A column in The Telegraph with headline: “Immigrants love this country more than we do.”

A reader in England writes:

How do you react to this praise of UK immigrant behaviour during the looting and violence?

LA replies:

Dead Island.

- end of initial entry -

Howard Sutherland writes:

It’s hard to argue with your assessment of Britain as a dead island, but I would be wary of characterizing Cristina Odone’s saying “immigrants love this country more than we do” as Englishmen grovelling before their imported betters. To begin with: Cristina, what you mean “we,” kemosabe?

Cristina Odone is no more English than Arianna Huffington. Odone is a half-Italian, half-Swedish woman, born in Africa, who lived in the United States long enough while growing up to be given our citizenship, carries an Italian passport and lives in London. Apparently, Odone likes to call herself “Italian-American,” whether or not she actually is. One should not take Odone’s comments as necessarily representative of English sentiment upon seeing assorted aliens defending their stuff in London. If Odone wants to make immigrants look good it’s because she is one, the misleading “we” in her headline notwithstanding.

Odone is an active Catholic, and her role at the Telegraph seems to be that of token social conservative gadfly, one she is probably tolerated in because she is a woman. She is very concerned about religious freedom, including the right of Moslems to practice Islam in the UK—so much for the depth of her social conservatism. As for what she is otherwise and the depth of her actual attachment to England and the English, the term that comes to mind is rootless cosmopolitan, although admittedly not in the sense Stalin meant!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 11, 2011 09:17 AM | Send