Don't we think we're special
By Julie Burchill Saturday March 13, 1999
For me, one of the most interesting angles of Fornigate was how Monica managed to get a mouthful of the Presidential pecker when Tony Blair has been on his knees in front of Clinton for the best part of two years. It must have got mighty crowded down there. "I say, budge over Monica, you blimp!" "Hey, don't sweat it, guy!" Talk about a Special Relationship.
No matter how much any country prides itself on having an SR with the US, there always comes that Gimp Moment, when it is made painfully clear that we are there merely to lend a hand in harried times, preferably in bomber planes, and should then go quietly back to our box under the stairs. If it really is a special relationship, it's only in the way that the doormat is special to the shoe. Remember how we all used to make fun of Mrs Thatcher's "crush" on Ronald Reagan? That clever poster with them done up as Rhett and Scarlett, him sweeping her off her feet, her gazing up at him adoringly? "She said she'd follow him to the end of the Earth - he said that could be arranged." I don't see what's so much better about having a PM who acts like the "prison wife" of some state-penitentiary hardman. Didn't you want to be sick when Blair told a black newspaper that America was far less racist than Britain? Tell that to Rodney King, or to the disproportionate number of black men in US jails, or to the numerous black musicians who have told me that they love playing England because there's nowhere else where white women are so eager to sleep with them.
That the most recent example of America's absolute inability to relate to other countries as equals - as opposed to doormats or enemies - should be over bananas, of all things, breaks your heart, it's so perfect. The innocent banana, basis of so many nourishing smoothies in all the juice bars springing up all across Airstrip One in imitation of those in the Big Country; architect of so much death and oppression in those Latin American countries, where, through the tender mercies of the American Fruit Company, Big Brother is a banana who denies you most basic human rights, especially the ones about belonging to a trades union and getting a decent wage for your work.
Why does the world keep forgetting that America is such a bastard? Is it because it keeps waving shiny geegaws in front of our eyes, like juice bars and Friends and Frasier and mocha-latte-to-go? It seems to me that our mentality hasn't moved on since the GIs were here during the second world war: then, they dazzled us with free nylons; now, they amaze us with the fact that trainers can be bought for half the price over there. That everything is so cheap in America for the simple reason that it tyrannises the developing world mercilessly doesn't seem to occur to us when we're wetting ourselves over how much money we've saved on our weekend shopping trip to New York.
It's as if we think there are two Americas - there's the nice one that's like a big toy shop, and there's the nasty one that bombs countries - and they're nothing to do with each other. The ceaseless, dogged belief that the CIA is behind everything bad that happens in the world exists, I believe, purely so that we may continue freely to avail ourselves of American treats without feeling guilty: after all, they're doing it against the wishes/behind the back of the elected government, innit? Well, the fact is that there is an evil entity that is hell-bent on controlling the world and brainwashing its people - but that evil entity is not called the CIA but the USA. And all the conspiracy theories exist simply to obscure this hard fact.
I don't blame the tourist who takes advantage of cheap flights to Florida for this self-deluding callousness half as much as I do the luvvies - actors and writers, mostly - who mouth off about right-wing oppression and then piss off to Hollywood or New York, right into the belly of the beast. During the Eighties, particularly, there were many fiery, young English actors who railed against "Fatcher's" Britain but then, instead of transplanting themselves righteously to Sweden, moved lock, stock and barrel to Reagan's America! Go figure, as the colonial cousins say. Once they got there, of course, they found plenty of work - playing Evil Incarnate, which, as we know from Hollywood past and present, always speaks with an English accent.
>From something as trivial as this to the lovable American habit of
fund-raising for the IRA, you can't say that the US hasn't given us
every warning that it resents us madly for once having been boss, and
that it will do everything in its power to avenge this slur on its
manhood. It's especially keen on a bit of dividing and conquering; it is
poignant to think that the same Scots who glowed with pride at
Hollywood's depiction of them in Braveheart are now facing the collapse
of their textile industry because of the American, not English,
compulsion to exercise power over all nations great and small.
While we stare at the screen, entranced, they go through our pockets and take our pride. And no British leader has been more complicit than Blair. He's a strange case, really. Most men want to become leaders because they have an excess of testosterone; I don't think this is true of Tony Blair. I don't mean to be bitchy, but I believe that he went into politics with the intention of giving away power, like those second banana apes who offer their females to the leader of the pack. I think Blair gets a thrill from stepping down in the dominance hierarchy - he was called "Emily" at school, remember, and forced to play all the girls' parts because of his pretty ways.
I think he wanted to make his father proud of him, so strived for power, but on the other hand gets a thrill from giving away, not getting, power. You can see this in his attitude to both Europe and the US. If you think of him not as a prime minister but as a firm but fair colonial governor, whipping the natives into shape, it all makes sense. We're only a little island, you could argue; we've got to be nice to those big, hunky Yanks. It would be nice if this latest episode of American arm-twisting sparked some ember of national pride in Blair, but, judging by his past record, we are far more likely to become another Puerto Rico than another Cuba. I don't think the beard would suit him, somehow.
[end]
Carl Remick