1.Quick quiz: Who has a more vitriolic relationship with the US? The French or the British. If you guessed the French, consider this: Paris newspaper polls show that 72 percent of the French hold a favorable impression of the United States. Yet UK polls over the past decade show a lower percentage of the British have a favorable impression of the United States.
Vitriolic: 尖酸刻薄的
文章开篇仍然使用大对比进入主题：英国人不如法国人喜欢美国。
2.Britain's highbrow newspaper, The Guardian, sets the UK's intellectual tone. On any given day you can easily read a handful of stories sniping at the US and things American. The BBC's Radio 4, which is a domestic news and talk radio station, regularly laments Britain's social warts and follows them up with something that has become the national mantra, "Well, at least we're not as bad as the Americans."
Snipe at: 嘲讽，诽谤
本段首句是主题句,段落结构为道理－例证型段落。英国主流媒体为排美舆论定调。
3.This isn't a new trend: British abhorrence of America antedates George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. On 9/11 as the second plane was slamming into the World Trade Center towers my wife was on the phone with an English friend of many years. In the background she heard her friend's teenage son shout in front of the TV, "Yeah! The Americans are finally getting theirs." The animosity may be unfathomable to those raised to think of Britain as "the mother country" for whom we fought two world wars and with whom we won the cold war.
本段结构与第二段完全一样：首句主题，随后力争。讲英国对美国的恨意由来已久。列举了伊拉克战争，911恐怖袭击等例证。
4.So what's it all about?
5.I often asked that during the years I lived in London. One of the best answers came from an Englishwoman with whom I shared a table for coffee. She said, "It's because we used to be big and important and we aren't any more. Now it's America that's big and important and we can never forgive you for that." A detestation of things American has become as dependable as the tides on the Thames rising and falling four times a day. It feeds a flagging British sense of national self-importance.
