Divided Languages - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 18

the topic back to my friend, the woman inquired “Is he gay?” No, said my friend. The wo-
man pondered for a moment. “Is he English?” she asked.
Satire
Most Americans are too straight-talking to make effective satirists, though many of them
have become resigned to others being satirical at their expense, not least about their in-
eptness as satirists. Commentators can also be too deferential to power to feel easy about
mocking it. It is hard to imagine a U.S. television interviewer putting the same embarrass-
ing question to a squirming politician sixteen or so times over, as a BBC journalist once
famously did. As for the Irish, they have about as much respect for their politicians as they
do for their paedophiles.
Even when political pundits on American TV engage in rowdy debate, there is usually
an unspoken obligation to grin and make up at the end. They must leave the impression that
their squabbling is basically good-humoured. Perhaps this is written into their contracts.
Political debate, after all, is only entertainment. A touch of polemic is good for the rat-
ings, but too much of it would make viewers feel uncomfortable, a capital American crime.
What America calls hard ball is soft ball in Europe. Public debate in the States, at least in
the media, is generally more emollient than it is in Europe, keener to emphasise points of
consensus, more fearful of outright conflict. The bunch of brawling schoolboys known as
the House of Commons would probably be arrested for civil disorder in the USA.
In many a British academic conference, there is blood on the floor by the end of the first
afternoon. Exchanges can be barbed, even quietly vicious. Americans, however, will tend
to preface their criticisms of your lecture with a courteous reference to “your very fine pa-
per,” rather as U.S. politicians who clash with each another on television are often careful
to record the respect in which they hold each other's views. There is less mutual bootlick-
ing in Europe. In some ways, this courtesy is a deeply attractive aspect of American culture,
even if it is not always best suited to establishing the truth. The genuine niceness of some
Americans can be hard to distinguish from a certain blandness. The difference between rad-
icals and others is that radicals suspect that the truth is generally discreditable. It is thus
rarely in the open, and a degree of abrasiveness is required to dig it out. What you see is
highly unlikely to be what you get.
Blandness, however, hardly characterizes the nation as a whole. On my first visit to
New York, where I had come on the audacious mission of teaching two hundred nuns,
I wandered into a gift store, browsed a little and then headed for the door. My exit was
blocked by a large man with a drooping moustache who was standing with his back to the
door. “Okay, so what ya gonna buy?” he asked. I realised after a moment that this was the
proprietor and gave him a feeble, English-upper-class-idiot sort of smile. “Come on, what
ya gonna buy for Christsakes?” he repeated menacingly, refusing to shift from the door. It