Semi-Daily Journal

How stupid can a white man get? Really?

"It is based on a complete misunderstanding of the Iraqi people and of Muslim communities around the world, who will reject such unacceptable colonialism. The sad thing is that America has fallen into the trap set by Bin Laden."

Quote from the BEST article I have read about "France, Muslims and Iraq". Hate it or love it, yet it is a piece of our reality:
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313247641&p=1012571727088

I just can't see how any friend of America would advise her to scale up her current adventure to a full-blown WWIII on the Middle East. Only her worse ennemies would do that...

P.S. It's already been the second *American* IraNIAN I have tried to talk into whishing good luck to the US in Iraq... It's not because it's not on FOX, that it isn't.

"But I also know from experience that a collective judgment sometimes seems to descend on even the best and independent-minded news organisations, and it is susceptible to influence by those in authority. It may therefore be wondered why the Times, and many others, significantly underplayed the extent of domestic anti-war sentiment before the war started. Now US soldiers are in combat, it is perhaps understandable that protests get shorter news shrift but the lesson of Vietnam is surely that they will not go away."

A gulf in the war of words, By Jurek Martin, *Financial Times*, March 28 2003

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313247070&p=1012571727088

That's enough for tonight ;-)

You seem to be missing the point here, which is that the British soldier has the dryest sense of humour known to man. Clearly none of you has been to Southampton or Portsmouth either.
Steve

welcome every body
the war is begin

no war

no war website

welcome every body
the war is begin

no war

no war website

Prostitutes and shootings I can understand, but why is there no beer in Portsmouth? Strikingly unEnglish, if I might say so.

The Jurek Martin article linked to by Jean-Phillippe contains the following:

"Suspicion may also attach to the fistful of polls that purport to show, predictably, a surge in support for the military and commander-in-chief. Many have been conducted on the smallest of statistical samples and with the narrowest range of questions; and I remain puzzled by the fact that I have never met anybody who has been polled on anything other than commercial products."

Just in case anyone was wondering, this is IMHO mostly nonsense. But I guess I won't try to explain why in a thread about droll British soldiers.

Mark Lindeman

I don't want to declare victory prematurely, but I suspect that the battle for "best war quip" is over.

Now, we had an American entrant with this Reaganesque offering:

"They were, for the most part, upbeat. ''We decided that getting shot at isn't too bad,'' Villafane joked. ''It's getting shot that's bad.''

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=676&ncid=716&e=23&u=/usatoday/20030328/ts_usatoday/5005123

Oh, and for the folks determined NOT to laugh at this, I wonder - if an American had said this, what city could he have mentioned without running afoul of the PC police?

If there's no beer, what do they use for food?

There *is* something about the British system--of primary education, of basic training, of military organization, whatever--that does seem to produce a superior class of wit...

Nice of you to say so (being an unwitty product of the British system).

Unfortunately there is another side to the story. The side of (to go back a few years) Benny Hill, On the Buses, and other lame, predictable, stereotype-driven comedies. Perhaps there is some kind of conservation law, so that a country that provides a lot of really good humour has to balance it by providing the opposite as well.

Orignal story with even more man-in-the-street comments

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=392135

I think generally Americans are brought up to speak their mind - amongst their best qualities, but not one that encourages irony. Lets face it, most Yanks are not renowned for their subtlety - neither dissimulation or tact comes naturally to them.

I live in a country that gets both British and American sitcoms. I agree with Tom Slee. The American ones tend to be competent but rarely hilarious (with the odd exception - I loved Seinfeld). But the British ones - well, when they're good they're very, very good, but when they're bad ....

Bah. I tire of the Black Knight, bleeding from all four severed limbs, telling us we're right where he wants us. Fisk has been peddling that line for years now -- especially since 2001, but probably before that. Apparently, it's spreading. One could just as easily say that the more successful capitalism was, the more oppression it would require, and so the ultimate victory of communism was ever more guaranteed. (And people did easily say that.)

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but my girlfriend didn't know. Southampton and Portsmouth are two Southern English seaside resorts. Similarly, Umm Qasr is on the coast.
Southampton also has a strong naval presence, as I recall.

"Fisk has been peddling that line for years now -- especially since 2001, but probably before that."

[sigh] that's a rather desparately tenuous, bitter and unrelated bit of political shoe-horning, Dan. Having a bad war?

Anyway, one needs to appreciate a few things: that the British armed forces are divided between terribly proper officers and working-class footsoldiers, with the latter having the bone-dry wit, usually at the expense of the former; that a large proportion of those forces is deployed in the south-west of England; and that the Southampton-Portsmouth thing is possibly one of the most bitter and intense regional rivalries in the country, and is recognised as such by most British readers.

The best semi-quip I've seen so far was in the second or third night of bombing.

A newsdesk commentator for a Major Network (don't remember which) was talking to a front reporter in Baghdad, and reassured him with talk along that lines that "unlike in the First Gulf War, something around ninety percent of the munitions being dropped are the 'smart' bombs."

A slight pause, and the correspondant, listening to the explosions, replied, "Well, yes, but it's the other ten percent we're worried about. I hope they're at least somewhat clever."

Benny Hill DID have all those fine skills of sophisticated humour, which he used right up until it became practical to use sleazy slapstick on public media. Then he stopped doing it the hard way.

Re: Tom Maguire's query about the American equivalent of "Portsmouth"...

The cities most often used as (all-purpose)punchlines would probably be Cleveland and Detroit, though maybe I'm dating myself here. (Example: in Kentucky Fried Movie, the evil kung-fu warlord sends his torture-chamber prisoners into tearful pleas of "No, please no!" when he threatens to send them to Detroit.)

But as for "no booze, no prostitutes, and people shooting at you", it would be hard to find a city which could plausibly meet all three criteria. Salt Lake City, Utah, might be closest (at least in terms of public perception) on issues one and two, but unfortunately it has a relatively low murder rate.

SLC jumped right into my head as well, but altho' heavily armed, Mormons don't seem to have that love of shooting random things that's a hallmark of our president's home state.

So - New Orleans and Amarillo?

BTW - Thanks Nick - the regional rivalry makes all the sense in the world.