Alexander Chancellor and Sarah Lyall
I feel forgotten no more, thanks to your cheery note with all those kisses on the bottom ("Gosh, I'm glad I got 'em"--Fats Waller). It makes me feel like I've got at least one Valentine card, and I will reciprocate immediately--xxxxxxxxxxxxx. I hope that makes you feel better, too.
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StumbleUponYou ask if I would "please, please, please" explain why the Sun has three topless women on Page 3 today. Good question. The story was going around about a year ago that the world's best-selling daily tabloid was planning to phase out its famous topless girls because they were embarrassing its publisher, Rupert Murdoch. It never quite happened, for some reason. But the Sun did clean up the captions. These used to be breathtakingly coy and riddled with sexual innuendo. Now they normally consist only of the girl's first name, her age, and where she comes from. Today's picture of a "three-mendous triple treat that's guaranteed to set your heart all a-flutter" is a return to the past. Let's hope it's for Valentine's Day only. What struck me most about the picture was its brutal rejection of the idea that Valentine's Day has anything to do with romantic love. It's no good the Sun's saying that "our terrific trio won't go short of chocs and flowers on Valentine's Day. Just one look at them would make any fella come over all romantic." The message could not be clearer--every British "fella" really prefers three topless girls to one.
The Sun has never accepted that Englishmen are shy and repressed (which we all are, of course). It has found there are more bucks to be made out of portraying us as lusty, red-blooded, and fearless. It seems that Murdoch must have bowed to its professional judgment. Do I read the Sun? Yes, I do, but only because I write a press column for the Daily Telegraph. There is a Fleet Street myth that Sun editors are all scholars of ancient Greek with post-graduate degrees from Oxford, but I find this hard to believe. The headlines of which it is inordinately proud--e.g. "Stick It Up Your Junta" to General Galtieri, the military dictator of Argentina during the Falklands War--have always struck me as more bold than brilliant. I have noted that the Sun has more appeal to sensitive, educated Americans than it does to their British equivalents. I think this may be to do with an American love-hate fascination with excess and vulgarity in the British press, because you don't have it over there in the United States. My wife certainly doesn't read the Sun. I'd be amazed if any women did. It's definitely a man's newspaper, though the Sun would hotly deny that. This being the case, I am surprised you are surprised that it sells so many copies "when it prints these ridiculous photographs."
You make an amusing point about the irritation in the British press that so many of the hijacked Afghans turn out to want to go home. We don't want them here, naturally, but how dare they prefer their miserable, joyless, impoverished country to this other Eden? I read somewhere, though I can't remember where, that many of them changed their minds about wanting to stay in Britain after being informed about the consequences of seeking asylum here. I wonder what they were threatened with. Maybe a lifetime spent in Moreton-in-Marsh. How can you have a town in a marsh? you ask. Well, you can't, but the British have a curious habit of naming places in remembrance of things they have destroyed. The New Covent Garden vegetable market in London is called that, although it is miles away from Covent Garden. The same is true of the Charing Cross Hospital. I thought that possibly there was once a marsh at Moreton, and then they drained it. But the dreary truth will out. "Marsh" is a corruption of "Henmersche." "Mersche" was somehow related to "marc," which was somehow related to "march," meaning a boundary. So it should have been called "Moreton-on-March," but wasn't. Please don't ask me any more about it, especially how the "hen" comes into it.
I hope we can raise the tone of this correspondence tomorrow, but sticking to its present low level, I wonder whether you read the piece in the Sunday People yesterday about the Life Guards captain who tried to steal the queen's knickers? Captain Nick Carrell says the queen caught him in her private apartment rifling through her drawers while he was helping to save her personal possessions from the great fire at Windsor Castle in 1992. "Naughty Nick Carrell was planning to pinch a pair of the royal undies as a cheeky memento for his officers' mess," the newspaper said. "But amazingly, the queen turned a blind eye to their brief encounter." Poor old queen. Even her personal bodyguards show no respect, let alone the tabloids. No wonder she seldom smiles. Can't even an American feel sorry for her?
