What drives me crazy about British coverage of the US election.

There's so much interest here in the US election, the only thing to rival it is the news that we're all about to be very, very poor. You'd think, with that much interest, the British press corps would be getting it right. But you'd be wrong. It's often been said that we are two nations divided by a common language, and language is certainly one of the things that really gets on my nerves as I listen to the breathless accounts of the BBC's intrepid reporters in such mythical places as 'Mary-Land' and ' Mitch- igan' - a touch of Schadenfreude is mine. Aha! Revenge for all that heartless sneering at innocents abroad in search of Le-ces-ter Sqaure. But it's really so much more than mere language that divides us, and renders this campaign coverage often teeth-gritting in its ineptitude.

Take the case of Sarah Palin. Now she may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the amount of disdain and the sheer ungentlemanly viciousness addressed at that lady from this side of the Atlantic have been shocking and offensive to this American lady's sensibilities. We don't see anything wrong with Sarah Palin, as a person - you may agree or disagree with her politics, but to the American mind she is wholly admirable as a person. She is the frontier Mom, somebody we all grew up admiring, a part of our national mythology. If the cabin gets snowed in, and Pa is away - no need to panic - Frontier Mom will go out and shoot a few large mammals to feed the children. Thus her affectionate nickname 'Caribou Barbie'. Not only can Sarah Palin shoot, she's popped out five kids and still looks like a local beauty queen. That sort of over-achievement is typical of Americans, and we don't see why you don't admire her for it instead of sneering. But then, Americans would never elect the likes Harriet Harman.

Another typical area of misunderstanding is religion. 'Americans are a religious nation,' the Brits intone, and then report on our quaint habits, such as actually believing in God, or going to church on Sunday in the same tones usually reserved for the more exotic rituals of remote Amazonian tribes. Curious statistics are trotted out such as the proportion of Americans who believe the world was created 10,000 years ago (about 45%), or believe in abduction by aliens (24%), as if these views were somehow central to the political system. Apparently 61% of British people believe in aliens, and 52% of you believe in ghosts - so what does that show? That the British public is even more irrational than the church-going God-fearing Americans? And it is a Brit, former BBC reporter David Icke, who has spread the theory that giant lizards are actually running things. But then, as G.K. Chesterton once noted, 'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything.'

America is not a country peopled exclusively by racists wearing large hats and carrying rifles. The charge of racism is one that particularly sticks in my craw - sure, there are some racists in America - and the BBC is on a tireless quest to hunt them down and interview them - but it's a plain fact that a man of half-African ancestry is a major party candidate for the highest office in the land, and has a darn good chance of winning it too. Can you imagine a British PM who's not white? Even a front-line minister? It just doesn't happen. Heck, you can't even deal with racism in the police force, as the recent call for a recruitment  boycott from the Black Policeman Association makes embarrassingly evident.
 
Then there's the poverty myth. British people are frequently regaled with horror stories of 'poverty in America', supposedly a shameful secret in the land of plenty. But by any reasonable understanding of the word 'poverty', there is no poverty in America. There is poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, where people sometimes go hungry, and children sometimes starve. In America there is, or haven't you heard - an obesity epidemic. As to the poverty of expectations, that peculiarly British affliction that traps generations of  the working class in government handout dependency, that's not as big a problem in America where everybody believes he or she might just grow up to be President.

The American election interests the whole world because, let's face it, America is still a very powerful country, and when that power is used irresponsibly it has repercussions far beyond our own borders. The Brits used to be an important country, but nowadays they are just a smallish island with bad case of election envy. The strange mixture of unbridled enthusiasm  (those wide open spaces! those friendly, genuine people!) and disdain for an America that doesn't exist is a continuous source of exasperation, and will no doubt continue to be so in the weeks ahead, as an army of ill-informed Brits, stereotypes firmly stowed along with their laptops, embarks for the land of the free.

AMAZING GRACE

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