I think Alan Watkins has finally lost it. "In Mr George Bush junior we have a President who, for the first time since the beginning of the last century, openly proclaims and is proud to declare that might is right." Perhaps Mr Watkins is in possession of a speech of the President's which the rest of us have yet to hear. Forgive me, but I thought that Bush's intent was the exact opposite: to protect the West from the 'might is right' brigade. Maybe Mr Watkins was asleep in El Vino and isn't aware that terrorists destroyed the World Trade Centre.
His solution is novel, but no less repellent for that: "We can demonstrate our disapproval...what Americans hate most is to be told they are not liked. Members of their cultivated or political classes are specially averse to this treatment. They tend to be tremendous snobs. They love being entertained at gentlemen's clubs; visiting art galleries; attending Glyndebourne or Covent Garden. Their English equivalents, ever alert to the opportunity of a visiting scholarship, a publishing contract or a grant to the foundation, are only too ready to oblige with invitations to whichever form of diversion seems appropriate. Sorry, we say instead, but you are no longer acceptable in polite society. This may not work. It is the best I can think of at the moment."
It's the usual British snobbery. How distasteful it is that those hicks are so wealthy. It's not fair, and it's wrong. Still, we know how to take advantage of their money by pandering to their uncouth habits. And now, because they are behaving like the yobbos they really are, we'll punish them by no longer treating with them.
Imagine if Mr Watkins had changed the word 'Americans' to 'blacks'. You know the sort of thing: they aren't properly educated, they don't really know how to behave in polite society. You can make up the rest. He wouldn't dare. But the Americans, who spent almost all the last century saving Europe, both militarily and economically, are beneath contempt to the likes of the superior Mr Watkins. What a deeply, deeply ungrateful man he is. And how wrong.
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