Alexander xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Highlights from The Fray:
I'm somewhat stupefied over the choice that your magazine made regarding this week's Breakfast Table. Frankly, as an American political junkie, I find it unfathomable that, with one of the most exciting, compelling presidential primary weeks in recent electoral history upon us, you saw fit to have as your Breakfast Table guests this week two expatriates who spent their time debating the fascinating details of British table condiments.
--Lonnie W. Neubauer
(To reply, click here.)
(But not everyone agreed - Doug Richardson replied that
A dollop of painless prattle about condiments is becoming, day by day, more appetizing than the great trough of swill served up by the four cretins who have captivated every marginally literate person with a word processor--I look to Slate for a little of everything on my plate.
And other Fraygrants were happy to deal with the whole wide range of Breakfast Table subjects:)
It's nice to find amidst the stuff about ketchup, Americanisms, Bush vs McCain, and salad cream, an admission of the problems of the British National Health system [Wednesday's entry]. Throughout the great healthcare "debate" of 1992-1994 we were told over and over again that the single-payer system was the way to go, with Britain and Canada cited admiringly. Now who's ready to admit that rationing would be necessary in any kind of scheme to extend healthcare to everyone in the U.S.?
--Edward Brynes
(To reply, click here.)
To Edward Brynes:
Don't you think that the current American health-care system rations access? It is, in practice, unavailable to approximately 43 million people.
--June Thomas
(To reply, click here.)
In reply:
Medical care is not actually unavailable to people without insurance, but certainly it is very costly. That's not the same situation as rationing, which to me implies a deliberate policy of allocating treatment according to medical need and feasibility of treatment.
Normally someone in the U.S. with insurance coverage is assured abundant care and little waiting even if there is reason to believe that with all the care in the world he or she won't live more than a few months anyway or will live a greatly impaired life. There is a different philosophy in Britain. Many people, not heartless monsters, have asked what value there can be in maintaining, by complex expensive technology, people in such a situation. Rationing has the effect of freeing up resources.
--Edward Brynes
(To reply, click here.)
Norway is not a member of the European Union [Tuesday's entry].
--Marian
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What I've always wanted to know is: Is catsup the same as ketchup? [Wednesday's entry] I've always had a suspicion that catsup was more "U" than ketchup - wasn't there a British, ie non-Heinz variety, called catsup in the '50s? Don't know what the fuss is about salad cream, incidentally. It's just bottled mayonnaise--not very good mayonnaise, sure, but that's not the point. The point is the name; you wouldn't have got my Mum buying something called mayonnaise, but salad cream was nice and homely.
--michael elliott
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This is a dreadful error of culinary history: no the British did NOT invent catsup. Like many things adopted during the Imperial years, it is an Indian condiment. I have read various spellings of the word, but "ketchep" will do. It is a kind of chutney, not always tomato, but sweet rather than hot, like lemon pickle. My favorite recipe is one that uses sweet red peppers, roasted, skinned, and macerated into a pulp which is then simmered with vinegar, sultanas, onion, garlic, ginger, cardamom, and cinnamon. My private joke is to then blend it all (not really authentic) and serve it with an East Indian meal, in a Heinz pourable catsup bottle. It is just a bit more orange, but no one notices. It tastes nothing like the American product of course, and is tangy and delicious. Bon Appétit!
--Apollonius
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(2/18)
St. Valentine [Monday's entry] is the patron saint of MESSAGES, because while he was imprisoned he threw little messages out of his cell to cheer up the Christians. Hence St. Valentine's Day is a day to send messages to those important to you. Since the Christian message is "Jesus loves you" and "see how they love one another" and so on, "love" notes come immediately to mind. Since we use only one word for all of the kinds of love (unlike the Greeks), and since we needed a February holiday to buy cards and gifts for (really, study the history of Valentine cards), the target for and meaning of the Valentine changed to more physical ones. The arrows business may come from St. Valentine's execution by being shot through the heart with many arrows.
--tony zapf
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(2/15)