Political disorder: Confessions of an accidentally ethnocentric American

The Hot Tea: A Pitt student’s ramblings and amblings abroad

When you pack up everything you’ve known for the past two decades and trade it for four months “across the pond,” you quickly discover that life’s not all tea and crumpets. Everything you encounter in a foreign country presents a new set of challenges, from classic public transportation woes and language barriers to the more modern-day struggles of meeting natives on Tinder and becoming acquainted with local politics.

“The Hot Tea” is a weekly column dedicated to these discoveries — unearthing the intricacies of London’s social, political and millennial issues in context of Pittsburgh’s own complex culture.

Follow me on my journey as a Pittsburgh native striving to become an authentic Londoner.

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LONDON – On my first day of orientation in London, a presenter pulled up a photo of a decent looking man in his late 40s and stared out at the room of Americans before her.

“Do any of you know who this handsome devil is?” the presenter asked.

No one raised a hand or offered any suggestions, and I silently concluded that his expensive suit meant he had to be a television star or a BBC reporter.

“It’s all right, I’ll tell you. That’s David Cameron, our prime minister.”

I had never been so embarrassed.

If a tourist came to the United States without a clue who President Obama was, I’d consider them a complete buffoon. Yet there I was, without any idea who Britain’s leader was, about to start work in the commentary section of a London newspaper the following week — bloody hell.

Turns out, I’m not the only uninformed foreigner — and I’m certainly not the only uninformed American.

Americans — as a whole — are less inclined to care about their government’s politics than U.K. citizens.

In a study by the Pew Research Center titled “U.S. voter turnout trails most developed countries,” only 53.6 percent of those able to vote cast a ballot in 2012. Comparatively, 65.8 percent of the English voted in the 2015 general election, according to U.K. Political Info.

Whatever happened to the taxation without representation uproar? I’m not a political science major — and nearly 300 years have passed since the Revolutionary War — but isn’t it a bit ironic that so many of us don’t use the rights our Founding Fathers fought over?

When Americans do decide to be active voters, they only support candidates along party lines. Why? Because researching individual platforms requires effort and political savviness. That’s too much effort for most.

I didn’t have to be Nancy Drew to uncover why Londoners, specifically, care so much more about politics than the average American. The only thing more omnipresent on the Tube than a chilly female voice warning me to “mind the gap,” was the sheer volume of commuters reading newspapers.

It makes sense — the only thing the British hate more than loud foreigners talking on the underground railroad system is accidentally making eye contact with them. Newspapers even advertise to this point. Plastered to the walls at nearly every platform, you can find a London Evening Standard ad that basically reads, “Hey, you need something to look at on the train to avoid eye contact with other humans? Read our paper to avoid embarrassing acknowledgements from the people next to you.”

And it works — about 1.7 million people read the London Evening Standard’s  free paper each day — whether online or in print — with about 900,000 copies circulated in the heart of London every evening, according to News Works.

So not only are most people reading some form of newspaper on the Tube, but they also leave them all over the seats. Even if I tried my hardest to be politically uninformed, these litterbugs ensure that I’d still see some shining faces of the Labour Party staring back at me, pulling me to read about the latest scandal.

And then there’s exiting the Underground station. If you think religious parties shoving mini Bibles at you in front of the Cathedral is a nuisance, the paperboys outside the Tube station are the real Messiahs. “Get your Evening Standard,” they wail, shoving free newspapers in your face as if they’re trying to deliver papercuts and not the news.

Then, in the morning, you’re bombarded with the free Metro.

At home, free newspapers — like the Pittsburgh City Paper — exist, but news giants — like The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review — cost money, which is an instant turn-off for the apathetic commuter.

Wannabe Londoner that I am, I immersed myself in local politics via these free, ever-present papers . Embarrassingly, I wasn’t even the least bit educated in the names of the political parties. I just assumed everything was Democrat and Republican like at home. That was the first flaw in my accidentally ethnocentric lifestyle.

By my third week in London, I was so invested in the Labour Party — the liberals — and the Tories — the conservatives — that I wished I was able to vote here. The recent controversy over England’s new Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn — his left-leaning views are considered to be dividing his party — enthralled me. I loved hearing the banter between my co-workers at The Independent.

I still don’t always know what I’m talking about. Sometimes, I opt for a smile and put my “Miss Congeniality” face on ­— and of course, eavesdrop until I finally comprehend the political jargon.

As an American learning about international politics, I’m bound to embarrass myself.

And embarrass myself I did. I was most dumbfounded one day at work when I was proofreading an article about former Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Tory Party. I thought I had ingeniously discovered a typing error — the sentence said something about “Tory Blair” — so I pointed it out to my editor.

Turns out, it was a pun. I didn’t blame her when she laughed at me. “Oh it’s OK, you’re just an American.”

Not exactly the cop-out I’d like to have to rely on, especially when almost every other day a Londoner says, “Explain your country to me,” in jest. Mostly after reading something asinine about Donald Trump or gun-related violence that day.

I don’t want to have to “explain my country.” I want it to speak for itself. Millennials need to start voting more and questioning the government seated over them. If we don’t, we’re only contributing to our own stigma of “lazy, stupid Americans.”

The Brits care about politics more than tea. That political fascination should be their new stereotype.

But I also think Americans need to rebrand themselves in politics. Otherwise, other countries will always remember us as the country who voted Trump into office — or at least gave him the platform to do so.

In which case, I’m moving to England — permanently.

Courtney Linder is a senior columnist at The Pitt News, primarily focusing on social issues and technology. Write to her at CNL13@pitt.edu.