If Only They Didn't Speak English: Notes From Trump's America

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You cannot allow, in the name of impartiality, your journalism to say: “one person believes two plus two is four”, then add: “but another person believes two plus two is six – and only time will tell who is right”. In the age we’re living in, we need aggressive impartiality. When we think our judgment is right, we should say: the overwhelming evidence is that this will happen. People don’t want me to tell them that some people say Trump arrived on 23 June 2016, when he arrived on the 24th. I think that kind of impartiality ill serves our audience. I attended Jon Sopel’s publicity tour event for the book at Charleston, Sussex on Bank Holiday Monday 28 May 2018. The death of the US ambassador in Benghazi was awful, but was Hillary Clinton really culpable; had she truly been negligent?" - Chapter 1, Anger Overall it was an enjoyable read, but censorship is part of the job for a BBC foreign correspondent (6 out of 10)

Note: segregation in public came to an end only in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed by Lyndon B. Johnson. (in this regard probably we should redefine the presumed causes JFK assassination?) So I've been given a lecture about the dangers of fake news, followed by an example of the BBC spreading it. The central premise of Jon Sopel’s If Only They Didn’t Speak English is that Americans are a bit nutty and hard to understand for a Brit. Many countries seem to have odd cultures when seen from the British Isles, or even Europe. Pakistan springs to mind, although that could just be a media misrepresentation. But you sort of expect Pakistan to be very foreign. You can’t understand the language and most Europeans don’t share the religion. But the USA? At first glance, it appears that we do share the religion and of course we share the language – or at least we think we do. And then of course we are inundated with American culture, from their food to their films, music, fashions – you name it. This all makes the US a superficially familiar place but as Sopel points out, the accent is on “superficially”. In actual fact, the French or Germans are probably a lot closer to the British mindset than the Americans; it’s just that most people can’t understand them when they are speaking their native tongue. The Americans, on the other hand are just very foreign. IMO, our mindset as humans is much governed by our early education- Australians in UK will find chasms of unexpected misunderstanding, as Scots in England & vice versa) The USA as a whole hardly knows UK exists, but Westminster politicians have talked up the "special relationship" for decades.Sopel shares some of his own (weirdly liberal) racist views, implying that ethnic minorities are too dumb to apply for photo ID. The truth is that you need ID for everything in America (except voting, in some states). Everyone has photo ID, except for young people (who could easily apply for it) and a few ancient people who don't even have birth certificates. From our cuisine and to our literature, to our fashion and our music, there is no escape from the beast that is the United States of America. Jon Sopel tries to explain the madness of Trump's America with an elegant sense of stoic bewilderment. Brilliant Emma Kennedy, Actress, Writer and Broadcaster Sopel does have positive comments about US. He doesn't dismiss Trump voters as "learning disabled" but suggests some rationale for their enthusiasm. This research coupled with his own observations of the daily lives of the Americans around him... and paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, all those Americanisms which I struggled to fathom suddenly started to make sense - the mistrust of government; the idea that you yourself are responsible for your own wellbeing and safety; the absolute belief in the American Dream and hey presto - you begin to understand the obsession with guns, the resistance to an NHS style health care, and even the popularity of religion when you realise it's sold in the oh-so-flambouyantly-unique capitalist manner.

He also rightly observes the real-life limitations that lie behind what successive British and American governments have extolled as their “special relationship”— though, in an especially moving passage, about meeting an octogenarian US ex-serviceman during a family visit to Normandy, he also explains why, despite everything, a core specialness does remain. A chapter about the NRA, "unarguably the most powerful lobbying organisation in the United States". If they're so powerful, I'm surprised that Sopel is allowed to criticize them. [8]Trump brand. The Four Seasons hotel chain are missing out as foreign delegations feel it prudent to stay at Trump Tower! As with any nation, you can’t tar all the inhabitants with the same brush, but reading Sopel’s book does paint a picture of the average citizen which is at best somewhat incomprehensible to a European, at worst not very flattering. Americans are angry with their political class and deeply distrustful of it. This is one of the reasons why they own so many guns; they like to think that when the chips are down, no government agencies are going to mess with them when they are armed to the teeth. Paranoid? We might think so. I like the quote from Bill Bryson, who describes him as "the sanest man in America". It must be a very difficult balancing act (as a non-American), critiquing American culture without losing friends. Sopel describes the differences between the UK (where ‘We don’t do God’) vs. a country where nine out of ten adults say they believe in God. Jon Sopel may be the sanest man in America. He is certainly one of the most insightful ... Immensely enjoyable * Bill Bryson *

