into the American psyche,” beginningnat Valley Forge when Washington’sntroops were entertained by performancesnof Addison’s Cato and heardnlines such as “What pity is it that wencan die but once to serve our country”nthat were later attributed to Americannpatriots.nThe transmission belt has beennhumming merrily ever since. Publicnfigures, who know the extent of Americannignorance and who dare not risknunfamiliar or too-intellectual allusions,nreadily quote Kipling, like CongressmannRobert Dornan in Iran-Contra:n”He is Ollie this and he is Ollie that.nGet him out of here, the brute. But henis the savior of his country when thenguns begin to shoot.” To this manglednquatrain Congressman Mervyn Dymallynpromptly replied with an equallynmangled quotation from Shakespeare:n”To thine own self be true, and it mustnfollow the night, the day thou canst benfalse to any man.”nUnwitting conservators of the specialnrelationship pull out all the stopsnwhen they get to Churchill, “the resortnof choice for a politician who is on thenropes.” Nixon’s “Churchill said” rationalizationsnmounted as Watergatenprogressed, John Tower’s supportersnboasted of Churchill’s diet of alcohol,nand according to a computer surveynthat Hitchens serves up with infectiousnglee, one of every four columns bynWilliam Safire makes at least one referencento Churchill, while 1,200 allusionsnto him appeared in leadingnAmerican newspapers between Aprilnand December 1984 — “a period selectednat random.”nWhat Hitchens calls “Brit kitsch” isneverywhere, but its worst manifestationnstands in once-isolationist MiddlenAmerica. The Country Club Plaza innKansas City boasts a bronze statue ofnWinston and Clementine Churchillncalled “Married Love.” Next to it is anspeaker that plays the “blood, toil, tearsnand sweat” peroration at the press of anbutton.nHitchens’ best jabs are aimed at thenkind of liberal intellectual snobs whonnever miss his column in The Nation.nThe special relationship rests in manynrespects on mutually sustaining elitesnin the two countries, he says, andnso . . .nThe Masterpiece TheatrenSunday evening debauch ofn42/CHRONICLESnEnglishness is one of thenstandbys and continual referentsnfor students of Anglophilia andnits American mystique. WhennAlistair Cooke assumes thenleather armchair, the freenassociation begins andnEnglishness takes on its variednguises and incarnations: thencivilized country house; thenstrained but decent colonialncivil servant; the regimentalnmess; the back-to-the-wallnwartime coolness under fire,nthe stratified but consideratensocial system. … As thencameras roam the room beforendiscovering Mr. Cooke, theynlinger upon marble busts, oilnpaintings, carefully bound firstneditions, and sporting andnmilitary prints.”nAnd then, at long last, the cameranzooms in on “Mr. Cooke’s perenniallynreassuring features.”nThe American Achilles heel thatnmakes such seduction possible is ournobsessive commitment to democracy.nWe are afraid to say the word “class”nout loud, but the overpowering Englishnessnof Alistair Cooke & Company innour cultural life permits the permutationnof class into “style.” One enthusiasticnlaborer in the vineyards of permutationnis James “Scotty” Reston, whomnHitchens calls “one of the all-timen’special relationship’ apparatchiks.”nOthers are Rhodes scholars (eleven innthe Kennedy administration alone) whonget a dinner jacket allowance and ancharge account at an Oxford bookstorenas part of their grants. But lest we forget,nthere are also the “skinheads,” whosenprole version of the special relationshipnis based, says Hitchens, on the behaviornof English soccer fans.nHigh and low, we are all victims of annidentity crisis that was articulated in ansecret document of the British SecuritynCoordination, an organ of Churchillnand Sir William Stephenson designednto mold American opinion betweenn1939 and 1945. Although America isnrich and powerful, said the analysts, thenAmerican people “are still unsure ofnthemselves individually . . . still strivingnafter national unity and indeed afternsome logical grounds for consideringnthemselves a nation in the racial sense.”nThe special relationship in all itsnnnforms — political, cultural, social, economic—nwas designed to benefit Englandnwhile serving as our securitynblanket, and it has worked. Hitchensnfinds Waspness triumphant over thenimmigrant version of the AmericannDream even as late as the 1988 elections,nwhen the successful “Mayflowernimagery” of George Bush and his familyntriggered subconscious racial and religiousnconnotations represented by thenopposition: “Television advertisementsnfeaturing a notorious black criminalnnamed Willie Horton also showed MichaelnDukakis without a shave andnlooking distinctiy swarthy.”nAttempts to break off the specialnrelationship have been short-lived andnfutile. Hitchens provides an entertainingndescription of the flurry of post-nRevolution enthusiasm for making classicalnGreek or Hebrew the official languagenof the U.S. government — innitself a Waspy move since all the leadersnhad been classically educated after thenBritish fashion. Noah Webster’s campaignnfor a distinct grammar of AmericannEnglish and Theodore Roosevelt’snexecutive order for “Simplified Spelling”nin government prose (“thru” forn”through”) came to naught despite thencooperation of Anglophobes like ColonelnRobert McCormick, owner of thenChicago Tribune. In 1923 an “AmericannLanguage” bill was introduced innthe House, but its tone of provincialismnand frontier brag — “Let our writersndrop their top-coats, spats andnswagger sticks, and assume occasionallyntheir buckskin, moccasins and tomahawks”—nwas ridiculed by critics likenH.L. Mencken (who, ironically, wasnan Anglophobe).nLanguage also figured in Churchill’snmany wily schemes to save the BritishnEmpire by turning it into an Anglo-nAmerican consortium. To this end henproposed joint citizenship, currency,ntrading areas and bases, and “BasicnEnglish,” the brainchild of an Oxfordndon to reduce the language to 850nnecessary words that the whole worldncould learn in time to be ruled by then”English-speaking peoples.” An unimpressednFranklin D. Roosevelt askednChurchill if he could have inspired hisncountry with “blood, work, eye waternand face water,” and promptiy turnednthe Basic English question over tonSecretary of State Cordell Hull, anTennessee mountaineer famed for hisn