Blame Canada

After a weekend of mulling I have decided what makes me so cross about Fahrenheit 9/11. It's not the sheer bloody idiocy of electing not one but two generations of 'Warning, may be dangerous if exposed to brain' president without knowing that they indulge in pay-as-you-go morality, but the fact that I always thought we'd be safe from America because the people who have to share a continent with them would keep them under control. I mean, after what went on in Europe last century, no one's going to let the world get into that state again are they? Are they?
Now I'm standing here with my hands on my hips (hard to type) looking at Canada like a mother who has returned home to find her younger child has demolished the conservatory and her elder child on the phone to his girlfriend upstairs. What were you doing for so long that your brother managed to do so much damage? You're supposed to be the responsible one. How can I trust you on your own in future? You wait til your father gets home (is it worth ditching the monarchy and voting Lib Dem on the offchance that America would listen to someone called President Kennedy? You know, the Welsh guy. Sorry.).
I sometimes wonder if we have a skewed idea of Americans because of the ones we're exposed to on television or by meeting them. I know there is Michael Moore, there was Bill Hicks, Kurt Cobain, there's Chuck Mead, there's Dolly Parton, Eminem (if you're too old to get it on your own, try thinking of the language he uses as an emerging dialect he's part of shaping, and then try listening to what he actually says in between the bits you don't think you like). But then there's David Blaine (and for my latest 'trick' I will disappear and see how long it takes people to notice...... Oh, bollocks, shouldn't have tried this one in New York..... There's an eye on my hand Eamon....), there's Joe Jackson, with a face like a cruising mako shark, telling us his son is normal- comparatively, Dr. Frankenstein, yes- people like Isaac Hanson, who on last night's Buzzcocks was cruelly paired with Bill Bailey, who knew the fingering to 'Paranoid' where "musician" Isaac didn't even know the song. Sweet of Bill to try to explain rock to him, but as he says, he does actively seek out disappointment. People like Courtney Love -she wants to be governor apparently, I wonder if she know which state she lives in... People like Paris Hilton,
except nobody does. Vanilla Ice.
You might call me skeptical about America, in that I have the same worries about getting in too much with them that some people have about Europe. But given that Mandleson re-defined skepticism as 'being open to persuasion' (bribery) I think that skepticism is not quite the right term. I suppose it's just how you look at it. Most of the things that wind me up so much about Americans are the things the Americans winding me up are so proud of. It's like some ads on TV. Apparently there's more bacteria on a child's high chair tray than on the floor. Sweet, let your kid eat off the floor then. Or my personal favourite "Hit me at 30mph, and there's an 80% chance I'll live." Cheers for the offer, love, but I don't drive.
It may be that it is the land itself that is to blame. Over thousands of years the Chinese discovered America, the Vikings discovered America, a little Irish monk in a leather boat rowed all the way across the Atlantic and discovered America, and all of them took a look around, said "Huh." and went home again. Even Coloumbus stuck mainly to the islands. Then some people who were so annoying that.... Sorry, whose religion was not treated kindly at home got on a boat and sailed across the sea to start a country where people could worship freely without persecution for being different, and not irritate the hell out of the rest of the civilized world. They got to America and thought it was God's chosen country. That may well have been what the estate agent told you, guys, but when a property's been on the market that long the vendor's usually gagging to get rid of it. Or maybe unlike the gunpowder inventing Chinese, the raping and pillaging Vikings and the fire and brimstone missionary, they didn't think 'Oops! Someone already lives here. We'll be off peacefully then'.
But then we're back to Canada. If the land was cursed, would they not be evil to, rather than polite but generally of no practical use? They do seem almost apologetic for being physically attatched to America, when in fact they're civilized Europeans (well, slightly less surly French) really. They do seem to know how we feel, and it probably explains why they have just let them get on with it; one really ought to do something, but where would you start, and where would it stop? I think it's best described as "When you try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn". But I'm sorry, Canada, you're still to blame.