Anglophiles

Anglophiles are people (mostly Americans) who greatly admire the British people, culture, customs, etc. And of course there is a lot to admire, but we do often tend to carry this fondness a bit too far. For example, people with English accents are often presumed to be at least one station above us Yanks. Some years ago, a lawyer acquaintance of TNB told him that his law firm could not fire an incompetent receptionist because her English accent greatly impressed their clients. Admit it! You subconsciously attribute some level of superiority to anyone speaking in those clipped British tones--or for that matter, using spelling like colour, centre, labour, etc. which sets them apart from the rest of us, who barely know how to use a knife and fork (differently, naturally) and drive on the left side of the road.

Then also of course there's the royal family, consisting generally of empty-headed, inbred individuals who while providing a sort of diversion from reality, hardly warrant the celebrity worship that we in the United States insist on lavishing on them (see: recent visit of William and Kate).

It is thus with a sense of schadenfreude (OK, so it's a German word meaning taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune) that TNB, and maybe some of you, have been following the fascinating news of the well-deserved troubles of the Murdoch media empire in the UK, resulting from hacking the phones of missing teenagers and families of military casualties and terrorist victims (not to mention the run-of-the-mill royals, government officials and other prominent people), bribing of police for scoops, intimidation of politicians, etc. After decades of enabling the scumbag British tabloid culture to flourish, sad to say, maybe our friends across the pond deserve a little black eye--maybe they won't be so smug about their former colonies.

And naturally this couldn't happen here; oh but wait a minute ---Murdoch does own Fox News who while not in the same league as the now defunct News of the World certainly attempts to intimidate politicians (read: Democrats) who don't agree with their right-wing politics. And also there's Murdoch's New York Post, a pale imitation of its UK siblings. They do get some unusual scoops (some of it is obviously made up).