Amidst all the buzz and debate over the imminent recall vote in California and the prospects of ‘Big Arnie’ becoming the next governer of the state, I have been struck by another of those cultural differences between Britain and the USA, albeit a superficial one.
I do not know whether American politics is intrinsically more interesting than politics in Britain but I do think that it sounds a lot more colourful. While perusing opinion in the US-end of the blogosphere, I keep coming across American political figures who sound as if they have just jumped straight out of the pages of a James Ellroy novel.
For example, I can imagine ‘Cruz Bustamante’ as a diamond-toothed pimp-turned police informer; ‘Scoop Jackson’, as an alcoholic former baseball player turned seedy private detective. Even Jesse Ventura and Rudolph Guiliani sound like they might have been ‘button-men’ for the syndicate.
Cut to the UK where we have political figures with names like ‘Gordon Brown’, ‘John Major’ and ‘Iain Duncan Smith’. For all the world they sound like dullards with plain suits and narcolepsy-inducing platforms.
I do not know quite what follows from this or, indeed, if anything follows from it at all. If there are any dazzlingly clever cultural observations to be extrapolated then they surely only of trivial significance. The minutiae of American politics is, I daresay, every bit as dry and opaque as it is anywhere else but I would be tickled pink by the vista of characters with names like ‘Bustamante’ and ‘Ventura’ strutting their stuff around Westminster.
I would be tickled pink by the vista of characters with names like ‘Bustamante’ and ‘Ventura’ strutting their stuff around Westminster.
Oh, that’s easy. Import more politically-minded Eye-talians.
We probably have a few extras here in New England we could loan you. I think we could spare Buddy Cianci, for example.
You’d be way more than welcome to Teddy Kennedy, too !!
Actually, could you take the whole bloody Kennedy family? (Except maybe Arnie’s wife…)
Please? We’ll pay you. A lot.
Oh, I didn’t think to foist off our Irish politicians on him. I assumed they would be insufficiently exotic in the UK.
In which case, we’ve got a couple of spare Bulgers looking for work these days.
There isn’t any mystery here. The US simply has a much longer history of being a multi-ethnic society than Britain. In California, for instance, the Chinese, Japanse, Italians, Irish and Latinos have been established here for more than a century. Names like “Norbert Chang” or “Ian Martinez” may sound weird to a Brit or other Euro, but to us they’re as American as apple pie. I have a friend who’s a Taiwanese immigrant married to an East Indian Hindu. Their first kid has an Anglo first name, an Indian middle name and a Chinese last name.
In addition, local politics — as opposed to national politics — has always been something of a route “up” for American immigrants and minorities. JFK’s paternal grandpa was a Mass. state senator and his maternal grandpa was the mayor of Boston. Both San Francisco and Los Angeles have had black mayors, and so have numerous other big, important US cities like Chicago and Atlanta.
I think Britain has been a multi-ethnic society for a very long time, actually. There were the Celts, the Romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings, and many more. And of course I find it in many ways remarkable that one of Britain’s greatest 19th century statesmen was a man named Benjamin Disraeli. Britain can be a very pragmatic place, and this is one of the better examples.
I do get your point though. Certainly America has done more mixing than has Britain over the last 200 years or so.
On this, there’s an interesting article in the Economist this week talking about changes going on in the ethnic composition of London. Basically, London is now as mixed a city as you will find anywhere, and it is getting steadily more so. It’s a city that largely works, too, which is a big reason why I love the place as much as I do.
The very fact that someone would comment on the names in American politics…as “colourful.” A most interesting and revealing post, though I do not take it amiss.
But to answer the question “What’s in a name?”
It’s called freedom. And opportunity.
And it’s spelled USA.
Immigrants integrate in the US, and rise. Hence the Weinbergers and the Dershowitzes.
The best Britain can manage is Sandi Toksvig (or Magnus Magnusson, if you prefer).
You left out one of coolest named U.S. Senators, Olympia Snowe. She’s a republican from Maine.
Um, she is a R.I.N.O. and votes with the Republicans as little as possible. She is comtemptible greek wench who is totally useless.
