THEY'RE AT IT AGAIN!
Our London Debating Crew:
JOHNSON VS.TAYLOR III
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Conversation Between Our London Columnists |
Taylor |
Yank meets Brit in pub
to settle world problems
By MICHAEL JOHNSON and ROBERT TAYLOR
of TheColumnists.com
Columnists Michael Johnson, an American ex-pat, and Robert Taylor, a native Brit, met in a pub in the East End of London the other day to celebrate the New Year. Between pints, they had this exchange of views on the world around them.
MJ: The Royal Family continues to fascinate the world--the latest caper being Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi. Was this in homage to his grandmother’s ancestry or does he just march to a different drummer?
RT: The Royal Family exists only to entertain the taxpayer, and Harry was therefore just doing his duty. This latest “caper,” as you put it, would have been carefully planned in Buckingham Palace, and the result--worldwide outrage and disgust--has been better than anybody inside the Palace could have predicted.
MJ: I see your armed forces are sending another 400 men to Iraq to help bring democracy to the unwashed. That's such a tiny contribution at this crucial time that you should be ashamed, shouldn't you? God forbid that one or two of them might suffer a scuffed knee.
RT: Oh, I don’t know. 400 of our upstanding young men will do wonders for a medieval backwater like Iraq. They’ll teach those Middle Eastern chaps a thing or two about stiff upper lips and straight backs--the sorts of thing that come in handy when there’s a food and water shortage, and your family hasn’t got a roof over its head.
My only concern is that our boys might learn some bad habits from your dreadful American fellows, and start photographing piles of nude insurgents. It’s all right doing that sort of thing to each other--indeed the British Army encourages it--but doing it to the enemy is bad form.
MJ: Well, at least none of our senior military or political leaders had anything to do with that. They’ve been cleared by a special inquiry.
RT: A whitewash, eh? Yes, we’ve had a few of those over here, with Blair somehow deflecting responsibility for taking the country to war under false pretences. Half the country was convinced by him that Saddam was on the verge of blowing up central London. Presumably, though, Blair was just following orders from The White House. How depressing.
MJ: I see that Prime Minister Blair had a little trouble figuring out that the tsunami destruction was worth an interruption of his precious family holiday in Egypt. He waited until George W. Bush woke up in Texas and got moving. Were the two great men perhaps coordinating their alarm clocks?
RT: Yes, well, we just wish he’d stayed in Egypt for a little longer. Forever, perhaps. He’s a ghastly prime minister--almost as bad as your president. And I’m not sure what he’d have achieved by being in Britain. He’d just have irritated us by coming over all Shakespearean and pretending to hold back the tears. Yuk.
MJ: That’s odd. Most Americans see Blair as having three times the IQ of our leader. We wouldn’t mind trading ours for yours.
RT: Blimey, he hasn’t convinced you lot as well, has he? Is there no end to the man’s ability to persuade the world that he’s a great leader while having no vision, no strategy, and no hope of achieving anything of significance? I’m no fan of Bush, but at least he knows what he wants to do with the power that your fellow countrymen have inexplicably given him.
MJ: And yet Blair and Bush are clearly drifting apart on some issues, a little less of a thumbs-in-the-belt team. Blair seems to have realized that Britain's love affair with the United States is a one-way street. The half-hearted British involvement in Iraq is just one example. Where is this phony partnership going?
RT: No idea at all. Can’t see the point in it at all, can you? Most of you yanks couldn’t place Britain on a map, and we write you off as a bunch of over-sized, trigger-happy hooligans. Let’s stop the pretence before we talk each other into nuking Tehran.
MJ: Oh I don’t know. We sort of like you in a paternalistic way. A lot of people would be happy to see Britain become our 52nd state, just after we let Canada in.
RT: How very sweet of you! Could we park ourselves just off the east coast, and flog fish and chips to day-trippers?
MJ: Your relations with the European Union appear doomed to failure. Britain will soon hold a referendum that will reject the European Constitution. Doesn't this send a signal to the garlic-eating Continentals that they can get lost? Poor old Britain is beginning to look somewhat isolated on a tiny island in a cold climate.
RT: I do hope so. I’d sooner be sentenced to “questioning” at Guantanamo Bay than be part of the same federal system as that lot on the Continent. Some of them can’t even speak English, you know. Think of America being forced to share a government with Mexico and Cuba, and you’ll see where I’m coming from. Splendid isolation is the only way.
MJ: What a quaint view, yet true to form. I see one of your foreign correspondents based in New York is tired of seeing the English portrayed as goofy comic characters. She says the U.S. television news ends too often with an, "And, finally, this from merry old England ..." Why are the English the object of such scorn in the big countries like the USA and Australia?
RT: Oh come, come. Move over. We love to amuse our rather gullible friends in America and Australia by pretending to be a little old fashioned. It keeps you all coming here as tourists, and then by the time you realize that Britain is actually a rather disgusting little place, it’s too late. We’ve got your credit card details. Ha, ha, ha!! There's method to our madness, you know.
MJ: Speaking of old-fashioned, what's this fox hunting stuff about? Someone told me the English have never outgrown blood sports. Since they can't joust each other to death on horseback, they choose to pursue helpless foxes and watch the hounds rip them to shreds. Somehow I can't square this with England being the cradle of civilization. Can you?
RT: Dear God, man, where’s your sense of history and romance? We’ve been fox hunting for centuries, and it’s never done anyone any harm. Well, apart from the fox of course. And tearing a fox to pieces is civilized. It teaches the fox a lesson or two, and it allows us to dress up in pink jackets and tight cream trousers, while sipping champagne and getting on the news bulletins.
MJ: A man with the bizarre name of Jack Straw (Wasn't he a character in Mother Goose?) surely cannot be the best person to represent your country abroad. No class, no brains, and a strangulated speech of a man very afraid. Americans like to look up to well-spoken, well-turned-out British leaders. Has the gene pool run dry?
RT: I couldn’t agree more. Straw is a twit. The trouble is, though, that he looks like a leader of magnificence compared to your Mr. Bush. When are you Americans going to realise that you’ve re-elected a nincompoop? He’s screwed up the economy (remind me how many pence the dollar is worth now?), turned Iraq into a blood bath, made the whole world hate America even more than before, and provided Al Qaeda with a recruitment strategy to die for. Which they probably will.
And what’s more, he got re-elected purely because he persuaded a few hundred farmers in Ohio that he didn’t agree with gay marriage. Can’t right-thinking Americans (there must be one or two left) arrange for Mr. Bush to have a little “accident?" This should be easy enough, since the man nearly choked himself to death on a pretzel and bruised his head falling off a bicycle.
MJ: Is it fair that a Prime Minister should arbitrarily pick the date of the next election (waiting for a peak in the polls)? Will it happen in the spring? How can a political cripple like Michael Howard even contemplate unseating Blair?
RT: He can’t. The only question is how many of my apathetic, celebrity-obsessed countrymen will bother to vote. Unfortunately, we’ve been learning far too many bad habits from you Americans. All our teenagers want to do is sit in front of the TV, eating hamburgers and breaking wind. Can’t you give them a better role model than Homer Simpson?
MJ: You underrate Homer. He’s the best we’ve
got to offer.
©2005 by Michael Johnson and Robert Taylor. The cartoon
illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco
Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first
posted on Jan. 24, 2005.
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