Independent UK: My Special Relationship with America never fails to leave me agonised

Home And Away: My Special Relationship with America never fails to leave me agonised

By Brian Viner
Thursday, 25 September 2008


On Tuesday I got home from a brief trip to South Carolina, freshly riven with the ambivalence about the United States that I first felt when I lived there for a year at the height of the Reagan era, and that has resurfaced on every one of maybe two dozen subsequent trips. What an admirable, maddening country it is.

I don't know too many Americans who have a similar ambivalence towards the United Kingdom. They either like us, hate us, or, overwhelmingly, know sod all about us. I have a Scottish friend who chuckles when misty-eyed compatriots refer to the "Auld Alliance" with the French. He assures me that he has never met a French person who has ever heard of the Auld Alliance, or feels the slightest historical kinship with Scotland. The so-called "Special Relationship" between Britain and America is similarly one-sided. At the weekend I talked to two perfectly intelligent South Carolineans, one of whom asked me whether Ireland was "the same as" England, while the other expressed amazement when I explained that England, Scotland and Wales share an island.

I suppose it is natural that we, as the weedy little cousin, should feel the Special Relationship more intensely. The old saying that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold, has never been truer than in these catastrophic economic times. So it is no wonder, for example, that Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference got negligible coverage there, while Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention got blanket coverage here. On which subject, my visit did nothing to assuage my growing conviction that the Great American Public, as conservative a body of people as the Tunbridge Wells Women's Institute, will overlook the talent and promise of Obama in favour of creaky but avuncular John McCain this November.

After all, only in America could a woman like Sarah Palin – who, as the estimable Maureen Dowd put it in The New York Times, appears to think that The Flintstones was based on a true story – be clutched to the collective bosom. At any rate, it was all too noticeable, as I passed through Dulles airport in Washington DC, that outside one gift shop there were prominent lifesize cardboard cutouts of McCain and Palin, whereas Obama stood apart on his own, a cutout of his running mate, Joe Biden, having presumably been rejected as a waste of cardboard.

You can learn a lot about a country from its airports. In the departure lounge at Savannah, Georgia, there was a stand given to "Inspirational Reading", where I spent an enjoyable few minutes, and indeed shelled out $11.99 for Four Paws From Heaven: Devotions for Dog Lovers, which included the aperçu from one of the three authors that "God has sealed me with His divine dog-tag." I have all the time in the world for people who love dogs, and plenty of friends and relatives who love God, but except that one is an anagram of the other, God-love and dog-love should not be confused. Yet Four Paws From Heaven is an American best-seller, and I have a feeling that the people who buy it are not likely to choose a president with the middle name Hussein.

It is too easy for an Englishman to poke gentle fun at America, especially Bible-Belt America. I also met a fellow called George at the weekend who retired to South Carolina a few years ago. George and his wife live in a retirement community for the over-55s. The community is 12,000-strong and has 120 clubs, encompassing just about any legal recreational pursuit. I recently read Rebecca Miller's novel The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, which has a spooky portrayal of just such a community, but this one also has three swimming pools and two golf-courses, all immaculately kept, according to George, who, after a career as a window salesman, spends his twilight years fishing, sailing and playing golf. I didn't ask who he plans to vote for, but I can see why he might favour the status quo. He is one of those many Americans who seems to have life sussed.


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/brian-viner/home-and-away-my-special-relationship-with-america-never-fails-to-leave-me-agonised-941361.html