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Thomas Hardy
"Thomas Hardy was funny, but personally I'll always prefer Stan Laurel. "
Well, of course. Stan Laurel was an Englishman and was the brains behind the duo's comedy.
"Likewise, for all those English people today who think they are cultured by eating pasta and rejecting what they see as boring traditional English foodstuffs, here is just one of many 14th Century English recipes for pasta: "
The British are the most cultured of all the European peoples.
Official: Britons are most cultured Europeans
John Hooper in Rome Saturday February 19, 2005 The Guardian The Italians have Michelangelo, the French Molière and the Germans Beethoven. But, according to an Italian survey, the British - the beer-swilling, tabloid-reading, supposedly sports-crazy British - are more cultured than any of them. They go to more concerts, films, plays, galleries and libraries than almost anyone in Europe. They even manage to visit more ruins and monuments than the Italians. But the one area where they lag behind the other major nations of Europe is sport. More French, Italians and Spanish than British go to a course or stadium. But the British are sportier than the Germans and, proportionately, attendances are above the average for the former European Union of 15 states. These and other findings are contained in a survey of European cultural consumption commissioned in Italy and due to be published next week. Interviewees in the countries that made up the EU until its enlargement last year were asked if they had been to any one of a series of cultural events in the previous 12 months. The British scored higher than the French, Germans and Italians in every category except sport. More than 60% of Britons said they were film-goers, compared with only 52% in the land of Renoir, Godard and Truffaut, and 49% of Britons claimed to have been to a library, compared with 27% in the homeland of Goethe. And almost a third of Britons claimed to have been to a gallery or museum, compared with barely 20% of Italians. Italy's relatively low "cultural consumption" is a source of growing concern in a country that is renowned for its artistic riches. Guido Venturini, director general of the Touring Club Italiano, which carried out the survey, told the magazine Il Venerdi: "We are sitting in the most beautiful country in the world, but the Italians appear to be wholly unaware of it." Part of the problem is that Italy's stagnant economy has prompted the government to cut the budget of its culture ministry as well as to slash allocations to local authorities, which are responsible for many of festivals, libraries, museums and galleries. But it is also true that contemporary Italy's artistic output is modest. Antonio Paolucci, Florence's top arts official, said: "The next Michelangelo, if there ever is one, will certainly not be born in Italy, but rather China, or the US, or Brazil." Or perhaps even Basingstoke. guardian.co.uk
=>The British are the most cultured of all the European peoples. <=
<Choking while laughing> (will leave out comment for obvious reasons)
>>"Actually, he does have a point, Steve. We are so used to thinking of the US as an ex-British colony that we tend to forget that more of it was French and Spanish than was ever British -- the British-controlled region was mostly just the east coast. Hell, if you include Alaska, more of it was Russian!
Add to that the fact that the majority of Americans are not British by ancestry, and you can see that, while for a great many reasons the English language ended up dominating all others, for most Americans it is an accident of history that we speak English and not some other language. This is one of the factors that has led to our ambivalent relationship with the rest of the English-speaking world. (Not just that little incident that started with the tea...) " It was the British who the Americans fought against to get their independence, most of the other states being gained after Americans moved westwards after they gained their "independence."<< Well, it does have to be said that the cultures that developed in such areas aren't necessarily simply extensions of British culture, *especially* in the Upper Midwest, which was exposed to direct immigration from outside the US without any aspect of internal migration being required for settlement there. And even in the 13 colonies, the cultures there weren't necessarily purely English in nature either, having non-negligable Irish, German, and Dutch settlement in areas there as well during colonial times. >>I say "independence" because the US (as well as Canada, Australia, etc) are STILL British colonies. The British Empire is still very much alive and well, only we know it as "the British Commonwealth."<< LOL - considering that the UK and Canada are practically all but satellite states of the US these days, despite English-speaking Canada's rather weak efforts to try to find some way to differentiate themselves from the US...
<<It was the British who the Americans fought against to get their independence, most of the other states being gained after Americans moved westwards after they gained their "independence." >>
But those western lands were often populated by Spanish and French settlers, whom we inherited. And there were also waves upon waves of non-British immigrants who came later. <<I say "independence" because the US (as well as Canada, Australia, etc) are STILL British colonies. The British Empire is still very much alive and well, only we know it as "the British Commonwealth." >> Are we really? I must alert all those textbook editors to this egregious error -- they seem to be of the opinion that we ceased being a colony after you were summarily dismissed from our land. Silly history books! <<And the British own nearly all of America's media. >> I think it's actually that crazy Australian who's making the impact. By the way, Aussies: you can have him back....I'll pay the shipping and handling....
