depends upon maintaining an air of refinement when dealing with the natives. Among other things, that means never taking a service job. ‘It’s a responsibility, I can tell you, and in various degrees every Englishman out here shares it,’ says one of the British characters in The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh’s Hollywood novel. ‘We can’t all be at the top of the tree but we are all men of responsibility. You never find an Englishman among the underdogs — except in England, of course. There are jobs an Englishman just doesn’t take.’
More articles from: Toby Young | this section
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning
If Scotland is to be independent, then why not London? And good luck to what’s left
What kind of pyjamas did President Kennedy wear in bed?
Rory Sutherland's fortnightly column on technology and the web
My wife and I have ended up as stay-at-home parents — with a part-time child
Advertisement
Dot Wordsworth looks at superwords
Dot Wordsworth fights back
When gobbling brawn is caviar to the general
The cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz, 1913–66) fled to London not long after the Reichstag fire, with the Gestapo at his heels. Had he not possessed a Hungarian passport he would never have got away, for as the boy wonder of Berlin political cartooning in the 12 Uhr Blatt, he had gone for Hitler as far back as 1928, and was a marked man.
At this time of year my thoughts often dwell on the Loch Ness Monster. Let me recapitulate what we know about this beast.
Every Volvo we build is the sum total of more than 70 years of focusing on safety. Visit the official site to request a brochure, book a test drive or find your Volvo dealer.
Every Volvo we build is the sum total of more than 70 years of focusing on safety. Visit the official...
UMBRIA, Niccone Valley.Farmhouse Rental. Newly renovated 400 year old farmhouse, high on the south facing slope of Niccone Valley, on
AMAZING CORNISH HOUSE previously featured in Vogue Living, available to let during the last 3 weeks of August either on a
PARIS and ROME: over 350 holiday rentals apartments listed: visit www.parisreference.com and www.romanreference.com or call +39 0648 903612.
Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine
Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved
David Thomas
March 14th, 2008 2:44pmYes, but Toby, some of us really are classy. We don't have to pretend ... !
rowan Somerville
March 14th, 2008 3:37pmClearly Mr Thomas aint