The attitude that Europeans often take towards America is a never-ending source of amusement. Convinced that they are smarter and more sophisticated than we are, they get them into all sorts of hot water, requiring us to periodically rebuild their economies or give old Jerry a proper thrashing. You'd think that this would instill a certain amount of self-awareness in the continent's educated elite.
Sadly, you'd be wrong.
I have to say that I love the BBC show Top Gear, shown here in the Colonies on BBC America. I've posted about them before, approvingly. However, they recently fell into the euro-sneer trap, in an episode where they set out to intentionally antagonize the locals. The locals were suitably antagonized, and the Top Gear team found - to their astonishment - that they had to run for the hills.
Err, mission accomplished, guys.
Let's see: set out to be as antagonistic to the locals as they could? Check. Underestimate the local's level of initiative when antagonized? Check. Overestimated their ability to sweet talk the loals who they intentionally antagonized? Check.
What's funniest about this - funnier even than the panic so clear in the video - is the sense that these guys are absolutely certain that they're smarter than anyone in Alabama. Where I'm from, thay don't look very smart. Or polite.
Via #1 Son, who knows a thing or two about smart. And polite.
12 comments:
Not a single shot, and there were no injuries? Dang, those boys scare easy.
Willing to bet that they weren't really in any danger. If the locals had wanted to hurt them, they would've done it, not just scared them. And aren't rocks a standard response to film crews in Alabama? After all, who goes there to film something good?
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Rude Britains, trying to teach the colonials a lesson. Which they did. We learned that the nation that stood fast in World War II is no more.
Notice however, they didn't go into a black community and try this stuff.
I saw that show it all looked fake to me.
I live in South Carolina and if they drove though here their might be some frowns maybe somebody would yell but I have a feeling that most people would have the same attitude as me and shake their head and laugh that somebody friends played a bad joke on them.
Funny how this is making the rounds in a few gun blogs as its been around for a few years.
You guys need to stop copying crap from the gun blogs. Kinda makes it look like a shallow gene pool in our blogging community.
Anonymous (#1): "fake" is plausible. I wouldn't put it past the BBC to make sure they had sneer-worthy footage.
Anonymous (#2): It may be old, but it's new to me. As to a shallow gene pool, this did come via #1 Son. But you might want to tread lightly on that, near a bitter, clingy Redneck like me. Sadly, he does not follow the gun blogs, your humble host's included.
This is staged. No self respecting Southerner refers to themselves as "hick." No one in the south calls the town they live in "a hick town."
Eurotrash, designed to play into the European idea of what America is.
Could be a fake - especially given the BBC.
Too bad, I like Top Gear, partly because they're not a gang of comsymp, dhimmi traitors, like the rest of what used to be Great Britain. Maybe they can take that back some day.
Not that I'm bitter or anything like that.
The six "boys" in the pick-up make this unlikely. Most of us have to work and this was supposedly during the day and during the week. I can't think of any reason that the "lady" at the station would have made it sound so important as to cause anyone to give up a day's pay.
Her language notwithstanding, the accent did NOT sound like any part of AL that I've ever been in. It is typical of the British/Eurotrash view of the US and frankly I'm sick of it. They can just learn German next time. Its no concern of ours and certainly not worth an American life, not even a democrat's.
Still pretty funny. Whats even funnier are the "comments" at Youtube for the video!
I suspect it was entirely fictional, sort of a
"Clarkson plays Borat/Bruno sketch",
I'm just waiting for Clarkson to come out with the line, "You'll never guess; I'm Homosexual..."
I can hear the gay guys I know thinking "I hope he's not, he's bloody ugly..."
From a this side of the pond perspective:
- and the US film industry / tv etc don't pedal equally fictional stereotypes of Europeans?
I'm just thinking of the Star Trek episode where they'd evacuated a planet, all the men were small drunken red haired wasters who were setting up potin stills on the cargo decks, the women were be-decked in shawls, had thousands of children and were berating their men folk - and guess what? (Idon't know if they were gay or not) they had the worst fake Irish accents I've heard in a long time.
Other than that it was pretty realistic
;^P}
@BorePatch - I guess others are taking the content from you then. I should have checked the timestamps on the various places I saw the post.
And the "shallow genepool" wasn't a slam on you - it was a slam on the blog community as a whole for taking from others and not working on their own content.
My bad on a poorly written comment that was taken the wrong way.
Keith, I can't argue with anything you've said. It's absurd that an actor like Alan Rickman only gets villan roles in Hollywood - and there are a thousand other examples like him.
I like the "Borat goes to Alabama" description.
Anonymous, no sweat. I actually think that the Blogosphere works somewhat like you describe - IOW, this may be a feature, not a bug. Interesting idea, and maybe fodder for a future post.
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