<<I say "independence" because the US (as well as Canada, Australia, etc) are STILL British colonies. The British Empire is still very much alive and well, only we know it as "the British Commonwealth.">>
1. Ever hear of the American War of Independence? Which we...sort of...won? And then we wrote a constitution and stuff? 2. Canada and Australia are not colonies of the UK. Their only tie with the British government is that the Queen serves as their ceremonial head of state. See the Canada Act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Act ) and Australia Act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Act ), which completely severed Britain's constitutional ties to Canada and Australia. 3. Actually there is no British Commonwealth anymore - it's called the Commonwealth of Nations. And it's a voluntary supranational organization that doesn't actually do much. And the UK doesn't exercise any power over the other members - it's just an equal member.
<<LOL - considering that the UK and Canada are practically all but satellite states of the US these days, despite English-speaking Canada's rather weak efforts to try to find some way to differentiate themselves from the US... >>
What a shame that the original poster's intention of discussing great literature has to degenerate into this unbelievably stupid, crass, jingoistic, 'the US is so great and superior' bullshit within 3 pages. Nice one, Travis.
"And even in the 13 colonies"
But the 13 colonies, the founding states of the US, were British colonies.
Americans, no matter what state they are in, celebrate Independence Day, even if they are from Louisiana or California.
And nearly all of the people in the original 13 colonies were British. They were as British as the rest of us. The War of Independence was a British Civil War.
"I think it's actually that crazy Australian who's making the impact. By the way, Aussies: you can have him back....I'll pay the shipping and handling.... "
U.S. media have, increasingly since the turn of the century, been dominated by agents of influence of the British Empire (British "Commonwealth"). The two ``newspapers of record'' in the United States, the New York Times and the Washington Post, are controlled by British interests. The Times, which is a $3.4 billion media empire owning nearly two dozen other papers (including the Boston Globe), several radio stations, and the largest supplemental news service in the world, was founded by Tory-linked interests of the Ochs family and was financed by the British-linked J.P. Morgan. The Ochses and the Sulzbergers have always been close to British intelligence--so much so that, during World War I, the Times was widely rumored to have its copy approved by Lord Northcliffe, the head of the British propaganda machine. The $1.75 billion Washington Post conglomerate, which owns dozens of other papers, as well as several cable television franchises and six television stations, is run by the Anglophile Katharine Graham, the daughter of Eugene Meyer, of Lazard Frères. It was Meyer's purchase of the Post, that put the paper on the road to national prominence, as a vehicle to circulate British policy. Other major newspaper publishers have a similar, long-standing British connection. For example, the $3.3 billion Tribune Company, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and other papers, with a total circulation of more than 1.3 million, and owner of 11 television and 5 radio stations, has historically been controlled by the McCormick family: Its scion, who shaped the company in this century, was raised in England, as a would-be ``aristocrat;'' its connections to British banking interests led to joint ventures with Barings Bank in the Asian market. The nation's largest domestic news wire service, the Associated Press, which provides news to more than 6,500 media outlets and has operated for more than 50 years, was part of a cartel, with the British Reuters news agency, that divided up news reporting and transmissions. After that cartel broke up in 1934, AP maintained a collaborative relationship with British intelligence. When it needed funds in the 1980s to expand and modernize, it received a large cash transfusion and credit line from its long-standing bankers, the Morgan interests. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Radio and television U.S. television and radio networks are similarly under British influence. Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), now merged with Westinghouse in a $5.4 billion network of television and radio stations in every major market in the United States, was run for decades by William Paley, a well-known Anglophile who, during World War II, co-directed the Psychological Warfare Board with British master psychological warrior Richard Crossman. Paley's protégé Frank Stanton worked with the U.S. networks of the British Crown's leading psychological warfare directorate, the London Tavistock Institute, and used its media manipulation techniques to design network news and other programming. National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), which has been affiliated to the Radio Corporation of America, is now a subsidiary of Morgan-controlled General Electric. It has had, since its founding by Anglophile David Sarnoff, a relationship to British intelligence. During World War II, by arrangement with Sarnoff, British Security Coordinator Sir William Stephenson worked out of RCA's building in Rockefeller Center. Southern Agrarian Ted Turner, whose cable and television empire was recently absorbed in a $40 billion merger with Time Warner, is a professed Anglophile who, along with his wife, Jane Fonda, has been a champion of British New Age environmentalist policies, and has promoted them through his media outlets. Turner's new controllers at Time Warner have British connections dating back to the