British Accent Fools Hollywood Celebrity

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle in the blogosphere for the last couple of days after actress Gwyneth Paltrow said this:

"I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans," the 34-year-old added.

Some folks, like Sean Hannity on his radio show today, got very upset. Not me. There's a simple explanation: She fell for the British accent.

To the American ear the prim and proper British accent sounds intelligent. It doesn't matter what they're saying - they could be reading the London phone book and they may not even be able to spell their own hyphenated names. There's just something about the British accent that implies intelligence and breeding to the American ear. Why do you think there are so many British-accented pitchmen on American TV? The accent implies credibility that Americans seem to love.

Not all British accents work, however. The Cockney accent, which is unintelligible to most everyone including other Brits, implies that there's a trailer park in that person's present or immediate past. Those folks couldn't give stuff away, let alone sell anything.

However, I doubt that Paltrow has been hanging out with too many Cockneys, so the crowd that she spends her dinner party evenings with probably sound pretty good to her. She was taken in just like the Omaha housewife that buys the SuperMop Extreme from the British spokesmodel on TV.

Give her a break - she's just another duped Hollywood celebrity.