(By the way, unlike Mr. Hitchens, for most Americans, England and Britain are synonymous. We think of Wales, and Northern Ireland and even Scotland as part of the package. News of the glories of devolution haven't been digested here yet. We fought a Civil War to prevent that kind of thing.)

The real difficulty for many elites in London tonight is that they were overwhelmingly wild about Mr. Obama in 2008 and now they feel jilted. It's too bad they detested Obama's predecessor, because he appreciated the English very much.

Mr. Hitchens says he or his friends have overheard Americans bad-mouthing the Brits. So what? I have heard Brits bad-mouthing Americans, and sometimes they mutter remarkable untruths, or exaggerations, to one's face. We used to be called "racist"--until racism became a problem in Britain. And we were a "violent society", though one can't find a good counterpart in our sports for soccer hooligans in England's Green and Pleasant Land. And, alas, Cumbria recently showed us a very good counterpart for US killer nuts.

They used to say that Americans were "over-sexed," as in the old World War II complaint that the Yanks were "over-paid, over-sexed and over here." Well, they may be right about the sex charge, except that the Brits have been eager to excel us for about forty years now. English good taste is unmatched, but so is English vulgarity.

The English also say that Americans are "too loud." Okay, that's true. I'll give you that.

But the characterization that hurts--because it is unobservant as well as untrue--is that Americans are materialistic and money-mad. Americans are more religious than people in any of the developed countries and more generous to charities than anyone on Earth, including our good cousins over the Pond.

Hitchens suggests that we come to our supposed anti-English sentiment through our pro-Irish views. He cites assorted movies; e.g., by Mel Gibson (an Australian of Scotish descent). Has Hitchens never noticed that some English movies also are anti-English--such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film about 1916 by English film director Ken Loach? Meanwhile, hasn't he also noticed the American movies that are anti-American? (Think, Redacted, or Lions for Lambs.) Hitchens should reflect that mature democracies in our era tend to self-criticism, including when the criticism is undeserved and histrionic. Again, so what? Artistic elites in both the UK and the US lost their traditional moorings about a hundred years ago.

As for the Irish "issue" (I thought that was getting solved, by the way), the remarkable thing is that nearly all Americans are quite indifferent to the old feud across the Irish Sea. It doesn't belong to us (thank God). Indeed, you would be hard pressed to find more fawning monarchists than Irish Americans like Maureen Dowd or Peggy Noonan. They are monarchists where Britain is concerned, of course, not for the Land of the Free. Americans even like Prince Charles, which you must concede takes effort.

Anyhow, Americans do like the Irish. And we also do like the English That's possible, you know.

Mr. Hitchens' real problem, as I said, is that President Obama does not reciprocate the image-love of the English. Hard cheese, Peter. But Mr. Obama doesn't speak for the rest of us. Articles in Britain that speculate about anti-British opinion in the US after the Gulf oil spill wrongly assume that the average American associates BP with Britain. Probably not so. It's just "BP", a big corporation. Americans are upset about the oil, not the country where the corporation is headquartered.

Regardless, on this side of side of the water, conservatives, like Americans in in general, still like Britain and know that the special relationship is real and important. Maybe some Fleet Street and Whitehall Brits would prefer other friends, but maybe, too, that's more their problem than ours.