ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 15, 2004
WASHINGTON - - Having just returned from London, I today explode four myths about the English:
Myth One: The English are quiet and reserved.
People believe this because they see members of the royal family on TV
mumbling something low and semi-intelligible. But
ordinary English people are actually quite boisterous and noisy.
Take firecrackers. In the United States, we set off firecrackers one day a
year (where they are still legal): the Fourth of July. In
England, I am told that virtually every child's birthday party is
accompanied by the explosion of firecrackers.
In the United States, firecrackers are considered pretty much an outdoor entertainment.
But at dinner one night in a posh Soho restaurant, I found out that the English like firecrackers
indoors, too. (In New York, Soho stands for South of Houston. In London,
Soho, which in the middle ages was a hunting park, gets its name from the
hunting cry: "So-ho!" Or at least that's what the guidebooks say. But they
could be making it up.)
At the table next to us, about 10 people were wearing party hats and
setting off round after round of indoor firecrackers (those little
champagne bottle replicas where you pull a string and it makes a bang
and shoots out ribbons of streamers.) After setting off about 12,000 of them, they
seemed to be satisfied and settled down to just roaring at the tops of
their lungs for the rest of the evening.
Which didn't bother anybody, because you could barely hear them over the
roar of the table of 20 that was screaming what sounded like football
(i.e. soccer) chants and the table of businessmen, dressed in their London
uniform - - shiny black suits, suspenders, and big bellies pushing against
white shirts - - who were shouting something unintelligible, but quite loud.
Which is another way of saying food is not the point in some London
restaurants. Bellowing is.
Myth Two: The English are unfriendly.
Not a bit. My wife and I went to the Imperial War Museum, an absolutely
swell place stuffed with huge objects like tanks, V-2 rockets and
fighter planes. We saw a sign that said there was a painting upstairs by John Singer Sargent, the famous American ex-patriot painter. It is called "Gassed," it is nine feet high and 20 feet long and is an incredibly powerful and moving work. (Look it up on Google.)
Unfortunately, when we got to the gallery that houses the painting, it was closed
for some repairs. But when we asked a guard about it, he said, "You're
Yanks, right? Yanks always ask about the Sargent. We've only got the one, but
it's a big un!" And with that he unlocked the gallery and lets us in.
A friendly museum guard? What will they think of next?
Myth Three: The English are smarter than us.
Actually, they just sound that way because of their accents. While at the
British War Museum, my wife found an exhibit that claimed Neil Armstrong
landed on the moon on “July 20, 1963."
Huh? 1963? No bleedin' way, luv!
It would have been nice if President Kennedy had been alive to see
what he started, but he wasn't. The year of the moon landing was 1969.
So she went down to the reception desk and told them they were off by six
years. They were very contrite and promised to change it.
So check up on them next time you are there and make sure they did.
Myth Four: The English don’t know how to have fun.
Wrong! The most fun I had the entire trip came at the very end, when I went through security at Heathrow. In America, I always have to take off my shoes, but at Heathrow, they told me not to bother.
And so I walked through the metal detector with my shoes on and it didn’t set off anything!
“That was fantastic!” I said. “Can I go through again?”
Maybe I amuse easily.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 13, 2004
LONDON - - A new poll by the Associated Press shows that Europeans still don’t like President Bush very much.
“At least seven in 10 in France, Germany and Spain said they have an unfavorable view of President Bush,” according to the poll.
Which is one big difference between Europe and America: In France, Germany and Spain they know who the leader of the United States is.
In America, how many people know who the leader of France, Germany or Spain is? Or care?
Which just makes America even more unpopular because it feeds the Europeans’ inferiority complex. (Or, as the old joke goes, Europeans do not have an inferiority complex; they are inferior.)
Actually, according to Gallup, though Bush’s approval rating in the United States remains at 53 percent, "Bush's current job approval is substantially below the rating he received early in December 2002 and December 2001. Bush's current rating is well below the post-election job approval ratings of the five other presidents who have been re-elected since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 (in December of their re-election years)."
So maybe it’s just a tough time to be president.
The Associated Press poll found, however, that not only is President Bush unpopular, but the rest of America is, too. “Just over half of the French and Germans said they have an unfavorable view of Americans in general, and about half of Spaniards felt that way,” according to the poll.
Here in London, I found none of this. The Londoners seem delighted that any Americans are still willing to spend vast sums of money to come here and be tourists.
London has always been expensive, but now that the bottom has dropped out of the dollar - - you see Americans pushing wheelbarrows full of them through the streets, trying to get anybody to accept them - - prices are approaching the astronomical.
Using airline frequent flyer miles to come here and hotel frequent guest points to stay here gets around part of the problem, but that still leaves the problem of food.
Before I came, I had read an article that “a mediocre meal” in London would cost $100. So I have been eating lousy meals, instead.
Unfortunately, they cost $100, too.
Still, London is a wonderful city and it is almost impossible not to have a good time here.
And, some day, the dollar will strengthen and American tourists will return to Europe in droves.
Then the Europeans will really hate us.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 8, 2004
WASHINGTON - - My friend Phil called to tell me that a giant box store near him was selling DVD players for less than $30.
