I don't watch reality television, so I missed the shameful performance of Stephen Fowler, a British man featured on the LIFE television show 'Wife Swap.''Wife Swap' features two families who 'swap mums' for a fortnight. In this case, it was Stephen Fowler and his American wife, who both live in a wealthy district of San Francisco, who 'swapped' with a blue collar family from Missouri.
Fowler's wife, Renee, went off to Missouri - where she banned the family from playing paintball and organized compulsory French lessons.
Gayla, the Missouri 'mom', visited San Francisco, where she was subject to a tirade of insults from the snobbish, arrogant Fowler.
It apparently made for great television. Fowler was as snide and bitter as Basil Fawlty and cut Gayla down to size at every opportunity - lambasting her for her weight, her perceived lack of education, her patriotism and her 'redneck' ways. In the space of a forty-minute television show, Fowler managed to insult or alienate a broad range of middle Americans, from military families to NASCAR fans.
When the television show hit the air, the backlash was inflammatory. "You rude disgusting little limey prick" was probably the most polite of the comments made against him.
What annoyed me about the backlash, however, was that it manifested itself in a form just as offensive as Stephen Fowler's rants. I guess the old law is true - for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The first thing Stephen Fowler was attacked for was being British - the perrenial cry of 'go back to your own country, you limey prick.'
Then he was attacked for his lauded 'education.' The fact that he sent his kids to a bilingual French school was labelled 'useless' and people scoffed, wondering why anybody would 'bother learning French.'
Just like Fowler had labelled Gayla a 'redneck' and attacked her for traits like her weight or her patriotism, many of the people reacting to Fowler attacked him for his nationality and for other facets of who he was that had nothing to do with the despicable things he'd said.
Why is this a problem? Because I took many of them personally.
I share more than a few similarities with Stephen Fowler. I'm a British man married to an American. I have a son who I intend to raise learning French. I'm perceived as 'educated' because of my accent and my job. When outraged mid-westerners attack him for merely being all those things, they're simultaneously attacking me.
Which entirely defeats the purpose. They're ignoring what Stephen Fowler actually did wrong - berated and belittled somebody, wallowed in his own sense of superiority and insulted millions of hardworking blue collar Americans and military families.
Their reaction to his disgusting behavior is along the same lines as his. Stereotypes, jingoism and reverse snobbery are the order of the day.
It's the same old rubbish we witnessed during the election; the perrenial conflict between 'elitist' liberals on the East and West coast and the 'real' Americans who live between them.
Fowler is perceived as 'bad' NOT because he's an arrogant, rude prick, or because of his disgusting behavior. No, he's 'bad' because he's a West coast, liberal foreigner who wants to send his kids to learn the language of those 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' over in France.
When it comes down to it, is that any better than him attacking Gayla and her brood for being 'uneducated rednecks'? Merely because she didn't have a college degree and they live in the Midwest?
When you start attacking people for what they are instead of what they do, the whole point of the argument loses cohesiveness. Thanks to these middle Americans and their scatter gun attacks, the Stephen Fowler debate has descended into a bunch of 'redneck hicks' insulting an 'elitist snob.' Nobody's talking about what he actually did wrong.
As for me?l I was personally disappointed that Stephen Fowler was British. Perhaps I'm being guilty of the same judgementalism as the people I'm complaining about, but I was always under the impression that certain Brits from a certain class were raised not to behave the way he did.
I certainly wasn't - I have never considered myself 'better' than anybody else. I have friends from all sorts of backgrounds and I respect all of them equally. Growing up in Hampshire or the West Country, mixing with the friends of royalty or penniless Cornish farmers, my parents always taught me that people are defined by their actions, not their class.
So, I'm not going to be ashamed to be a liberal, East Coast, 'intellectual' foreigner with 'funny ideas' about my son learning French. If the people attacking Stephen Fowler have a problem with me because of who I am, that says more about them than it does about me.
