An Apology
Sunday, March 9th, 2008To my American readers, I hereby offer my humblest apologies for being among the vast number of non-US citizens who labour under the assumption that Americans are somehow incapable of understanding irony. Having recently met one of you in person, I have had my ridiculous preconceptions exploded (and am now eating copious amounts of humble pie).*
Fortunately Stephen Fry has just written/spoken on this particular stereotype, and of course he puts it more eloquently than I ever could:
… if there is one misapprehension about Americans that annoys me more than any other, it is the lofty claim, usually made by the most dim-witted and wit-free Britons, that America is an — ho-ho — “irony free zone”. Let it be established here, this day, that no one, on pain of being designated fifty types of watery twat, ever dare repeat that feeble, ignorant, self-satisfied canard ever ever again. Americans are no more irony illiterate than Britons or anyone else and the repeated assertion (and it is no more than an assertion not a demonstrable provable fact) is no more than a pathetic symbol of a certain kind of Briton’s flabby need to convince themselves of their sophisticated superiority over the average American…
(link to full article)
We in other countries tend to see the very worst of your culture in the media, in your current administration, along with the hideous Fox News style media coverage and the repulsively sincere celebrity puff pieces on everything from Entertainment Tonight to 60 Minutes. This is of course no basis on which to judge an entire population, and so, in the spirit of reconciliation let me say:
I am sorry, and will sincerely try to avoid such prejudices from this day forward.
__________
* it may seem strange to change an opinion based on meeting just one person, but sometimes you don’t notice that you’re carrying a stupid assumption around with you until someone challenges it, and only then do you realize that it just doesn’t make much sense.
March 10th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I like the idea that Mr Fry wrote that while a cranky Texan pointed a gun at him saying “I’ll give you irony, you Limey SOB!”
March 13th, 2008 at 10:51 am
I think, metaphorically speaking, you’ve just learned that your son is gay.
Irony is not a lifestyle choice. You’re either born with it or you’re not.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:18 am
So there is some hope that gene therapy may offer hope for the irony-impaired?
April 10th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I’ll have to respectfully disagree. Though not all Americans are incapable of irony, irony-deficiency is certainly not a genetic condition—Take the entire population of Southern California, for instance. You say something sarcastically, and 9 times out of 10, they’ll say, “really?”