The Looking Glass

The view from England

All right, it would be a little presumptuous of me to claim to have my finger on the pulse of the British people. I've been here less than 48 hours and a lot of that time I was trying to sleep off my jet lag. Nevertheless, I have a couple of "data points," for what they're worth. I was entertained by the Daily Mail on the flight to Manchester. Admittedly, it's a right wing tabloid, but it has a huge readership. The headline on one of the columns went something like, "We need a pit-bull with lipstick." The upshot was that the political establishment both in America and the UK has ignored ordinary people who work hard and raise families and don't necessarily fit into any of the categories that the demographers have boxed people into. The writer, a woman incidentally, loves Palin. She thinks a tough woman is just what we need now and has no qualms about her lack of experience. The other perspective came from a woman I met at this conference on "Women Activists in the Aftermath of the First World War." She said that McCain's choice of Palin was just a way to get back at Hilary. I'm not sure what the motivation would be there since Hilary is out of the race, but I guess the gist is that it's a somewhat cynical move to grab as many Clinton supporters who are still angry or want a woman no matter what.
I'll try to get some more opinions, but frankly, I'm a little surprised that the election is not a bigger deal here. The Daily Telegraph (a "quality" broadsheet, still conservative) has no commmentary on the election today, but the headline on a news article is "Obama targets seven swing states as dreams of landslide fade." Also British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is being criticized for making statements in favoring Obama.

Well that's the news from over the pond. I'll see if I can find a link to the Daily Mail column and if I do I'll post it later.

By the way, I'm enjoying your posts, but hope to see some more discussion. Take some strong positions!

posted by Hudson @ 3:03 PM