Important Radio Talk-Show News Bulletin: American Morons Think British Morons Are Crazy

I occasionally tune-in to politically-motivated talk radio shows in order to remind myself why I don't often tune-in to politically-motivated talk radio shows. Today was one of those days, and within minutes I was left shaking my head and laughing, but more out of disbelief than out of amusement. You see, talk radio rarely ceases to amaze me with its general cultural myopia and stupidity, even in a major metropolitan area such as the one in which I live.

Today, for instance, a local talk radio host tried to make the point that the U.S. should resist "becoming like Europe," or something along those lines, because, it seems, Europe is losing its collective mind and being overrun by left-wing lunatics, or some such thing. (ALL of it?)

The gentleman making that point is entitled to his opinion, of course. Yet leaving aside the debate as to whether or not his incredibly sweeping generalization has any grounding in fact, it quickly became apparent that, like a lot of people who make such statements, he had very little idea of what he was talking about.

I say this because the "source" he cited was an article about the apparent reluctance on the part of a certain percentage of contemporary British citizens to tell their children traditional fairy tales, and the article was taken from...The Daily Mail. He cited the article and its source in a serious manner. (Que massive amounts of laughter wafting across the Atlantic Ocean from our British brethren....)

The Daily Mail, you see, might be best described to Americans (or any non-Britons, for that matter) as one part USA Today, three parts The National Enquirer, two parts flag-waving hysteria, and one part toilet paper. Mash them all together (my apologies to the USA Today) and you have just about created the right mix for The Daily Mail.

I know about The Daily Mail because I lived in Britain for a few years. I am not suggesting that the talk-show host in question should have known about The Daily Mail prior to having read the article in a pre-show prep session. I am, however, saying that had he done his homework (and with the internet, such a homework assignment is very easily done these days), he would have understood that the people who read The Daily Mail in a serious manner are those for whom life has not worked out according to plan, so to speak. (The Sun is a similar British "newspaper"; its level of journalistic integrity is quickly ascertained by perusing its third page any day of the week, which will contain little more than a picture of a topless young woman.)

If you wish to quote major national British newspapers, please quote The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, or The Times, the first two of which lean politically to the left and the last two of which lean politically to the right. They are serious newspapers. If, on the other hand, you quote The Daily Mail or The Sun in a serious manner, you will quickly look like an ingrate.

This, of course, hardly bothered the heavily-accented folks who called into the radio program in order to voice support for the article. I live in Minnesota, but I don't often come across people who sound as though they've just stepped off the set of the Cohen brother's film "Fargo." Yet that's how most of these folks sounded as they said things like, "...Yah, ya knooow, dat dere Enger-land is crazy dese days, yah knooow."

It's true that much of the world is crazy, and I know for a fact that some aspects of "Enger-land" are indeed crazy...just as some aspects of the U.S. are crazy. But my bet is that "dese here" callers don't really know a whole lot about England or anywhere else in Britain...or even much about their own country, for that matter. And I'm sure any attempt to make the more pedantic point that though Great Britain is technically a part of Europe, the rest of Europe is not technically a part of Great Britain would be met with quizzical expressions from many of these same folks.

And I didn't even have to read The Daily Mail, The Sun, or The National Enquirer to form that particular opinion.