Why America Hate is Outdated
A few months ago, I moved from one side of the Atlantic to the other, toting little more than a UK passport and a desire to understand the country from which my entire family hails.
Prior to this transplant, the only vaguely British things about me were my claim to citizenship—thanks to my father’s use of the British Nationality Act—and my fondness for Marmite. The latter, I would argue, is worth more than it sounds—have you ever tried getting an American to taste Marmite?
This short time in the homeland of my ancestors has left me with an identity crisis of sorts. While my American sensibilities are still dominant, I would be lying if I said the British way of doing things is not winning my heart and mind on several important fronts.
High among those: the ease with which one can find a properly-poured pint or an invitation for a cuppa; the idea that a sandwich can simply be two pieces of bread with a humble 4 cm of filling and not the super-sized monstrosities that are so ubiquitous in America; and last but not least, the unbeatable combination of Sunday papers and a fry-up.
Additionally, I’ve conceded that writing the date in descending order of specificity makes way more sense (day-month-year, not month-day-year) and that the level of care offered by the NHS, despite the collective moan of Britons, is infinitely higher than the care provided to me by the US government (which, for the record, is non-existent).
However, despite my warming affinity for all things British, I can’t help but notice a certain bitterness that prevails against people like myself—or ‘yanks’ as you Brits like to say. I hear it when people openly mock my accent as I walk down the street in Soho, I hear it from an editor of mine who declares my occasional insertion of z instead of s as ‘vile’, and I hear it when people ask me if the portion size I’ve just been served is big enough for my supposedly insatiable American appetite.
My earnest attempt to adopt the British lexicon has also been met with nothing but condescension. “Do you have a rubbish bin,” I ask unassumingly. “No, but we have a trashcan,” is the patronising response.
It’s been nearly 250 years since those precocious and whiny Americans declared their independence from the United Kingdom. Apparently, though, citizens of the mother country have yet to declare independence from their bitterness.
I’ll admit there was a time when it was not just en-vogue to mock Americans, but fully warranted. This was a time when our president was a cowboy, when wars were our hobby, and more recently, when we considered making a former beauty queen who did not own a passport our vice president. To be fair, it wasn’t just haughty Europeans who mocked Americans for this—it was quite a few Americans as well (myself included).
Thankfully, times have changed. While things are far from perfect, America has progressed a bit from our ‘axis of evil’ days. Now, I am not saying the American way of doing things is number one; that would just be too American. But holding on to the insistence that Americans are all Wal-Mart shopping, gun-toting, religious nutcases is not only incorrect, it’s unimaginative.
And, I didn’t want to be the one to deliver the bad news, but there are more than a few ways in which the UK and US resemble one another these days. We’re currently in a neck-and-neck battle (or should I say belly to belly) for highest obesity rates in the world. UNICEF’s index of childhood well being places us right next to each other—at the bottom of the list. Rupert Murdoch, despite a brief hiccup in dominance, still exerts far too much control on both of our media landscapes. And, perhaps most disturbingly, our collective appetite for bad and unintelligent television seems to know no bounds.
I challenge you Brits to come up with a new one-size-fits-all stereotype. Perhaps one that reflects our self-conscious, quasi post-racial society and our new fondness for occupying centres of public finance and government. Then, and only then, will I begin to even consider the possibility that spelling cozy with an ‘s’ makes any sense whatsoever.
