Obligatory Americans on BBC Radio

[Flosshilde]

But the BBC (& other sections of the media) do pay a disproportionate amount of attention to the USA, compared with Europe or the rest of the world. Look at the attention payed, not just to the USA presidential elections, but the hoo-ha over who will be nominated as the Republican candidate, & compare that with the coverage of the French Presidential election, which could have major consequences for Europe & us if a candidate hostile to the German-centred Euro rescue plan is elected, as seems highly possible.

In terms of programmes, the USA used to get more coverage, with Alistair Cooke's oleagenous ramblings & then the more recent Sunday evening programm (now discontinued), while the rest of the world had to share 'From our own correspondent'.

Perhaps Marthe, & others in the USA, could tell us how much coverage the UK, & the rest of Europe, gets on USA radio?

[Hornspieler]

Oh deah. This is very tiresome...

Indeed, Marthe.

I have just returned from a holiday river cruise. where more than half the passengers were from America. They were delightful company, a lot more politically aware concerning World Affairs than the average Brit, and far more agreeable to deal with than some of the Teutonic inhabitants that we met on our travels.

Stay with us, Marthe. Your views from across "the pond" regarding the BBC's Radio output are very enlightening and objective.

Hornspieler

[Dave2002]

Quite

Also, in the collegiate spirit of the MB, not a bit friendly to the small handful of regular contributors from across the pond, I'd have thought.

I hope not me. I lived in the US for a while, and I hope I still have lots of American friends, and even new ones made on trips back there.

Re Sandel, I have now resorted to downloading most of his podcasts - certainly his most recent ones, and some go back a few years. The one on bribery/incentives for health is good. I must listen to the bankers/nurses one again. I was just slightly disappointed in that that it seemed that "markets" were being accepted in a less than questioning way, though I do see that some form of market can be used as a justification for pay scales. Then you have to justify the "market" used for the exercise, which in a way is not quite building on sand, but rather on something else which may simply come down to opinion.

[Black Swan]

As someone who hold's dual US /UK citizenship, I am a bit surprised at the content of this thread which is tending toward a negative bias. What is wrong with having American contributors to radio content.

John

[DracoM]

Because with monotonous regularity the American guest has to confess that he / she is not entirely familiar with circs in UK but....and then goes on to explain what happens in USA. Which tends to make one ask....erm...why were they invited.

[Flosshilde]

I don't think that there's anything wrong in having USA guests as such, but perhaps voices from other places might also be valuable? It does add to the feeling of a cultural imperialism.

[Don Petter]

I think they're fine on the radio until they say 'essentially', which is usually within the first two sentences - Then I switch off (mentally and, usually, literally).

And I do have many good American friends and love much of their culture and country.

[Dave2002]

Strange people, though I like them. Particularly their use of words like "momentarily" and "deplane". A nice sentence is "the plane will take off momentarily" - less comforting to Brits than US citizens. I imagine a rapid deplaning afterwads, if anyone survives! Also ask (tell) kids to walk on the pavement, and see what happens. Actually don't - I don't want to be responsible for any road accidents, even indirectly. We're divided by a common language, as they say.

[Serial_Apologist]

Strange people, though I like them. Particularly their use of words like "momentarily" and "deplane". A nice sentence is "the plane will take off momentarily" - less comforting to Brits than US citizens. I imagine a rapid deplaning afterwads, if anyone survives! Also ask (tell) kids to walk on the pavement, and see what happens. Actually don't - I don't want to be responsible for any road accidents, even indirectly. We're divided by a common language, as they say.

Subway, sidewalk, men's room, closet, elevator... One picked up these "re-applicated" terms working in West End restaurants back in the '60s.

Commonest quote: "We just lurve your queen"

[Flosshilde]

Bathroom - which, of course, has nothing to do with bathing.

[Serial_Apologist]

Bathroom - which, of course, has nothing to do with bathing.

Indeed - it's the transgender term for "men's room".

[Black Swan]

Because with monotonous regularity the American guest has to confess that he / she is not entirely familiar with circs in UK but....and then goes on to explain what happens in USA. Which tends to make one ask....erm...why were they invited.

Thanks for the clarity. I think I'd find the same with many presenters on radio programs regardless of their nationality.


To each his own.

John

[amateur51]

Subway, sidewalk, men's room, closet, elevator... One picked up these "re-applicated" terms working in West End restaurants back in the '60s.

