Bloody British foreigners

A sarcastic but rather sad Vanity Fair column on British expatriates living in New York, painting a very unflattering picture of Englishmen in New York behaving rather like the erstwhile British Raj in India but with worse personal hygiene habits than the Victorians.
One extract rang a bell with me:

"British men can be identified by their cropped hair, which they shave to obscure their genetically endemic premature hair loss. They imagine it gives them a street-hard look. Most Americans think they look like gay Marines with deformed ears."

This is exactly what I felt Americans thought of me when I visited San Francisco for the first and, thankfully, only time. You can't but feel a foreigner in America, it's safer that way. You really don't want to fit in with their homogeneous style, attitudes and tastes.
I think I would rather look like a gay marine with deformed ears than having to be one for real in Iraq.

Link via Andrew Sullivan, who, of course, would rather be dead than be considered British.