"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
It's hard /not/ to interpret such a description as an intentional
insult. I can't imagine what it actually means -- in any innocuous
sense, anyway.

There ya go then!

Please don't semi-quote Ronald Reagan. It's not becoming.


I'm afraid that's just too 'in-American' for me. I actually haven't a clue
what you are talking about ...


If I'd been in a debate with Ronnie, and he'd pulled that "There you go,
again" crap with me, I would have ripped him a new one, even if it cost me
the election.


And again - I'm afraid that's just too 'in-American' for me. I actually
haven't a clue what you are talking about ...



(This is way OT, but remember last year when Barney Frank ripped into a
stupid woman who was griping about Obama being Moslem? I was proud to be
queer. If all politicians -- conservative or liberal -- were that
intelligent and quick witted, the level of political discourse in this
country would be at a much higher level.)


And again - I'm afraid that's just too 'in-American' for me. I actually
haven't a clue what you are talking about ...




Anyone from the UK would see it as a quick-fire throw-away
line, and would laugh at it. It's sort of intended to be 'barbed',
but not in a malicious way. It's a very hard to describe form
of humour that is quite prevalent over here.

I admire someone who can come up with quick throw-aways -- but unless they
make them all the time, it's hard to tell they're supposed to be humorous.


Not at all. As I said before, over here it works between people who don't
know each other, provided that the circumstances of their encounter are
correct. The whole point that I was making, and which you seem to have
missed, is that I now know that that isn't the case, when it's cross-culture
between the UK and the U.S. That's why you, like the original guy 25 years
ago, see it as being offensive, I guess.



I offended people with "innocuous" wisecracks so many times that I
gradually
became careful about what I said. A word to the wise...?


Not needed. As I said in the first place, this was a long time ago when I
was much younger, and my first encounters with Americans were on the
telephone rather than face to face, and before I had the slightest
understanding of what subtle cultural differences were, as opposed to the
'obvious' ones that I had encountered up to that point, which involved other
European countries with a different language, vastly different food, a
totally different outlook on life, and so on.



If you cut yourself on barbed wire -- you're cut, regardless of how you
came
in contact with the wire.


Hmmm. Not sure that I really understand the under-meaning of that one,
either ...

Arfa