The funniest thing about the CA recall is the Dem strategy seems to be to whinge about the recall. That seems to be their entire strategy for this election. Arnie is going to get lots of shit from them. The best they can come up with is that he is a “womaniser”. Not exactly the best tack to take for a party that loved Clinton who was a serial philanderer! It also interesting to see that despite the call by the head of the CA Dems that no Dem would stand. There are several throwing their hats in the ring.
We might have entertaining names, but Parliament is very entertaining.
Sandy P., very true. We get the British parliamentary sessions on C-Span and they are very interesting to watch! Makes the Congressional sessions look extraordinarily dull by comparison.
Britian has had MPs with interesting names. How about Benjamin Disraeli?
Maybe because it’s my favorite Grateful Dead song, but Jack Straw has an interesting ring to it.
America is less a melting pot then a nice stew pot. We have nice irish potatoes, indian currey, native American corn, a little oriental rice, and some nice french canadian(Cajun) spices thrown in. Each seperate, but together a nice darn stew. That is how I have always seen this contry. A nice stew.
Sounds corny(no pun intended), but I think our ethnic flavors make this country
Of course the coolest name ever in American politics was former Federal judge and the first commisioner of baseball:
Kennesaw Mountain Landis.
Yes, that was his real name. Damn, why couldn’t my parents have given me a bitchin’ name like that?
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Michael Portillo in this thread. Of course, his name would sound more colorful if it were pronounced “Por-Tee-Oh”.
Jesse Ventura’s real name is James Janos.He is not Italian but,if I recall this right,Polish.He named himself Ventura after the town in California,incidentally.
The US is really a hodge-podge of ethnic types that play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
It leads to colorful elections, vying Hispanic and Germanic candidates in an Anglo neighborhood, for example.
Surely the ethnic colour of names is in the eye of the beholder, and I wonder whether there’s much difference in the degree to which American immigrants anglicised their names, compared with those who came to Britain: there’s a lot of German, Huguenot, Jewish (etc) ancestry disguised behind plain English surnames. As some have observed, in truth Britain is as much a melting pot as the US in terms of its ethnically diverse background, except that most immigrants have been from within Europe in the long term. Even that is misleading though: before about 1800 there were anything up to 15,000 black people here, and their genes didn’t just wither away, they intermarried… My mother’s maiden name is Swain, a fairly rare example of an almost unaltered Norse (Viking?) name surviving into modern English, original “Sveyn”. Interesting stuff for linguists and historians, though politically not much of an issue here I think.
An American college professor friend of mine once taught a student named Nimrod Hacker. I’m not making any point at all, other than that I love the name.
Steven Chapman – What about Lord Levy and Sir James Goldsmith? Gerald Kauffman? Michael Portillo? Broadcaster Robert Kee (Chinese). Leslie Charteris (who wrote The Saint) was a Singaporean Chinese living in London.
On American names, I have always thought Gore Vidal was ultra kewl. And Tennessee Williams. I know it was made up, but it was still ace.
Wait 20 years. When the children of immigrants from Africa and the subcontinent get into politics, Britain will start to have some funkier names in politics.
The Roy Jenkins biography of Churchill contains some excellent names from British public life a century ago:
William Scrawen Blunt
Sir Redvers Buller
William Flavelle Monypenny
Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh
John Strange Jocelyn
and my favourite:
General Sir Bindon Blood
David,
Good post. But this phenonmenon is not limited to politics. American life has a far more dramatic and vital character generally. Cowboys on the range are our shepherds on the downs … Route 66 is our M62 … Hurricane Annie down in the gulf is a mild depression approaching from the south-west.
Let’s face it, the beauty of English life (I’ll leave the Scots, Welsh and Irish to fend for themselves) does not consist of dramatic or grand gestures. We lack the requisite if passing passion, and I’m all the more grateful for that.
As has been posted, we may have some cool (or weird) names, but I love to watch the Parliamentary debates. I wish we had something similar in the US Congress. It would be great for the president and others to defend positions like the prime minister does.
As for the California governor’s race, that has to be some great entertainment. California always does things very differently. I just hope that’s one trend that doesn’t get exported to the rest of the US. I heard there are over 100 people on the ballot!!
California’s economy is something like 6th in the *entire world*, right after France, so I do hope they elect the best person to handle their fiscal mess. California can drag down, or lift up, the entire US because their economy is so large.
It’s called freedom. And opportunity. And it’s spelled USA.