Meyer Lansky mob-connected Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, and to Time Warner founder Henry Luce's leading role in the Anglo-American establishment, as pushed in his magazines, most notably Time and Life. British influence is also spread through the ``training'' of journalists at places such as the Columbia University School of Journalism, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Direct British control of U.S. media While there has been long-standing British influence over U.S. media, approximately 30 years ago, British companies and individuals started increasing their direct holdings of U.S. media properties. The Canada-based Thomson Corporation was one of the earliest players in the U.S. market, with a solid base in the Midwest. At this point, Thomson, which controls such important British media properties as the London Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement, and whose founder, Ray Thomson, was raised to a peerage in 1964, as Lord Thomson of Fleet Street, owns 105 daily and 26 weekly newspapers throughout the United States. Mostly in medium-sized and smaller markets, these papers have a circulation of more than 2.1 million. Thomson is also one of the key purveyors of financial information, through various publications and data sources, and controls the largest legal research publisher in the United States. In 1995, Thomson sold 23 of its smaller U.S. holdings to the London-based Hollinger Corporation, headed by Conrad Black. Since 1992, Hollinger, which got its start as a privatized asset of British intelligence in North America, known as the Argus Corporation, has been on a U.S. media buying spree, doubling its holdings. It now owns 80 daily newspapers and over 300 weeklies, in both large cities and smaller markets, including the Chicago Sun-Times and the British intelligence scandal-mongering weekly, the American Spectator. Black, who owns the London Daily Telegraph, has been financed in his takeover operations by the Rothschild banking interests, and reportedly has received funding from Li Kai-shing, a former board member of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, identified in EIR's book Dope, Inc. as a long-standing controller and money-launderer of Asian drug-trafficking proceeds. A third British heavyweight, the London-based Pearson PLC, has limited, but important, direct holdings in the United States. These include Capital Publications, which publishes 41 specialized newsletters aimed at the U.S. corporate elite, and the most important Capitol Hill journal, Roll Call. In 1995, it expanded its holdings to include the Journal of Commerce. It has promoted the direct distribution in major markets, including New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, of its London-published, U.S.-printed Financial Times daily and Economist magazine, with its Washington-based Economist Group publishing journals directed at corporate and political elites. Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most flamboyant of the direct British players in the U.S. market is the Australian Rupert Murdoch. His multibillion-dollar News Corporation Ltd., based in London and New York, owns several score newspapers in the United States, including the New York Post, and 11 large circulation magazines, including TV Guide; his publications have a circulation of several score millions worldwide, and several millions in the United States. Murdoch, the son of an Australian press magnate, apprenticed under Lord Beaverbrook, the most important British press figure of the twentieth century. Murdoch began buying up press two decades ago, and affixed himself to the dirty side of British operations in the United States, becoming close to the notorious homosexual political fixer Roy Cohn and his New York machine. In the 1980s, Murdoch, using highly leveraged funds, purchased the 20th Century Fox movie studios, which he used to spawn the fourth national television network, Fox-TV, which has outlets in all major media markets.
"<Choking while laughing>
(will leave out comment for obvious reasons) " See above thread: "The Italians have Michelangelo, the French Molière and the Germans Beethoven. But, according to an Italian survey, the British - the beer-swilling, tabloid-reading, supposedly sports-crazy British - are more cultured than any of them. They go to more concerts, films, plays, galleries and libraries than almost anyone in Europe. They even manage to visit more ruins and monuments than the Italians."
"I think it's actually that crazy Australian who's making the impact. By the way, Aussies: you can have him back....I'll pay the shipping and handling.... "
The US government and army needs him. They made him one of theirs and are holding him ransom. Or is it the other way around... Anyway good luck with your High School letter to the president.
We all know how reliable the "news" posted by Adam are. Come to think of it, we all know how realiable the UK "media" are.
>><<LOL - considering that the UK and Canada are practically all but satellite states of the US these days, despite English-speaking Canada's rather weak efforts to try to find some way to differentiate themselves from the US... >>
What a shame that the original poster's intention of discussing great literature has to degenerate into this unbelievably stupid, crass, jingoistic, 'the US is so great and superior' bullshit within 3 pages. Nice one, Travis.<< Candy, did I say that such (that is, American imperialism) is a *good* thing? God fucking dammit, For starters, I'm an anarchist, and am not particularly fond of American nationalism and imperialism, in and of themselves, as a whole. That said, that still does not negate my original point about the culture of English-speaking North America and in particular the US, which has little to do with the US's foreign policy and like. |