A Few Questions
for My British Friends
by John
Blumenthal
First off blokes, what
exactly is the name of your country? Is it
England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom?
Why can't you make up your
bloody minds? England is okay, but Great
Britain? Do you really need the pompous adjective?
Other countries think they're great too, but they
don't all advertise it in the title name.
We don't call ourselves
"The Really Terrific United States of
America."
The same goes for United
Kingdom. I mean, seriously? Kingdom?
Newsflash: You don't actually have a
kingdom anymore, chaps. It's gone. You've been
kicked out of everywhere.
Do the Italians call
themselves the Roman Empire? I rest my case.
How come your actors can
mimic American dialects so well but ours struggle
with yours? You're constantly showing up in our
movies (we couldn't find an American to play
Lincoln?) I can see Derek Jacobi as a toothless,
banjo-picking, moonshine-brewing Alabama half-wit
but I cannot imagine Robert De Niro playing the
Earl of Grantham.
Yes, you gave us your
language (and we managed to make it bland) but
why can't we get away with saying the really cool
words like "wanker" and "bollocks"?
Why is everything "brilliant"?
Find another adjective. Please. Even the scullery
maid from Downton Abbey has a more
imaginative vocabulary.
Speaking of Downton
Abbey, why was it necessary for your upper
class twits to change into over-starched shirts
and black-tie monkey suits for dinner every
single night? Sure, if you've been in a coal
mine all day, I can see changing into a clean
shirt and some decent slacks, but you haven't
been in a coal mine all day. And why did you need
six guys to take away the soup plates?
Fox hunting. Why is that
fun? I don't get it. The hounds do all the work.
Why do they need you?
What is this fixation with
tea? You show up at somebody's house and right
away your host asks, "cuppa tea?"
Nobody ever declines or says, "Do you have
any tomato juice?" We Yanks just say, "May
I get you something to drink?" This opens up
a wide variety of possibilities, many of them
toxic.
Why do some of you still
have titles? If you're a Duke, what exactly are
you Duke of? Nothing, that's what. Back in the
day, you had absurdly lavish estates with enough
bedrooms to house half of Manchester, and way too
many servants (please tell me why you couldn't
even figure out how to dress yourselves?) but now
all you have is a pile of bricks that you can't
afford to maintain so you're selling your titles
Now some random guy from New Jersey can spend a
few hundred grand and be Joe Schmo, Duke of
Whatever, but nobody will call him "Duke"
unless that's his first name.
I'm not going to even
mention kilts. They're just too bloody weird.
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