Oh please, I am going to chuck up my lunch… and this is a country which still had legislated racial segregation until the 1960’s and brought us such wonders as the unconstitutional RICO statutes, civil forfeiture without trial, extraterritorial taxation, suppression of religious polygamy, ‘selective service’ conscription etc. etc.
I am not anti-American and the USA is nothing like the nasty place that the anti-American left would have the world believe, but please, save the hosannas and rose tinted glasses about how wonderful it is as well. When it is good, it is world-class good, when it is bad, is world-class bad.
I don’t know quite what follows from this or, indeed, if anything follows …
As I suspect you sense, David, nothing “follows” from your problematic observation. America is a nation of immigrants (in a way that Britain, so far, is not), and they bring their names here with them.
But your time may come. In perhaps another generaltion, British politicians may commonly have names like el-Khalidi, Hakim, and Abdu. Such old boys won’t much “sound like dullards with plain suits”.
My favorite American name is Handsome Lake, a Native American who invented his own religion.
Followed by the Texas sisters, Ima and Yura Hogg.
A couple years back there was a guy running for office in New Hampshire named Dick Swett.
And I once saw a campaign sign on somebody’s lawn that said “SEMPRINI.” Lucky he wasn’t campaigning in England, the Beeb could never report his name…
It’s called freedom. And opportunity. And it’s spelled USA.
I agree, Snide, that it’s a bit maudlin, you know, like Land of Hope and Glory, but it does contain a grain of truth: Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Gen. Shalikashvili and Arnold really don’t have equivalents anywhere else in the world. If it weren’t a Constitutional requirement that the US President be natural born citizens, first generation immigrants would be in the White House today.
I recently watched a Robin Williams HBO special, in which he described Parliament as “Congress with a two drink minimum.” Brilliant.
“and this is a country which still had legislated racial segregation until the 1960’s”
while your country publicly made Indians and West Indies unwelcome.
“civil forfeiture without trial”
Sorry?
“extraterritorial taxation”
so does New Zealand, Australia,… Although I agree that it is bad, but you can’t blame George Washington and other US founding fathers for KKK, FDR, Berkeley, etc.
“suppression of religious polygamy”
America was founded as a constitutional republic with underlying principles of the natural rights of man. It is self-evident that from natural rights of men the only right marriage is monogamy between a male and a female. America is good on this point because it conforms to the unchanging God’s principles.
“‘selective service’ conscription”
Hang on, this is a chance to serve and die for your country, mate.
“when it is bad, is world-class bad”
As a former HK Chinese and now a New Zealander, I disagree. Want something like world-class bad government, go to Burma, Communist China, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia today and witness yourself.
“Chuck” away and call it “Maudlin” if you like but also call it true.
The very fact that somone could write a post with a straight-face and so patronisingly refer to American political names as “colourful” illustrates that there is indeed something in a name which speaks volumes about a culture’s sense of itself.
snide;
“When it is good, it is world-class good, when it is bad, is world-class bad.”
I can’t help but take that as a compliment.
Susan;
“My favorite American name is Handsome Lake, a Native American who invented his own religion.
Followed by the Texas sisters, Ima and Yura Hogg.”
Ima Hogg didn’t have a sister named Yura. And as far as I know she didn’t have any unusual religious beliefs.
There is also, of course, the famous and talented Judge Learned Hand. There is also at least one Judge Justice.
Both in the US courts.
Instapundit has a couple of great quotes w/links, for those of you who are watching CA w/a mix of horror and fascination – it’s people power.
Tony Quinn:
The recall is about much more than Gov. Davis. It is an assault on the whole political class in California by an electorate in a very bad mood. Voters have concluded that the electoral process has become a private affair of incumbents, their campaign consultants and the various interest groups that fund these endeavors, and now they have a chance to do something about it.
And another at Sgt. Stryker – they have an interesting blog, I encourage people to check them out.
Also read USSClueless – Steven Den Beste. (And read his phrance screed.)
We’re a very easy people to understand if you take the time.
I have to offer compliments to the Catholic Church, which has managed to produce people named both “Cardinal Law” and “Cardinal Sin”.
Well…. I just happened to be related to Sir Bindon Blood – The Bindon bit is carried on – every guy in my family keeps it as a middle name, even now.
It ain’t funny. :p
Very nice blog