At that price, I told him, you should buy two or three.
“But I don’t own any DVDs,” Phil said.
Doesn’t matter, I said. You can rent them.
“But I don’t know what a DVD is,” Phil said.
Inconsequential, I said.
“And my VCR, which I have owned for more than 10 years, still blinks 0:00,” Phil said.
Besides the point, I said. That price is too good to pass up. At that price, you should buy five or six DVD players and bring them to dinner parties instead of a bottle of wine.
“But I thought people spend too much at this time of year,” Phil said. “There was an article in the New York Times Sunday that said spending in America is ‘out of control’.”
That was the bad news, I said. The good news in that article is that “the United States economy depends on its citizens’ penchant for spending with abandon.”
“What does ‘penchant’ mean,” Phil asked.
It’s not a real word, I said. It’s a New York Times word. But that’s not the point. The point is that consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of our economy and to keep the economy going we all have to keep spending like madmen or the whole thing will collapse.
“I thought savings was supposed to be good, not spending,” Phil said. “That’s why I have my money in mutual funds.”
Huge mistake, I said. I have written about this before. I call it my Buy Stuff Now Theory of Economics.
“Do you know anything about economics?” Phil asked.
You think economists do? I asked.
“Fair point,” Phil said.
Here is how my theory works, I said: Let’s say you have $1,000 burning a hole in your pocket. You could put it in a mutual fund or you could buy a new refrigerator with it.
“What kind of refrigerator?” Phil asked.
Doesn’t matter, I said.
“Would it have ice-in-the-door?” Phil asked. “I have always wanted ice-in-the-door.”
Fine, I said. You take your thousand bucks and buy your refrigerator. And you are happy because it has ice-in-the-door. But let’s say you take that thousand bucks and put it in a mutual fund instead and the stock market goes down 15 percent. What happens to that thousand dollars?
“Some of it goes away,” Phil said. “I don’t know where it goes, but it goes away.”
Exactly, I said. But if you had bought that refrigerator and the stock market plunged 15 percent you know what would happen to that refrigerator? Nothing! Fifteen percent of it would not disappear! You would still have an entire refrigerator!
“With ice-in-the-door?” Phil said.
Yes! I said. That is how the Buy Stuff Now Theory works. When you buy stuff, you actually have the stuff. It does not disappear. And your buying stuff helps the economy. Remember what the New York Times said: Our economy depends on your penchant for spending!
“I own a penchant?” Phil said.
With ice in the door, I said.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 6, 2004
SIMON SAYS:
Could it be that some journalists are using steroids? I've seen some very robust writing recently.
Harry Truman is the last president who did not go to college. Consider all the presidents since Harry Truman and tell me that college has improved anything.
Nobody looks good while eating.
While the entire airport security system is dependent on those gray, plastic bins, no mechanism is in place to make sure they are always available. They pile up at the back end of the system and nobody seems in charge of carrying them back to the front end. I am sure the government could design a conveyor belt system for the bins that would cost only $30-$40 billion and would work intermittently.
“Pimp My Ride” may be the future of television.
Hardly anybody has a globe in their homes any more.
I can’t think why this quote by H.L. Mencken, which first appeared in the Baltimore Evening Sun on July 26, 1920, has become so popular on the Internet these days: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
There's nothing quite like sitting by a good fountain to lift the spirits. (I suggest Buckingham Fountain in Chicago.)
“Love Actually,” now running on HBO, may be the best Christmas movie ever made. (And if you don't cry at the end, you are not human.)
Is it really possible to dissolve a pearl in a glass of champagne? And why would you want to?
Artificial logs are not acceptable.
If you want to feel inadequate, try hanging wallpaper.
When demonstrations in Ottawa are more violent than demonstrations in Kiev, you know something is going on.
Don’t worry about whether “Being Julia” is a chick flick or not. Just go see it.
I'll bet anything that you don't know your hat size.
So the Democrats raised more money than the Republicans in the last presidential election. Which just goes to show it is not the money, but the message and the messenger that count.
Am I the only one who still remembers (and misses) “Spin and Marty?”
The Pentagon purposefully lied to CNN recently? I am shocked, shocked.
The thinner the sole, the more expensive the shoe.
Paperback Pick of the Month: “Paul Revere’s Ride” by David Hackett Fischer will delight and surprise you, teaching you things about Revolutionary America that you never knew.
Since almost nobody smokes a pipe anymore, where do little kids get pipe cleaners to play with?
If you could go through a shorter security line at the airport by letting law enforcement agencies check your background beforehand, would you do it? Some civil libertarians say, “No!” This civil libertarian says, “Sure!”
John Danforth resigns as United Nations ambassador after less than six months? What, he didn't like the food?
The top of the Washington monument is capped with a metal, then considered rare, that today is used to wrap left-overs: That's right, aluminum.
Never trust a person who says “frankly,” “candidly,” or “to be honest.” He probably is none of those things.
Is there a kid left who still worships pro athletes? Naw. Kids are smarter than that.
If anybody finds a scarf, it's mine.