UK GUARDIAN: Romney's Anglo-Sax Appeal

[yurbud]

Funny stuff, especially that Romney is forgetting the Norman (aka FRENCH) layer of Brit culture and that we are two nations separated by a common BMI.

The Republican presidential challenger, Mitt Romney, is reported to want to restore "Anglo-Saxon" relations between Britain and the US as part of a concerted effort to lay down a set of foreign policies to counter accusations from Obama's supporters that he doesn't have enough experience on the world stage.

It's an intriguing idea, even if it is couched in rather lazy terms. What, for instance, happened to the past thousand years of culture bequeathed to us by the Normans, including the lineage of our monarchy (a blood line which has its fair share of German corpuscles)? If Romney wants to forge some kind of union with an anachronistic view of Britain, what are Anglo-Saxon values anyway? Here's a list to get him started …

Our language

"Two nations separated by a common language" – this quotation, often misattributed to Winston Churchill (whose bust Romney wants to return to the White House as part of his re-alignment with Britain) was actually uttered by either Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw … but whatever the source, the language has its roots in Germanic dialects. Old English, as spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, has been continually modified over the years. After the Norman invasion and its French influence, it gradually changed over hundreds of years into Middle English and, from the 15th century, evolved into the language we are all familiar with today. Its greatest threat these days is probably the former Republican president's "Bushisms".

Alfred: not so Great at cookery

The king of Wessex was allegedly so preoccupied with ridding us of the Danes that he accidentally left cakes, entrusted to him by a peasant woman, to burn in the fire. This simple tale tells us all we need to know, not only about the otherworldliness of our betters, but also about our deep distrust of gastronomic excellence. It is why all true Anglo-Saxons – who have to hold down jobs, raise children, watch television and avoid taxes levied upon them by a militantly unjust crown – believe that the ready meal and the takeaway are the pinnacles of western culinary achievement. Our Anglo-Saxon transatlantic brethren, it is noted, invented the TV dinner, the hamburger "restaurant" and morbid obesity; we are but one nation separated by a common BMI...

FULL TEXT

[WCGreen]

1. the comments are classic.....

K&R

This one is classic....

I don't think the 'Anglo-Saxon' thing is intended so much for British ears. Like Romney really cares about what we think.

It's a laughably crude little dog whistle attempt to whip up the Republican core vote against the 'Kenyan/Marxist/Indonesian' President.


From the link supplied by the OP.

[monmouth]

2. That comment nailed it perfectly..n/t

[yurbud]

3. unlike Baby Bush, Romney can probably find other countries on the globe...

but that's where the intellectual differences end.