Ever wonder what it's like being an living American in the UK? After nearly 20 years, I've seen it all. I've been loved and I've been hated. For the time being, I'm pleasantly enjoying the "Obama Effect," which is a bit like giving a local pub another go after they have advertised they are under new management.
As a little reminder, here's a post I wrote the day after Barrack Obama was elected in 2008. It includes the original comments:
The UK you say, they’re America’s best ally. They LOVE us over there.
Er, no, sorry to burst your bubble. They actually don’t.
It’s very hard to try to explain what it is like to be an American living in the UK.
It’s used to be an asset, especially being an American woman. But festering in the depths of the British psyche is a special love/hate relationship with Americans. It goes something like this: yes, we admire the American entrepreneurial spirit, but they are loud, arrogant sons of bitches and never take responsibility. AND they only entered the war when they had too (we're talking WW2 here).
I’d say it was just after the initial sympathy of September 11th waned, when all the pent up hostilities started to really come out.
I was in charge of marketing for Northern Europe for a large software company. I had counterparts in Central Europe (a German) and Southern Europe (a French man). I worked with a great bunch of women, and they would always say I wasn’t like the Americans in the home office, the ones that had no idea about “how things worked here” and would "thrust their policies on us" with their gung ho slightly arrogant “I can fix this” spirit without investing the time to find out the real issues.
I remember the day the US bombed Iraq – “shock and awe”. I was on a conference call with my counterparts, we were discussing a big user conference, and that attendance might suffer because of the war. It was a short conversation.
Then came the report there really were no weapons of mass destruction.
Suddenly being an American here was not an asset. It was a liability. As the lone American in the office, I was blamed for everything President Bush did.
‘Do you know what your president just did?” It didn’t matter I didn’t vote for him. Everytime I open my mouth, I might as well have been dropping bombs.
A few Americans understood how badly our reputation was tarnished abroad. When we returned to the UK, my husband had his leaving do at his San Diego software company – they jokingly gave him a Bush T-shirt for each of our girls and said that on the first day of school we should roll up in a Hummer with the girls in their “I love Bush” shirts. Yes, it was funny, but no, I didn’t bring the shirts with us in fear they might accidentally be worn.
An American friend of mine told me about her school ride share. She overheard one of the boys tell her son “Your mummy is stupid. My daddy says all Americans are stupid.”
A friend from school who is also on my Facebook accidentally sent me the “Americans are NOT stupid” video that has nearly 18 million views on You Tube.
When I offered to do a voice over for a podcast at work, my boss politely declined because I had the “wrong” accent.
I was greeted at the school gate on Wednesday with lots of "well dones" on your new president.
Read some of the posts of my British mummy blogging friends (All things are possible, Obama and the singing bear) and you get the feeling the UK thinks there is hope for America.
Short lived? Probably. But imagine my life if a hockey mom had made it to VP.
Photo credit: paul henri
