WHEN YOUR EYES TEAR UP at the singing of “God Bless America” during the broadcast of the Super Bowl on your favorite British television station, it’s time to go home. That’s what my wife, Cita, and I decided. London is a wonderful place, but it has suddenly become more foreign, more hostile, at times drowning us in a rising tide of anti-Americanism. Prime Minister Tony Blair may be a stalwart supporter of America; he may say over and over that Britain and America share common values; he may emphasize the powerful influence that Britain has on American policy. But his is now a lonely voice.
Start with a group you might think would be on our–America’s–side: expatriate American citizens. Not all are quite as, er, unversed as one who at a dinner party told me she resented being called “expatriot” when she visits America. When I explained that she had misunderstood the word, she shed 30 years of resentment at being tagged with what she considered an unpleasant label.
Not that expatriot is entirely inapt, either in my dinner companion’s case or in that of many other Americans who have chosen to live permanently in Britain. Like most expatriates we meet, she finds George W. Bush an embarrassment, and feels forced to forestall any guilt-by-association by making her contempt for the president clear to all auditors.
The expat litany goes something like this. Bush wasn’t “really” elected, but was appointed by a rabidly right-wing Supreme Court; don’t blame me, I voted for Gore. Bush’s sentences are a horror, not the sort we were taught to use at the (mostly) posh Eastern schools we attended, and not at all as well formed as those of our heroes, Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy (he and Jackie never, ever embarrassed us when they visited Europe), and even Bill Clinton, whose drawl is simply charming.
The president’s positions on gun control and abortion certainly don’t reflect those of any Americans we know, and his flag-waving should have gone out of style with Teddy Roosevelt. Most of all, please don’t associate us with his unilateralism: We favor the Kyoto accord, think that only the U.N. has the moral authority to disarm Iraq by force, and wish the Bushies would treat our European allies, France and Germany, with more deference.
And that’s just the Americans resident in Britain. The native political class is worse. The Labour left views America as an evil force; its parliamentary members shuttle to Baghdad to pay court to Saddam Hussein. They believe the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest of the media are Bush’s poodles, and that’s how he can get away with his saber-rattling and oppression of the domestic poor.
The followers of Labour’s lefty politicians at least have a degree of courage not present in their elected representatives. They have boarded buses for a leisurely, fun-filled tour of Europe, en route to Iraq, where they plan to deploy themselves as human shields to protect the military installations that will be the targets of the Anglo-American coalition when it loses patience with the U.N.’s foot-dragging.
Nor can an American in London take much comfort from the political right. To its members, America is the debaser of Britain’s culture. Why, Britain’s television audiences seem to prefer “The West Wing” and “The Simpsons” to the latest BBC documentary on the fate of Scotland’s hedgehogs.
Worse still, Americans are not visiting Britain in the same numbers as in the past, in part because they are too cowardly to travel when a war in the Middle East looms. So harrumph some old-line Tories, who recall their ancestors’ courage in the Sudan from their easy chairs at their clubs. It seems that the absence of these American philistines is sharply reducing audiences for Shakespeare plays, the ballet, and the opera, threatening the finances of these arts groups. A contradiction? No matter: Once you have decided that American rednecks subsist on reality television and Texas barbecues, and shun Britain’s elevating but breathtakingly boring television, facts become the enemy of truth, to resurrect a slogan of the old left.
Let me not leave you with an unrelievedly gloomy picture. The prime minister, at great damage to his political standing, will be with us in Iraq because–cynics, take note–“it is the right thing to do.” Cab drivers, shop clerks, construction workers, and others who don’t hobnob with the chattering classes are pro-American almost to a man and a woman. They love Florida in the winter, New York any time of year, understand that the U.N. is useless, and that Saddam must go. And they treat us Americans as the cousins we are. And then there is all that Shakespeare, ballet, opera, and music. Dr. Johnson had it right, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” But when a couple is tired of anti-Americanism, it’s best to get out of London. At least for a while.
–Irwin M. Stelzer
