'Government Health Care: The Musical,' Olympic spectacle-Mark Steyn

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"That vague unsettling feeling you get walking around Central London that these days it's the theme park of a great capital rather than an actual one."

8/4/12, "Olympic Spectacle," Mark Steyn, NRO

"Government Health Care: The Musical, was far too riveting to be confined to a mere two and a half hours....The lack of basic awareness is remarkable. To that ever-dwindling band of Americans who believe in truly private health care, the NHS is a byword for disease and degradation. On the other hand, to Continentals who believe in clean, efficient universal health care, the NHS is a byword for disease and degradation. Yet the British delusion that the NHS is “the envy of the world” is indestructible. Years ago, in London’s Daily Telegraph, I carelessly remarked that, while one might be able to find a Bhutanese yak farmer somewhere upcountry who envied Britons the NHS, nobody else on the planet did. A couple of days later, the paper printed a letter from Mr. Sonam Chhoki, a Bhutanese gentleman who, while not a yak farmer himself, came from generations of sturdy yak-farming stock. He reported that his British in-laws were still waiting for their operations after two years, and that based on his experience Bhutan’s health service was superior. Whether or not Danny Boyle’s NHS musical will run longer than Cats, the waiting list already does. Yet there they were, dozens of Mary Poppins figures descending into the Olympic Stadium on unfurled umbrellas, like British paratroopers behind German lines on D-day. When everywhere’s a nanny state, inventing the great iconic nanny is a source of national pride....

Hmm. What can Americans learn from the Olympics spectacle? According to the IMF, China will succeed America as the dominant economic power in the course of the next presidential term, so Howard Fineman, editorial director of the Huffington Post and MSNBC mainstay, was anxious to pick up tips. “Brits long ago lost their empire,” he tweeted, “but overall show us how to lose global power gracefully.” So there’s that....

Turning the Queen into her own Queen impersonator (as Commentary’s John Podhoretz put it) underlined that vague unsettling feeling you get walking around Central London that these days it’s the theme park of a great capital rather than an actual one. The iconic red telephone boxes, for example, are currently the home of eccentric “artwork” — in Covent Garden, a statue of a giraffe busts through the roof of one and nibbles the leaves overhead. Meanwhile, the red boxes without giraffes have non-working phones, stink of urine, and are plastered with prostitutes’ business cards — though even these have a quaintly dated, semi-parodic quality about them: In the one round the corner from the Houses of Parliament, a Russian lady promises clients “the ultimate Soviet Union.” Like the Queen’s, it’s a 007 gag, but from the Roger Moore era."...

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