English Envy: The American Media’s Foolish Obsession With The British Elections
Just call it the London Times
The American press has lavished a remarkable amount of attention on the British elections. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both run multiple cover stories on the matter. Slate magazine, the very epitome of trendy bobo liberalism, ran a series on the elections last week, and even sent its chairman to England to cover the spectacle. Salon – a.k.a. the better Slate – has covered it as well, as has Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic. True/Slant has also been a hotbed of England-obsessed punditry, with ED Kain, Zach Dundas, and Rupert Russel taking on the subject. Hilariously, much of the American commentary on the election centers on how little American commentary there is on the election. The typically shrewd Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair nonsensically claimed that the election is “of no interest to the American media.” (Apparently irony is of no interest to Michael Woff.) Slate’s Weisberg made the preposterous point that “Americans don’t care about the British elections.”
Would that they didn’t! For in truth, the election there really is quite inconsequential – and certainly less important or thrilling than the American media would have us believe. Britain is a minor power – the third most populous state in the EU, one dwarfed economically (and certainly culturally) by Germany. Not to mention the election itself is stultifying: it’s become a staid and bloodless battle between an out-of-touch oligarch, a pretty boy liberal professional politician, and his conservative pretty-boy professional politician counterpart. The founding editor of the British magazine sp!ked (to which I have contributed) has made the most salient and penetrating point of all. “We are now witnessing the next stage of No-Party politics – and no politics parties,” wrote Mick Hume, who then goes on note that the British parties are “rootless, empty shells that represent little other than themselves and stand for little more than their own re-election.” In other words: parties comprised of Charlie Crists – albeit with plummy accents. Or to put it more bluntly: who cares?
The American media’s fixation with the British elections has laid bare some of the press’ most glaring limitations. First, it has exposed the the crippling monolingualism that affects (rather, infects) our supposedly elite press corps. Only Britain’s English-speaking nature could possibly account for the attention lavished on this inconsequential diversion. Take as a comparison point Japan’s recent elections. Japan, the world’s second largest economy, a cultural, industrial, (and baseball) powerhouse, perched dangerously close to nuclear-armed North Korea, and mired in its worst recession in decades, recently experienced a truly groundbreaking election. For only the second time since World War II, the ruling Liberal Democrats were defeated. This development is sure to portend major changes (evidenced just today, for example), for this extremely important country. Yet while the American media at least mentioned this quite nearly revolutionary election, it received none of the lavish attention that the British election has. Where was the Slate series? Where was Salon? Where, pray tell, was Sullivan? Surely, the fact that the English speak the same language as the American press corps has something to do with this depressing state of affairs.
Many in the American press have also taken to marveling at the “better” British way of doing things. This plays into the deeply ingrained media narrative that the American political system is “broken,” and that something must be done. Slate’s Weisberg may have made the most ridiculous claim of all in this regard. According to Weisberg, “we have to learn from the way elections are conducted in Britain.” In particular, Weisberg loves the fact that British elections, “are swift (four weeks!).”
But consider this. Short election periods serve to separate the people from their leaders, and ensure that politicians spend very little time actually interacting with voters. Short election periods also serve to benefit entrenched incumbents; after all, it takes a long time for a newcomer to politics to introduce himself to voters. Would Barack Obama have been able to win the Democratic nomination if the primary period had lasted four weeks? Of course not: Hillary Clinton, skating on name recognition alone, would have won in a landslide. It took months of Obama meeting voters in states like Iowa and New Hampshire to get him to a place where he could conceivably win an election. This is called “democracy.” But to nattering nabobs like Weisberg, ever mindful of American “decline,” there is something inherently superior about our British betters.
It’s one of my lifelong projects to fight the association of British accents with “sophistication.” Apparently now I have another battle to wage. I must do something to combat the association of British politics with being “better” – or even interesting.
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Oh, just lie back and think of England, as they used to say.
Seriously, your points are well-taken, but…is it so surprising (or outrageous) that a shared language breeds interest among the nerd-classes? I would bet that Germans pay more attention to elections in Austria than they do to elections in, say, Japan.
Long election periods mean that incumbents can spend their entire term electioneering instead of working. Many do.
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Meanwhile, there are some very interesting goings on with our Northern and Southern NAFTA partner nations and I’ll be very few people here in the US know a thing about them.
[...] English Envy: The American Media’s Foolish Obsession With The British Elections – Ethan … [...]
While not disagreeing, I confess to a certain amount of envy that England (and other European countries) can muster more than two major political parties at the same time, something this country has never been able to do. Not that this would necessarily improve things, but the grass is always greener on the other side of the pond.
“Japan, the world’s second largest economy, a cultural, industrial, (and baseball) powerhouse…”
The truth will out. This is because we play our own daft bat and ball game isn’t it? (along with much of the rest of the world, I might add)
And do you really want longer UK elections? If your assertions are indeed true, then you’ll have a whole years of this in future!
Not that I’ve seen anything even approaching an obsession from the tiny amounts of coverage I’ve seen on US news websites. Maybe one item tucked away in the world section of each website I’ve visited.
You want to see “obsession”, come to the UK during a US election.
I also feel like I should point out that you misunderstand a fundamental point of how British politics works. The British electorate have had 5 years to get to know David Cameron, leader of the conservatives (the main opposition party). We don’t have presidential candidates, we have party leaders elected (or selected) by the party they belong to. UK politics doesn’t generally have “newcomers”, you’ve typically got to work your way up through the party ranks.
seems to me this is still nothing compared to how much media coverage American elections get in the UK.
For all you younger readers: The expression “nattering nabobs” was made famous by Spiro Agnew (one of the strangest men to ever exist in American politics). Ethan, you must concede one point: Nothing ever really changes much in Japan. Japan just keeps on being Japan.
Ethan, I take your point that there’s a degree of linguistic superiority at play here, there are a few serious bones to pick with the argument. First of all, as marimo has pointed out, the issue of shadow government in Britain is key, but not because (as marimo suggests) it ensures that there are no newcomers. Rather, it provides a means for newcomers and challengers to present themselves to voters OUTSIDE of an election campaign, to demonstrate how they actually lead, so that election campaigns themselves are less significant. If you want an example of a newcomer successfully using that system, pay close attention to Jon Cruddas, a backbencher who made himself a fixture in the LP during the 1994-1997 Shadow Govt, and will likely make a bid for party leader this year.
Secondly, on Japan–the article you link to shows that they are NOT going to close the base, even after promising to do so during the election. In other words, the change of guard has not affected their military relationship with Washington at all.
Thirdly, there are a number of policy reasons that I’d justify the focus on the British election, but I’m going to tackle them in a longer blog post of my own. So you’ll have to come berate me in the comments section at instantcappuccino.blogspot.com.
[...] more disturbing factor, is the monolingualism of the American press corps. (Something I’ve lamented in this space before.) Because so few American journalists speak or read Chinese, their [...]
[...] by the British general election. Earlier this week, my friend and True/Slant blogger Ethan Epstein chastised American journalists for over-hyping this story at the expense of more significant elections, like [...]