PMB loves the English, and is privileged to be perched comfortably in an English dwelling. But he can't help himself at the moment. It's routine to hear English friends and acquaintances smugly denounce Americans, for their football (soccer), their lack of 'culture' (whatever that means), their nationalism, their guns and religion, even their (very un-English) public and political sentimentality. More often than not these denunciations come from people whose impression of the US is derived either from the English print media (whose coverage of all things American is as cartoonish and myopic as is the American media's coverage of Palestine), or a view of Times Square on a brief visit to New York for which a junket beyond Manhattan would constitute some kind of ethnic cultural overload for the average Brit. Come World Cup time, especially in matches against Germany, however, virtually everything the English allege about Americans that the English in fact espouse and embody threefold simmers to the surface. Beyond the English flag epidemic (that Germany hopefully cured yesterday), the patronizing comments by British TV announcers about little 'Africa' defeating the US ('it's men versus boys, and right now the boys are on top'), and the references to non-European countries suddenly 'learning' how to kick European ass all over the pitch this year, CBS news and the LA Times have included some gems that PMB, with much ambivalence, feels the need to highlight:
CBS NEWS:
"In England, they joke about the war, German accents and Hitler.
In Germany, they joke about the fact that the English joke about the war, German accents and Hitler.
The Germans used to get offended. Now they look on in slightly patronizing bemusement as English newspapers trot out ethnic stereotypes about war, Aryan races and bombing, preparing their readers for yet another agony-filled elimination game against their old foe Sunday.
With the German team now being made up of Poles, Turks, a Spaniard, a Ghanaian, a Nigerian and even a Brazilian, it's harder for the English to make fine German-baiting jokes. The Daily Star tried, coming up with a demonizing World War II remembrance headline, "Mixed Master Race," to describe the composition of the German team.
And the Daily Express offered this deep literary analysis: "Our national poet (Shakespeare) wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets. His German equivalent wrote 'Faust,' a gloomy two-part drama about a man who sells his soul to the devil, and a novel called 'The Sorrows of Young Werther.' . . . The latter sparked a craze of copycat suicides among romantic young men. Generations of pupils forced to study Goethe's work know how they felt."
Here's the real joke: The Germans don't really care."
LA TIMES:
"The sad truth of the matter is that England's players, with few exceptions, are an arrogant, ignorant and unpleasant lot. They are paid far too much by their Premier League clubs, where their true allegiance lies, and their ability individually and collectively in an England shirt does not match their swagger.
It is not too much to say that the worthless and nationalistic English tabloids are reflected in the English team. It's all about drinking, drugs, womanizing, gambling, fast cars and slow minds. Little England written large.
Consider, for just a moment, these sophomoric headlines from the gutter press in the days leading up to Sunday afternoon's match at the Free State Stadium:
"Germans Wurst at Penalties."
"Herr We Go Again."
"Job Done, Now for the Hun."
"Das Boot Is on the Other Foot.""