Commonest quote: "We just lurve your queen"

And Mr Crisp so loved them that he went to live amongst them

They also speak of a tearoom, which has nothing to do with a beverage, I understand

[Estelle]

I read these threads almost daily from my home in California, generally with admiration for their erudition and wit. I have learned a great deal about music and have listened to many BBC Radio 3 programs as a result of reading your threads. Many of you have become familiar to me, and I look forward to reading your posts. Occasionally I find a thread with a theme that sounds like America-bashing. Actually, (Is that qualifier permitted?) I understand your feelings of being overwhelmed by Americans, sensing in your comments the resentment of the native at being taken over by a deluge of foreigners. If I were a native-born citizen of the UK, I would feel the same way.

Isn't your very natural objection simply the effect of the enormous discrepancy in our two populations? The population of the U.K. was recently estimated at 62 million; the U.S. at 313 million. How many more scholars might a nation of roughly five times the U.K. population have available for an expense-paid trip to your lovely land? Certainly they are not, as a rule, as highly qualified for in depth commentary on UK internal affairs as home-grown experts, but perhaps the media value their more distant perspective --or their relative novelty. I don't really know why the media invite them.

As for differences in the use of our common tongue (for which I thank you), geographical separation accounts for it. A language is a living entity, subject to constant invention and misinterpretation. An American of my upbringing would be embarrassed to ask where the toilets are! As for tearooms, they exist in Canada, but I haven't encountered one in the U.S. Might you be thinking of the Tea Party activists?

I hope that you forgive the intrusions--mine, and those American "experts!" I find you a tolerant people, and very welcoming to visitors (as long as they return home!). I have had many memorable visits and I "lurve" your Queen (Who said that? It's news to me!).

[kernelbogey]

[...] Occasionally I find a thread with a theme that sounds like America-bashing. Actually, (Is that qualifier permitted?) I understand your feelings of being overwhelmed by Americans, sensing in your comments the resentment of the native at being taken over by a deluge of foreigners. If I were a native-born citizen of the UK, I would feel the same way[....]

Thank you Estelle; you make many valid points IMV.

Having been married to an US citizen I have children with dual nationality, and am proud for them - both were educated and are resident in the UK, although very conscious of their American roots: my daughter spent nearly four years recently working for Barack Obama's election campaign and then for the Democratic Party, supporting his Presidency and working towards his re-election for a second term.

By contrast, I grew up in the 1950s, having no contact with Americans. Yet Satchmo, Elvis, Bill Haley et al were increasingly penetrating our culture. My older brothers and their contemporaries had been given gum to chew by American soldiers stationed nearby - all gone home by the time I was reaching gum-chewing age.

There has always, in my experience, been a kind of grudging anti-Americanism lodged deep in the British consiousness throughout my lifetime, epitomised in the aphorism (variously attributed to Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and others) 'Two nations divided by a common language', and 'Overpaid, oversexed and over here' as folk used to quip during the war.

The British-born historian Tony Judt, a brilliant man who emigrated to the US and died there prematurely of some wasting disease not many months back, stated once [broad paraphrase coming] that the British clung to an iconic cultural myth that they had not only stood alone against Hitler and the Nazis (which is true of a certain period) but that they had gone on to defeat Germany on their own: the latter part of this is verifiably untrue, and even setting aside the US manpower in Europe in the latter part of the war we could not have 'stood alone' without lend-lease etc (nor would Nazi Germany have been defeated without the vast sacrifices of Russia).

I agree with Judt's analysis and I think to a degree it underlies the continuing British obsession with World War II, manifest in the repeats of 1950s nostalgic war films, the (still?) annual outing of The Great Escape (the German comedian Henning Wehn claims that this film is known in Germany as The Great Recapture) and the UK tabloid press's regurgitating of anachronistic anti-German language (e.g. 'Achtung! Surrender: For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over' [Daily Mirror 24.6.1996] etc etc).

My experience of Americans in Europe is that they can be either knowledgeable about and sympathetic towards European culture, or they can be poorly-informed tourists travelling in what they experience as an alien environment. Exactly the same can be said of the British on the European continent, and in neither case is the group representative of the whole.

The US is a huge country (if you want to really experience that fact, drive across it from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, or vice versa) and has vast natural and financial resources. Why would we not be envious of that? But I believe that our culture of tolerance and inclusivity behoves us to treat with generosity those of its citizens who grace our airwaves.