House of Eratosthenes

…[Gwyneth] Paltrow said in an interview with Portugal’s weekend magazine NS that she prefers Britian to America.

“I like living here, because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology,” the “Shakespeare in Love” star said. “The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.”

The 34-year-old actress lives in the mother country with her British hubby, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, and the couple’s two children.
:
“I love the English lifestyle, it’s not as capitalistic as America,” she said. “People don’t talk about work and money. They talk about interesting things at dinner.”

I wish the article went on to discuss what those things were. Not that I doubt that our friends across the pond can talk about interesting things; I’ve seen ’em do it personally. They’re a fun crowd, and I would tend to agree that on the whole they tend to think things through better than most Americans. At least, if you were to draw your samplings from both countries according to who does the most talking.

But when it comes to people visiting countries and taking in broad samplings of the social strata there, and gradually accumulating a competence to speak on what this country talks about at dinner and what that country talks about at dinner…Hollywood starlets don’t float to the top of my list. I’ve been educated for the last five years, more than I ever wished to be, on how blue-blood Hollywood thinks. To say I’ve gathered the impression that Hollywood likes to hang out with its own — that would be a gross understatement. Now, poor Gwyneth has been subjected to people talking about work and money at American dinner tables. Hmmm. I’ve eaten at American dinner tables. I’ve not had this problem. Where in America has she eaten dinner? With whom? People in Butte? Laramie? Walla Walla or Wewahitchka? Ah…could it be…Tinseltown. How many people in America would be graced by Ms. Paltrow’s presence at dinner, who don’t work in entertainment? How many people in the UK who aren’t in the movie business? Maybe that’s the answer; an apples-and-oranges comparison. Maybe. I don’t know. But it seems like something she’d want to explore, either in public or in private, if she was noodling this through.

Paltrow thinks she knows what a country with 300 million people, wrapped around seven time zones, from the Arctic tundra to the Gulf of Mexico, talks about at dinner. That could be a testament to her broad traveling experiences or it could speak to an abject lack of humility. Three guesses and the first two don’t count. What’s frustrating is that if the article went on from there to explore what Paltrow finds “interesting” about table talk, we wouldn’t have to speculate. We’d know for certain.

Somehow, I don’t think it very much matters.

I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt here, that she has some personal experience at all to back this up. And I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on even that.

“Our job as actors is to read the newspapers, and repeat what we’ve read on TV, like it is our own opinion.” — Janeane Garofalo in “Team America: World Police” (2004)

Update 12-6-06: Okay, so now she’s backtracking. Here and here you’ll find references to the whole thing being a Spanish-translation mix-up of some kind.

“I felt so upset to be completely misconstrued and I never, ever would have said that.

“This is what I said. I said that Europe is a much older culture and there’s a difference. Obviously, I need to go back to seventh-grade Spanish.”

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on the translation mix-up. I’m not buying the “never ever would have said that” bit. Bashing America is very trendy right now, and Paltrow’s bought into it before.

The Shakespeare in Love beauty, who lives in London with her rock star husband Chris Martin and daughter Apple, admits she is amazed by the locals’ courage in the face of adversity.

She says, “I find the English amazing how they got over 7/7. There were no multiple memorials with people sobbing as they would have been in America. There, they are constantly scaring people but at the same time, people think nothing of going to see a therapist.”

There ya go. If the event from 2005 took place but she was misquoted just now, then the fact that she was misquoted just now means very little. Even if she was misquoted both times, there’s a pattern at work here and as far as I’m concerned, where there’s smoke there’s fire.

You know, like I said at the very beginning, she is perfectly entitled to all these opinions. She’s a somewhat attractive actress who gives a somewhat decent level of performance, is more talented than most, and is known for making movies that usually don’t appeal to me. So I don’t really have a dog in the hunt.

And as an American, I can certainly survive pea-brained comments about my country from abroad. What gets under my skin is the intellectual laziness of it — the tired, threadbare comparisons between such-and-such a country and America. If Paltrow didn’t say stuff like this, other people have; if she did say it, she’s in a lot of company. But there’s so little sincerity in all this criticism of America. It seems everybody means something different from what they’re saying.

