Actually never met the guy, but I believe he was Irish-Scottish, and therefore probably perfectly charming.
He must have been to out-charm ME, right?
But why pick at an old sore when you can pirouette back on topic and pick a fight?
So in answer to your earlier question, I’d say that, apart from the usual overpaid, oversexed and over-exposed envies, my principle peeve with Americans is that they ask dumb questions like “Is trouve a weird Scottish word?”
This might seem like a perfectly proper pop at pretension (Moi?) and push for plain-speaking, but it goes WAY beyond that to produce a dumbing-down of public discourse.
This is why you don’t get Angela’s Analysis, which Obama could probably have managed fine.
You get…what you got…
…and that’s BAD, man.
REALLY, really bad.
Almost worse from my perspective, we now get it too, with New Improved British Buffoonery.
Blair wasn’t a buffoon, but he got us into a stupid and pointless War About Nothing (See the WMD connection?) because he felt we had to Back the Yanks, Right or Wrong (Mostly both, as it happens ).
The British (and certainly the Scottish) didn’t support that, because in those days they used to read stuff. These days, fuck knows what they are thinking, if anything.
So we have a situation going into the worst crisis certainly since Cuba and maybe since WW2 when The Leaders of The Free World appear to be entirely out to lunch, the Sauron and Saruman of Stupid.
If they aren’t faking it, we appear to be screwed.
(OK, giving The Yook a historical special-relationship boost there which exaggerates its contemporay importance. Apologies to Saruman.)
Striesand’s “Who is this Clown” rif on “Send in The Clowns” asks “If he were running the Free World, where would we move?”
I’d suggest the answer might be “Don’t bother, We’re here”
But being on The ROC might not save us.