Water Ain't What it Oughta

I have travelled a fair amount and met a lot of different people from many different countries and whilst I have yet to meet an American I don’t like, I instinctively don’t warm to them.  

Why is this? They are no more different than the French, Germans, South Africans etc.  They, and us Brits, all have our own cultural foibles. So why, individually, are Americans great but, collectively, are viewed/perceived so negatively? Where does this instinct come from?

Is it from my parents' era when US G.I.s were stationed here during the war and the phrase “Over-paid, Over-sexed and Over-Here” was coined? Ever since then, there has been a general bit of fun-poking by saying: ”The US is so embarrassed by being late to the first two World Wars that they are continually trying to make amends by being really early to every other potential one.”

Or is it from TV? We tend to get a lot of US-originated TV and Films here. Many of which we feel are second-rate. Then there are our satirical comedy shows which are forever poking fun at Americans, their loudness, their brashness and their presidents like Bushes one & two, Bill, Ronnie and Dickie - all of which didn’t do a huge PR job for the US.

Americans tend to have a much greater work ethic and work harder and longer than we do with significantly less holiday. I remember once, not long after the German company I worked for was acquired by an American company, the new company decided to do some market research on the company name and brand strength. They said that they would conduct this research using an email questionnaire to be sent out during August. The US team could not understand it when we said “Good luck”. 

Trying to get a response from pretty much anyone in mainland Europe during August is not easy. It is not unusual to get an “Out of Office” reply saying “I will reply to your email when I return in September” when you send them an email in late July!

Or, is it perhaps, because we stereotype the US as seeming so insular and unaware that there is a world beyond Los Angeles and New York? Their Baseball “World Series” does not include many non-US teams, they have little awareness of Formula 1 - which is huge in the rest of the World, etc.

Actually, I believe that maybe it's all a bit of sour grapes on our behalf.

Firstly, history shows us that the inhabitants of this tiny island of Britain successfully raped and pillaged their way around vast swathes of the World and built what was lovingly called the “Empire”. However, we then let most of it go and now, apart from hanging on to a few Islands in the South Atlantic and a few other odds and sods mostly inhabited by things that only David Attenborough is interested in, we are merely a shadow of our former selves.

Secondly, Americans, collectively, are perceived as being more successful, better paid, with bigger houses, are more confident, more sincere and more out-going and less conservative than us Brits. 

And, to be honest, we don’t really know how to deal with these things effectively. So we tend to go on the defensive and look down our superior noses and hark back to the days of the Empire.

We deride those who do not speak the Queen’s English properly, those who do not pronounce English words correctly - “It’s Water - worrter - not wotta” and yet we resolutely refuse to learn other people’s languages and insist on speaking English to every foreigner we meet. And if they don’t understand us, we tend to tut and then just repeat what we said louder and more slowly with more hand gestures.

So, thanks, in part, to our American student, I shall be relaxing that stiff British upper lip and will be having a much warmer feeling towards our US brethren.

I, for one, will not be treating them so disparagingly in the future.

I’ll save those feelings for the Welsh...