“Women go topless to the beach in xxx-country because xxx-country isn’t sexually repressed — like America.” That means, hey, it’s great that women can go topless to the beach in xxx. That’s what that means. Mentioning America at all, has nothing to do with the subject at hand. But people do anyway. That’s what’s fashionable. Such-and-such a country makes great blueberry pancakes, you just aren’t being chic when you compliment their blueberry pancakes unless you tack on to the end, “they’re not like those cow patties you have to buy with good money over in Ameeeeerica!” And speaking of money, anybody who criticizes America over money can just go pound sand as far as I’m concerned. To criticize us for having it, is an exercise in pure, petty jealousy; to criticize us for wanting it, is an exercise in projection. To simply bring up the subject of money, after all, is to make a priority out of it; and wanting it is a natural consequence of making a priority out of it. And so this is the pot calling the kettle black.

And there’s always this wonderful solvency about anyone who criticizes America for being too “capitalistic.” It seems most of the middle-class, have more important things on their minds. So many among the “shame on America for being a blood-sucking capitalist” set, are…happy, healthy, comfortable and successful capitalists. More often than not, thanks to the time they spent living in you-know-where.

But hey. It’s great news that someone is getting in trouble, and realizing the necessity of backpedaling, over negative comments about America. That’s the silver lining to this cloud. Maybe, just maybe, America-bashing is going the way of the Cabbage Patch Doll. Maybe Paltrow’s mea culpa will have an effect of pushing it off in that direction more quickly. If that’s the case, she should be thanked.

But I’m only believing half of what I read, and at a certain point I stop noticing it and just go to work. That’s what makes me an American.

As usual, you’re right on about the people she hangs out with — the worst of the worst of America. And those are the Americans the Europeans admire.

Alas, it is worse than that. It’s more moral preening. It’s considered to be a “progressive” badge of honor to denounce America and embrace … well, practically anything else. It gets people lots of thoughtful, furrow-browe nods and grunts of approval. Cultural self-loathing is all the rage here in the blue classes.

As many kudos as it gets you here in America among the academic and Hollywood elite, it gets you even more if you happen to be somewhere else, especially if that somewhere else is the place you’re embracing — like Europe, for instance.

These people take an absolutely risk-free position — one that will even get them the desired pats on their heads, and then pass it off as bravery. Easy to do, because the press are the people who pubicize it, and they agree. It’s this self-sustaining feedback loop. And it sustains their addiction to ego-padding.

More and more, I find American culture to be moving steadily downhill, but what’s moving it down hill in my book are people who either subscribe to a leftist world view, or to those who take advantage of the prevalence of that point of view by engaging in any kind of behavior it allows. Which is almost any behavior other than insisting on personal responsibility or even making remote nods to Christianity. Tolerance, except for thee.

There are still a lot of good and decent people here, and when I am among them I am in the America I recognize. I think we’re at a tipping point, though…. and I’m afraid sometime within the next two generations we will have seen the last of the last traces of America — at least the idea that was born 230 or so years ago. America will exist in name and geography only. I’m probably being generous on the time frame. It may happen before I die.

Which makes me very sad.

I have an idea — maybe I should invite Gwenyth over for dinner. The topic will be:

Multiculturalism. Does it ultimately amount to “no-culturalism”?
- philmon | 12/04/2006 @ 15:09
Well, that’s cool.

She now denies ever saying it, and says she would never had said such a thing.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1803032006

http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/GuffShuff.asp?filename=6a8Qa1va.9amal&folder=aGDafTaSah4afaf&Name=GuffShuff&dtSiteDate=20061206

Haven’t found any other sources. Haven’t looked real hard, either.

But it’s good to hear.
- philmon | 12/06/2006 @ 12:33
The most thorough write-up I saw so far, was here.

Doesn’t make Ms. Paltrow look good.
- mkfreeberg | 12/06/2006 @ 12:52
Well, that’s that, then. Guess it was just wishful thinking on my part.

Yup. Public Preening.

It’s back to my dinner invite and an in-depth talk about multiculturalism. We don’t have any money to talk about at our dinner table anyway. And we certainly don’t talk about “Survivor”.
- philmon | 12/06/2006 @ 15:23

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