Unmasked at last – dodgy Brits in America
The Yanks have copped on to us at last. For hundreds of years, we Brits have been exporting the slimiest, most opportunistic gold-digging toe-rags we can find from our decadent society to the pristine shores of the United States. We have been subverting, exploiting and ripping off our gullible American cousins, until finally they realise they’ve been had, and send our ne’er-do-wells scuttling back to whence they came.
All this from a journalist by the name of James Kirchick, who has written a stunning exposé for The Daily Beast. In The Brit Grifters and the Designated American Suckers he takes aim at four individuals whom he believes epitomise the species: Louise Mensch, former novelist, Tory MP and re-born conspiracy theorist; Milo Yiannopoulos, the would-be online media entrepreneur who became an alt.right hero of the hour – for just about an hour; Piers Morgan, former newspaper editor who took over Larry King’s slot on CNN and bombed; and finally, Sebastian Gorka, the sort-of Brit who made a name for himself as a counter-terrorism expert and ended up in the White House on the coattails of Steve Bannon.
To emphasise that our habit of sending our wrong’uns West is not a recent phenomenon, Kirchick quotes from literary figures such as Mark Twain and Scott Fitzgerald, who describe our con-artists and chancers in their novels. Even our own writers – Evelyn Waugh and more recently AA Gill – he cites as having taken delight in satirising our dubious exports.
He could have gone further, of course. He didn’t mention the impoverished English aristocrats sent across the pond to secure wealthy American brides who would help to restore the family fortunes. Such unions produced people like the notorious British grifter, Winston Churchill, who pulled off the biggest con-trick of all by luring Roosevelt into the Second World War on our side. How Churchill managed to persuade the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbour has yet to be revealed, though no doubt the answer is lurking in an archive somewhere. Something to do with oil, no doubt.
He also doesn’t mention our nefarious scientists, whom we sent to America to help our allies build the nuclear bomb. Or, for that matter, the dodgy characters we sent to Hollywood – Alfred Hitchcock, (creepy sadist) and Charlie Chaplin (covert commie) being good examples.
Oh yes, we really have exported the worst of the worst. And it’s still happening on a scale Kirchick is too polite describe. People like Ridley Scott, whose latest alien extravaganza is causing movie lovers all over America to wet themselves with terror. Jony Ive, chief designer at Apple, whose products have steadily rotted the brains of the country’s youth. Simon Schama, historian and renaissance man, who has the temerity to counter every tweet by the rightfully-elected president with his own contemptuous counter-posts. And countless other scientists, academics, engineers and writers who have fooled their gullible hosts with second-rate talent.
Come to think of it, how much better off would America not have been right from the start without our cast-offs? What if we’d never come across the pond in the first place? Without those troublesome pilgrims insisting on the right to practice their own beliefs free of English tyranny, there would have been no pesky characters like Franklin, Washington or Jefferson. No Harvard. No English common law. No English, in fact. The lingua franca might have been French or Russian. Le monde nouveau would have been a far more interesting place, full of chefs, philosophers and intellectuals, instead of MacDonalds, Hollywood and Breitbart.
Let’s face it. We Brits have polluted, exploited and spoilt America from way back. And what have we received in return?
Nothing but good. Tech giants who grace us with their presence because they appreciate our rigorous tax regime. Benevolent big data firms who have nudged us on the road to Brexit – for free, of course. Bankers who put up with our miserable climate for negligible gain. And soon to come, the biggest joy of all – a state visit by Donald Trump.
America doesn’t deserve our cast-offs. We should send our best people. Theresa May, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson (who’s half-American anyway), Sir Philip Green, the editor of the Daily Mail, and as many of the cast of Made in Chelsea as are capable of taking a comfort break without dropping their mobile phones down the loo.
That would leave us with our lesser talents. Folks like Steven Hawking, James Dyson, Simon Rattle, Tom Holland, Mark Rylance, Andy Murray, Kate Winslet, Jessica Ennis and Mary Beard.
I’d settle for the stay-at-homes, thank you very much. America, please take our brightest and best. We’d be sad to see them go, but I have a feeling we might muddle through anyway. And those you send back? Well, I’m sure we can find some space for them in the Isle of Wight, where they can cause no more trouble.