Come Together

A YouTube clip released by the European Union has had almost 3.5 million hits in under a month -- some of them, I would guess, repeat visits:

Not that it has gone over well with everyone. An article at the ABC News website quotes Godfrey Bloom, from something called the U.K. Independence Party (which, in spite of the sound of it, does not actually consist of several friends from the pub and three members of his immediate family) saying that the clip is "soft porn" and "cheap, tawdry and tacky" and "like watching an elderly relative trying to be cool: very embarrassing."

But here in the States, the promo spot is being taken as a reminder of how much more sophisticated our cousins abroad are. To quote one comment at YouTube from a viewer in LA:

The United States is much more puritanical. Really, the abhorrence of openness about sexuality is an American thing.

Why, yes -- that would certainly explain why you never, ever see sexual imagery in our mass culture.

Also the continuing popularity of those black hats with the buckles.

I've pointed out the misleading nature of that equation between Puritanism and "abhorrence of openness about sexuality" before. Not that it makes any sense even to bother arguing the point.