The Blog of Harald

I tripped over an interesting rant, written by John Lichfield and quoted by Kasia. In a nut-shell, he observes that:

The US has produced more than 50 kinds of peanut butter. They all taste the same but they have radically different labels. France has somehow managed to create 176 (or 258 or 1,000) different kinds of cheese, all of which are subtly different from one another.

If we are being offered a choice between a cheese-eating civilisation and a peanut-butter-eating civilisation, I am with the cheese-eaters. Post-September 11, US politics — and even US journalism — seems to be going the way of peanut butter. There is room for endless freedom of choice between labels. The contents of the ideas are not allowed to vary.

Go read Kasia’s excerpt, or the original column…