Английский язык для специальных и академических целей: Международные отношения и зарубежное регионоведение. Часть 1 - [73]

Those who believe that either social class still matters in the traditional way, or doesn't matter at all, are both wrong. Social class is still a significant factor in British politics, but the nature of that factor has changed utterly. In this, as in so much else, the past is truly another country.

Notes:

1. Captain George Mainwaring (/'mansrio/) is the bank manager and Home Guard company commander portrayed by Arthur Lowe on the BBC television sitcom Dad's Army, set in the fictional seaside town of Walmington-on-Sea during the Second World War. He has become widely accepted and regarded as a classic British comic character owing to both the popularity of Dad's Army and Lowe's portrayal of him in this show. George Mainwaring is a pompous, blustering figure with overdeveloped sense of his importance, fuelled by his social status.

2. Alf Garnett is a fictional character from the 1960s & 1970s British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part and its follow-on and spin-off series in the 1980s and early 1990s Till Death... and In Sickness and in Health. Alf was a working class man, forever complaining that he worked and worked and yet lived somewhere near the poverty line, and was a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party, although he didn't support one-time leader Margaret Thatcher, because he believed that a woman's place was at home "chained to the bloody kitchen sink!"

3. Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop. Dave Spart — ultra-left wing activist, always representing a ridiculous-sounding union (such as the National Amalgamated Union of Sixth-Form Operatives and Allied Trades), collective or magazine. Spart's views attempt to highlight alleged misconduct, prejudice or general wrongdoing, but often end up being contradictory and illogical.

4. Keeping Up Appearances is a BBC television sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke for the BBC. Centred on the life of eccentric social climber Hyacinth Bucket (who insists that her surname is pronounced "Bouquet"), the sitcom follows the obsessive and determined snobbish middle class woman who desperately and continually looks for opportunities to climb the social ladder by attempting to impress people (particularly rich people) and portray herself as more affluent than she truly is, despite being wedged between a working class background and upper class aspirations.

The Reader

THE RETURN OF ANTI-AMERICANISM

By Russel Berman

September 18, 2013 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/18/the_return_of_anti-americanism_119974.html

A major selling point of the Obama campaign in 2008 was the promise to improve the U.S. image overseas, heal the rifts with traditional allies in Western Europe, and eliminate the anti-Americanism that had burgeoned during the Bush years. In his first term, President Obama undoubtedly began to keep this promise, thanks to his personal charisma, but thanks as well to a fundamental change of course in foreign policy.

Yet his second term has begun with sudden eruptions of precisely that political hostility to the United States that he had promised to end. At stake are not the usual suspects — ideological regimes such as North Korea or Venezuela — but, worrisomely, countries with strong histories of cooperation with the U.S. and in which America has deep investments. Both in Germany and in Egypt — two very different cases, to be sure — politicians and parties have chosen to decry Washington. Anti-Americanism is back.

For Germany, the NSA affair touched raw nerves. Contemporary Germans have a strong sense of privacy rights, and the memories of the East German Stasi, not to mention the Gestapo, makes them particularly allergic to suggestions of government snooping. In addition, the Snowden revelations hit the news during the lead up to the September elections.

The underdog Social Democrats (SPD) made a calculated decision to attack Chancellor Merkel and the Christian Democrats (CDU) for betraying German interests through collaboration with U.S. intelligence gathering. A hostile press has portrayed America as a demonic surveillance state that combines unlimited spying with targeted killings. Demonstrators directed their animosity toward the U.S. President, with bitterly ironic slogans (in English) like "Yes, We Scan." Poster's juxtaposed Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" with an image of Obama tagged with "I have a drone." The CDU has hit back hard, pointing out that cooperation between German and American intelligence services dates back to agreements reached when a coalition of the SPD and the Greens was in power.

In this pre-election scramble, association with the U.S. counts as a negative. It turns out, however, that most of the impugned cooperation has involved information sharing in Afghanistan regarding terrorists, not harmless phone calls in Germany. Even though the accusation may have been defused, the past month of political mudslinging in Germany points to a potent anti-American reservoir in the political culture that politicians can tap into at will.