Culture Vultures: Hooligans of Leisure
Steyn, Mark
CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Hooligans of Leisure p at Buchanan is an engaging fellow, but he was never more wrong than in his observation, apropos immigration a few years back, that obviously...
...Americans may be interested to know that this lyric is sung to the tune of Sousa's "Stars And Stripes Forever...
...Passing a glass-fronted restaurant off the Quai des Belges, they smashed the windows, sent the bourgeois French diners fleeing from their tables, and scattered chairs, plates, and bottles across the street, all for no reason other than that which impelled Sir Edmund Hillary to climb Everest on the eve of the Queen's coronation: "Because it's there...
...The yobs who smashed up Marseilles are not downtrodden victims of the Thatcherite terror expressing their frustration at the vicissitudes of a life trapped in the underclass...
...Possibly these are not the kind of English Pat had in mind...
...At the Rigger pub, operational HQ of the "Free Louise" campaign, they roared out the movement's theme song, "You'll Never Walk Alone" — also a great favorite of soccer fans...
...It would be a brave scholar who pointed out that, strictly speaking, if it weren't for the Americans and the Canadians and Indians and Australians—not to mention the Soviets—the English would be Krauts, and speaking fluent German, instead of the Neanderthal demotic with which they menace their enemies...
...Yet that's exactly what modern Britain has: low taxes plus free health care, six weeks vacation per year, etc...
...There's a lesson for conservatives here, too...
...But here's the thing: the "soccer thug" also lives in the suburbs, in a detached home with a two-car garage and an equally impressive car in the front drive...
...He's the first public schoolboy (i.e., in American terms, the first private schoolboy) to become Prime Minister since the 4th Earl of Home 35 years ago...
...Meanwhile, if you're visiting the place and find yourself accosted by the footie lads, be restrained in your response...
...Ere we go...
...The Marseilles thugs are mostly blokes who find it easy to take time off from well-paying jobs to swank about the Continent getting pissed and wrecking the place...
...Today, as the British press has noted, he's gradually repositioning himself socially, talking instead in what they call "estuary English," the accent of the London suburbs, where glottal stops are cheerfully dropped...
...news shows, the British people embraced full-blown touchy-feely British society has traded class for cash...
...These days, more of Tone's compatriots aspire to estuary English than the Queen's English: In the last years of her life, even the Princess of Wales adopted it, as a sign that she was truly the People's Princess...
...In-ger-land...
...This was the ditty with which the In-ger-lish chose to regale French drivers as they clambered onto cars waiting at the traffic lights in Marseilles and began stamping on the roofs...
...Their other great battle cry is "'Ere we go...
...If you're a Tunisian or Italian or Belgian, with a competent mastery of the Queen's English, the snarls and grunts issuing from the England fans in between head-butts must be mystifying...
...The winning combination, the experts tell us, is fiscal conservatism plus social liberalism: non-confiscatory taxation but generous health benefits, etc...
...Peel win...
...There are, to be sure, local variations on these imported Americanisms—as there were in the week after the Princess of Wales's death when, according to U.S...
...It's as if, every time you switched on TV, Johnny Carson, instead of swapping Palm Springs golf anecdotes with Sammy Davis, Jr...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...Would you mind giving me a sporting chance to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed before clubbing me to a pulp, there's a good chap...
...46 August 1998 • The American Spectator Oprahfication...
...Ere we go...
...The Zulus have mostly given up their traditional practices of disemboweling and genital-severing, and I feel sure that, were a hundred thousand of them to turn up in, say, a small town in northern Maine, the locals would have little trouble, at least after the select board's polite request that they tone down the tribal dancing or save it for the Fourth of July parade...
...My mistake, old boy...
...In Britain, "soccer" presages "thug" not "mom...
...Not "Eng-land" but "In-ger-land...
...and Bob Hope, felt obliged to pretend that he was just an inbred Appalachian mountain man who liked nothing better than a jigger of moonshine and a bunk-up with his sister...
...Rather, they're the latter-day versions of those languid English aristocrats who used to do the Grand Tour of Europe, swanning about Florence and Venice lapping up the culture...
...When blacks in Los Angeles launch one of their periodic looting sprees, they at least pay lip service to the notion that it's because of some ongoing festering social injustice...
...It would be hard to find two less attractive advertisements for the benefits of stable democratic constitutional evolution...
...CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Hooligans of Leisure p at Buchanan is an engaging fellow, but he was never more wrong than in his observation, apropos immigration a few years back, that obviously America would find it easier to assimilate a hundred thousand Englishmen than a hundred thousand Zulus...
...lar blokes who like to have 4 pints down the pub followed by a vindaloo curry, then moon out the back of the mini-cab on the way home, vomit all over the pavement, urinate in their neighbors' front garden, and get into a knife fight...
...These past few weeks, there've been two: the homecoming of the sullen, whey-faced killer nanny Louise Woodward...
...Insofar as there are any coherent motives for the carnage, it would seem to be that Johnny Foreigner is insufficiently grateful: As the lads like to chant when they're stomping through hapless Continental towns, "If it weren't for the English, you'd be Krauts...
