FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Stuff

Why I Love America

Four of America's most famous detractors come clean on Independence Day.

Today is Independence Day. Twenty-four little hours for every American to take a time-out from the grind of living in a recession-plagued former superpower to take comfort in what once made them glorious: being British. But as with every festival of funereal longing, there runs beneath it an undercurrent of defiant pride. Here, four of the USA's most famous detractors tell us why they're finally ready to clutch the Stars and Stripes to their warm bosoms.

Annons

ABU HAMZA

When I first came to England, I described it as “a paradise, where you could do anything you wanted”. How wrong I was. This English “paradise” was built on the subjugation and eventual rejection of the American people. People seem to think that my hatred of Britain extends to America. Nothing could be further from the truth, for in hating Britain, I naturally love America.

My struggle is the struggle of America’s great founding fathers: it is the struggle for freedom from the yoke of English tyranny. The founding fathers dreamt of one nation under God. I dream of one nation under Allah. Allah and God mean the same thing! The founding fathers wrote that “all men are created equal”. I agree, because they didn’t say anything about women. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. I’d love to own slaves! John Adams had a big TV show made about him… My screenplay Hamza: Hooked and Holy is in pre-production! Besides, if I’m extradited to the US to face terrorism charges (please, was your great hero George Washington a terrorist? I think not), they will forcibly make me remove my hook in prison.

About bloody time! I hate that thing. The British tabloid press make me wear it in order to demonise me. I only started wearing it because I love Dustin Hoffman in Hook. And where’s he from? America. VLADIMIR PUTIN

You see picture of me topless, catching fish? Of course you see this picture. But you think to yourself, “Putin, he doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Yankee boys.” I say to you: I’m putting you in prison for 15 years! I joke, I joke! It is “working camp” not “prison”. But you see, my friend, you are ignorant of American tradition. You have not read Hemingway. You have not considered the fate of the ship kapitan, Ahab, who battled with greatest fish of all: whale fish. Or the fur hat wearing frontiersman, Crockett, who, like me, was called “the King of the wild frontier” and liked very much the skin of animals. These are my heroes.

Annons

America, it is the land of the man, the land of the car which breaks down but is huge, the land of the man who hunts animals and has many guns, the land of the oil company that makes billions and kills the fish. It is the land in which many are poor but few are rich. Did I say “rich”? I mean, “fucking rich”. Haha! It is the land of the soapy-breasted pornstar and her "old man". It is the land of Putin.

MORRISSEY

The British press. Sigh. You did for Oscar Wilde and you’ll do for me. Your failure to appreciate even the simplest of ironies continues to irritate, if not to surprise. I release a song entitled “America Is Not The World” and lo and behold, they’re at it again: “Morrissey hates America.” Urgh, easy to do for the NMEs of this world. Loathed as I am to analyse my poetry, I shall condescend, I shall bend, to your folly and your charms, your qualms and your ignorance. To quote myself: “America your head's too big / Because America / Your belly is too big / And I love you, I just wish you'd stay where you belong.” Now, my dear, far be it for me to draw attention to my own physical appearance (ah, the cursed mirror, the need to be thinner, a dream of perfection I’ve yet to deliver. I digress), but have you looked upon my head? It floats across the stage. It is, shall we say, enorme. My head, both physically and yes, some in this toxic press of ours would say, metaphorically, is too big. Ergo, I love the big head. And well, to continue, it’s no secret that I’m no longer the will-o'-the-wisp who once pranced across the stage with Marr and the other two. I have become a little rotund. And when I say “I love you,” I mean it. This is not where the irony is. The irony is that there is no irony. You dullards. Finally, let it be known that I predicted the saintly Obama’s arrival: “But where the President / is never black, female or gay / and until that day, you've got nothing to say to me / to help me believe.”

Annons

God bless America.

RICHARD DAWKINS

It amuses me, it really does. People say to me, “Professor Dawkins, a man as clever as you must find trips to America or, ‘the great Satan’, particularly trying.” After admonishing my interlocutor for invoking the name of a mythical creature, Satan, for whom there is no scientific proof, I tell them that, far from it, I relish my trips to America.

America is a place where men like me – clever, brilliant men – are given lucrative book deals and feature on night-time “talking shows”. It is the home of the public intellectual. And it is the home of the ignoramus Christian without whom I would of course be stranded. The river that flowed out of Eden found the Mississippi, I’m sure of it for there, on that river’s banks, the simplest of people dwell, worshipping their pie in the sky and happily appearing on my television programmes trawling out their ludicrous garbage.

But without these uneducated peddlers of superstition I’d have to argue with the believers who’d read books or gone to school and then what would I do? No, no, none of that for me. America has been providing me with straw men to knock down, with fish to shoot in barrels, with angry Christians to roll my eyes at for so long, now. And long may it continue.

Also: Why I Hate America – by Will Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Salman Rushdie and Lindsay Lohan