11/12/2004|||110026588995991758||||||

IT'S ALL RIGHT, I'M FROM TORONTO..

A vox-pop item in today's Daily Telegraph reports that anti-Americanism in London has grown even more intense since Black Wednesday (November 3rd, to the rest of us.) The report rings true even if the writer, Helen Kirwan-Taylor, doesn't seems to have ventured further than the pampered expat enclave in Notting Hill (definitely blue-state country):

"Every meeting I go to, every social occasion, even when I'm out shopping, someone hears my accent and challenges me to a debate," says Annie Ouroussof Jordan, an executive headhunter."

Kirwan-Taylor herself admits to resorting to subterfuge: "Anti-Americanism is running so high in some British circles that, at a recent party, I resorted to saying: "I'm Canadian." Months of getting into arguments and defending America (its people, not its leader) have caught up with me.

"...Expat Americans feel they have to have all the facts and statistics at their fingertips to ward off any criticism. "I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, do you?" says Lauren Crowe, a magazine editor. "I've never spent time in the heartland of America. As far as I can see, they're all insane. She does, on occasion, hear people making fun of Americans. "They say we're inarticulate and dumb, but that same person when drunk says: "I wish I could live in California."

As far as I can tell, the piece doesn't seem to be in the on-line version of the paper. If I do find a link, I'll post it.

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/its-all-right-im-from-toronto.html|||11/12/2004 01:44:00 pm|||||||||

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