...If a chap works hard enough at it, he'll soon be able to wander into a pub, order a pint of lager, and be taken for a cabbie from sarf uv th' rivuh instead of runner-up in the Upper Class Twit Of The Year contest...
...Thus, to welcome Louise Woodward home, the burghers of Elton tied their yellow ribbons, not round the old oak tree, for sadly most of those have been killed off by the smokestack emissions, but instead round the bollards and "No Parking" signs...
...There are now hardly any private firearms in England and, when the Duke of Edinburgh queried whether coast-to-coast gun bans were strictly necessary, the verbal lynch mob which jumped on him was, unfortunately, almost routine in modern England's nasty, brutish, bullying culture...
...Conversely, most low-tax regimes have their trade-off, too: In America, you'll keep most of your dough but your employer is unlikely to provide the generous vacation time most Europeans expect...
...Thanks to Thatcherism, the English working class is now free to pursue its darkest impulses on a lavish budget...
...This image somehow survives in America's collective consciousness despite all the evidence to the contrary...
...In most "nanny states," welfare comeswith a price: In Canada, you get universal health care, but the state takes 5o% of your income...
...Hardly any British stories make the network news these days, but on the rare occasions they do, what are they...
...They're the modern liberal's greatest dilemma: an underclass that's too rich...
...These periodic spasms are surely preferable to the unmistakable undertone of menace that hangs in the air during most English bus rides, train journeys, and forays into unfamiliar pubs...
...and the rampage of England soccer fans against Tunisian supporters at the World Cup in France...
...This determined downward mobility is a peculiarly British phenomenon: In London, show business and the literary world are dominated by fellows who've been to Oxford and Cambridge but persist in pretending they're just regu44 There are forces in his dark domain that even Blair's dazzling smile can't reach...
...True, as far as it goes, but not the whole story: When the mob demanded that the Queen come out from her "ice palace" (as they took to calling it) and feel their pain (Clinton-style), the barely veiled threat was that otherwise they'd come in and give her some pain of her own to feel (Brit-style...
...It is the enduring image of Englishness, ageless, indestructible...
...In-ger-land...
...The Iranian team may have promised a "holy war" against the Americans, but compared to the English, they're pussycats...
...If, over the last few weeks, you've heard Rodgers and Hammerstein's genteel Commencement anthem at your local high school, you may find the noisier version bayed by footie fans and Louise's chums down the pub somewhat alarming: In Britain, the innocent uplift of "You'll Never Walk Alone" has a barely submerged subtext which approximates roughly to "Oy, mate, you'll be highly unlikely to walk unaided ever again...
...The most they'll tolerate is "proportionate response" — which, from the increasingly beleaguered English householder's point of view, is a bit like a courtly duel where the rules are set by one side: "Ah," says the victim of a late-night break-in, "I see you have brought a blunt instrument...
...Peel, the two heroes of this summer's revival of The Avengers, thwarting evil madmen bent on world domination with little more than a bowler hat, a brolly-cum-sword-stick, effortless style, exquisite manners, and afternoon tea...
...When I first met him five or so years back, he talked posh—in the awkward, slightly strangulated tones of a rather creepy head prefect...
...Indeed, in one of the more curious tributes to the potency of the Anglo-American relationship, almost all the most revolting manifestations of English nationalism now depend on American pop culture...
...The latter is a far greater threat to society than any lunatic in a schoolyard...
...with a hundred thousand Englishmen next door, he'd soon be a protectionist in the "Quick, wedge the armoire against the front door" sense...
...As I understand it, Pat's a protectionist in the economic sense...
...What, for a start, is this country they claim to represent...
...In England, criminals, police, and magistrates are united in regarding any resistance by the victim as bad form...
...Under such rules, could even Steed and Mrs...
...My advice to him would be to head for the hills, especially since many of the English seem to have become belated converts to some of the Zulus' more robust tribal customs...
...On the other hand, were a hundred thousand Englishmen to move in, well, there goes the neighborhood...
...Possibly he was thinking of John Steed and Mrs...
...The homecomings of nanny Louise and the soccer thugs remind us that a nanny state and a thug state go hand in hand...
...Forgive me for unsheathing my bread knife...
...Even as they castigated the ghastliness of American culture, Louise's defenders were utterly dependent on it...
...It is, in its way, very telling, if only of the weird ersatz quality of contemporary English life...
...So, if by the time you read this, America has undergone some last-minute post-graduation schoolyard massacre, relax...
...The American Spectator • August 1998 47...
...Repeat until knife fight...
...This is not the image of his country that Tony Blair and his "Cool Britannia" committee wish to promote: Alas, the England fans' improvised remodeling of downtown Marseilles came during Britain's Presidency of the European Union, a sobering reminder to New Labour's Continental admirers that there are forces in his dark domain that even Tony's dazzling smile can't reach...
...I n America, "soccer" as an adjective represents all that's best in the great Republic: the "soccer mom," the caring suburbanite ferrying her moppets to their school games in her Dodge Caravan or Subaru Forester...
...But I wonder if Tone himself isn't part of the problem...
...Not the English lads in Marseilles...
Vol. 31 • August 1998 • No. 8
