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Gesundheit

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. (Yeah, that’s right. I can still hear your thoughts. The injections don’t help at all). You’re thinking, “geez, Stoaty — you live in an Olde Worlde socialist paradise now. What do you care from Obamacare?”

Well, I own sixty acres of American scrub cedar and rattlesnakes out near the old Gore place. We call it Rancho Plan B. I pay American taxes and vote in American elections. I brush my teeth humming Yankee Doodle Dandy and insist on saying aloominum and skedule and coming home once a year to stock up on Jimmy Dean country sausage and Bounty paper towels.

But seriously — clown nose off — it matters here. You have no IDEA how much things in the US matter outside the US, in the general force and direction of world politics. The old saying when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold should probably be updated to when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets AIDS, Ebola and a side order of flesh-eating bacteria.

The interconnections in the UK catch me off guard. I was having a cup of coffee and a scone in a cafe in town yesterday and the lady at the next table over heard my accent and wanted to tell me all about her upcoming vacation in California. That happens a lot. So much for the taciturn Brits.

The BBC’s obsession with all things American is deep and malignant. You would not believe how much of a typical broadcast day is about the US, one way or another. I used to joke that Radio 4 could work a George Bush joke into the gardening program, but I think the Obama infatuation is even loonier.

During a radio interview of the English singer/songwriter Alison Goldfrapp a couple of days ago, the interviewer remarked that her most recent album was very upbeat. “Why is that?” he said out of an abso-fucking-lutely blue sky, “because of Obama?”

So you’d better believe the BBC has reported every twist and turn of the Obamacare saga in minutest detail. Absolutely zero insight, but minute detail. And you know what they’re rooting for.

The tug-of-war between freedom and the state is played across international boundaries. Pull hard, Yanks!

March 25, 2010 — 11:35 pm
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