Oh God, Cultural Britain, how embarrassing.
There was a ditty amongst Keynesian civil servants during the postwar reconstruction that ran something like, 'they've got all the money and we've got all the brains'. Apart from being patently untrue, such fantasies only served to compensate us Brits for our decline.
Now today, this sad old make-believe is government policy. The Industry Minister Peter Mandelson has embroidered (is that anti-gay?) on Chris Smith's cultural Britain policy to argue that 'creatives' are the future for British capitalism - no longer the workshop of the world, but the drawing board - etc etc.
I think it a moral duty on the part of Americans to burst this last bubble of pride and shove all those sad old Brit cultural critics off your TV. Time for Doug, Richard Rorty, Judith Butler, Cornel West and Mike Davis to take pride of place. -- Jim heartfield