John Cleese's letter to America

[trailergod]

LOL... very funny

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium," and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."

You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't cope with correct pronunciation.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up "vocabulary"). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of
the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It will be called "Come-Uppance Day."

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to
carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect.

At the same time, you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you
understand the British sense of humour.

8. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline") -roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.

10. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." American brands will be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's
Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American "football." There is only one kind of proper football; you call it "soccer." Those of you brave enough will, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due backdated to 1776.

Thank you for your co-operation.

[Gaumont]

Good to see he keeps up the good work =)

[ZUBi]

LOL !!! :big grin: ... good (home) work John

[radstar]

#14 drives me mad too

[Lafce]

Haaaaa! :big grin:

[chernabog_ca]

Man that's classic....

[redbear]

funny as this is... it's false. i just love urban legends.

from Snopes.com

Claim: Monty Python member John Cleese penned a satirical piece announcing the revocation of America's independence.

Status: False.

Examples: [Collected on the Internet, 2004]

Origins: Just as most any anonymous piece of cynically humorous satire about American politics and culture ends up eventually being attributed to comedian George Carlin, so the same kind of material gets credited to English comic John Cleese when it evinces a British viewpoint on American affairs. Unlike his fellow Monty Python trouper Terry Jones, however, Mr. Cleese doesn't generally pen this sort of political levity.

The genesis of this article is a long and convoluted one. It evidently originated on with one Alan Baxter of Rochester, U.K., who wrote and posted a much shorter, four-item version to an internal newsgroup hosted by his employer in November 2000, as a wry commentary on the recently concluded (but far from decided) U.S. presidential election.

The "Revocation" piece escaped into the wider world of the Internet a week later when Peter Rieden of Farnborough, U.K., added three more entries to a slightly revised the list (bringing the total to thirteen) and posted it to the USENET newsgroup sci.military.naval on 15 November 2000.

The "Revocation of Independence" quickly spread far and wide on the Internet through e-mail forwards, newsgroup posts, and mailing lists, and within days newspapers in the U.K. were running even longer, fifteen item versions.

Curiously, U.S. newspapers tended to run a fifteen-item version as well, but one that was much terser and made significantly different "demands" to which the U.S. was required to comply.

Predictably, the satire spawned a variety of U.S. "rebuttal" versions.

All of this brings us to the end of 2004, when the U.S. went through another close, controversial, contested presidential election (although one not nearly as close, controversial, or contested as the 2000 version), which once again resulted in a victory for the Republican candidate, George W. Bush. One of the multiplicity of variants of the four-year-old "Revocation of Independence" satire was dusted off, British funnyman John Cleese's name was appended to the end, and the cycle of forwarding started all over again, only this time with a recognizeable name attached to the piece. Many, many people have had a hand in shaping the multiple variations of this bit of humor that now exist, but John Cleese is almost certainly one of the few who hasn't.

i encourage reading the entire article. the rebuttals from Florida and America are just as funny.....

13

[Lafce]

...i encourage reading the entire article. the rebuttals from Florida and America are just as funny.....

9. We'll tell you who killed JFK when you apologize for "Teletubbies".

This is good...

[Stormwalker]

the supposed john cleese is still the funniest..