This session was both the busiest, and the most febrile (to use again a Trumpian context). I’ve never attended a literary event where the raising of hands from the audience was so immediate, so sustained. Every single question was about Donald Trump. In the book Trump constitutes maybe 10% of the content- and this was a late add on which tops and tails the main body. PDF / EPUB File Name: If_Only_They_Didnt_Speak_English__Notes_F_-_Jon_Sopel.pdf, If_Only_They_Didnt_Speak_English__Notes_F_-_Jon_Sopel.epub It's rather pathetic: for centuries Scotland an France maintained the "Auld Alliance" against England, but it was always unequal- France gained more for small investment, and France forgot us completely when it suited, but we kept on loving France. This summary is not to take away the depth of Sopel’s writing, which cannot be done justice in a concise book review. He compares and contrasts, references extensively, and most interestingly of all, injects his own thoughts into his writing. Sopel probes why Americans are so anxious (because, among many things, their physical geography), and why, for instance, the “special relationship” may not exist entirely as we see it here. Sopel offers engaging anecdotes about how Trump campaigned and won and how he has governed. But he leaves the reader hanging as to how this bizarre departure from more than two centuries of American history seems likely to end, and whether the demagoguery and division in which Trump revels will irrecoverably damage institutions and constitutional norms. But the fact is that nobody knows.

Book Review: If Only They Didn’t Speak English

This reminds me on an old Norm Macdonald joke: “Earlier this week, Marlon Brando met with Jewish leaders to apologize for comments he made on Larry King Live, among them that “Hollywood is run by Jews.” The Jewish leaders accepted the actor’s apology and announced that Brando is now free to work again.” There is huge debate within the BBC over this. If timidity is what we choose in the end – and I’m sure it won’t be – that would be a wrong judgment. We’ve got to be bold. If I feel something is right, I think we’ve got to say it.

Quite an interesting read that really opened my eyes at just how different the culture across the pond actually is. I felt Sopel did a fantastic job at trying to explain why the USA has gone the way it has the last few years and it did feel as if it was well researched. This book was educational, I think I understand the TV news networks a bit better. They are obviously pro-Democrat (except Fox), but the corporate donors are running the show. I read the original version of "If Only", which doesn't have the extra chapter about Trump's first year in power. I don't know if anything major was fixed in a later edition...

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It was obviously incredibly uncomfortable. I’m much happier reporting the news than making it. I found the whole thing ghastly on a personal level. I was quietly minding my own business – I had no idea what other people earned – and then suddenly I was in the spotlight. I hated it. I haven’t said a word about any of this before. So far as Carrie went, I thought: her fight is with the BBC, not me; I’ll leave her to fight it, which she did effectively. The conversation with John Humphrys was nuts. John is a big figure. I’m quite a senior journalist, but [when you’re with him], you are in the court of King John. If you listen, you can hear that I’m trying to shut it down. I’m thinking: stop it, stop it. I was in Washington at 11.30 at night, about to go to bed, and suddenly I was thrown a curve ball. It is the reporting job of a lifetime. There’s no way I could have imagined this four years ago. On air, I’ve talked about grabbing pussy, shithole countries, and being spanked with a rolled-up magazine. I want to do it a while yet, but it is exhausting as well as exhilarating. It’s both my privilege and my curse. In If Only They Didn’t Speak English Sopel examines the current state of the US and the way Americans see the world. It makes fascinating and enjoyable reading, even if the book doesn’t contain too much that I didn’t either know or strongly suspect. Nonetheless, it is nice to have your impressions confirmed by someone who actually knows what he is talking about. The book is divided up into chapters that discuss the most important themes that define contemporary American culture, such as race relations, gun ownership, patriotism and attitudes to government. Sopel also highlights the mixture of anger and anxiety that suffuses the 21st century American psyche and includes a chapter on the post-truth world where the electorate prefers to be “informed” by fake news on Facebook rather than listen to educated and reasonably impartial press professionals such as Sopel. Less government in the USA but better social responsibility. The road and transport infrastructure is awful- John Kerry, visiting Haiti remarked that the state of the roads was better than in Washington!