I'm not saying that's the reason amongst fans on this board, for example, but I do see his adoption by more mainstream media as stemming from a kind of unspoken, but no less felt, national pride.
Britain is an extremely nationalistic country which often gets misinterpreted because of the self-critical way in which that nationalism often emerges.
To make this point more credibly would take more subtlety than posts on a messageboard allow, but I am convinced of this underlying anxiety about an ongoing decline in Britain's cultural significance as providing at least a part of the reason for MES's increased status within, for example, the BBC and the broadsheets.
|