Whee, the People!

"Have you, too, been bamboozled by American ballyhoo?" asked London's left-wing People under the headline: TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THE REAL AMERICA ! With this lead the Sunday People (circ. 4,948,215), which wallows weekly in a rich home-brew of slaughter, society scandal and police-court sex, last week decanted a bottle of sour-mash bamboozlement imported from the old colony across the Atlantic.

"The letters I get from home," wrote People's New York Correspondent Len Coulter, "reveal that thousands of people in Britain have swallowed the old bunk about the American Way of Life--swish homes, big cars, gleaming refrigerators, 21-inch TV sets and plenty of money in the bank. Phooey!"

Scramble for the Dollar. In sordid fact, according to Coulter, the average American is "up to his ears in debt," trades jobs "constantly in a frantic scramble for the extra dollar," and by all odds will wind up in jail, divorce court or the psychiatrist's clutches. "Every third or fourth person you meet," said Coulter, "is having psychiatric treatment. Each big apartment building has at least one resident psychiatrist, and some have four or five. It is the boomingest profession in town."

Older professions also thrive, Len Coulter warned would-be immigrants. Most New York girls who have left home, he said, "though highly paid by British standards," manage to get by only if they "have made themselves 'interesting' to the boss, or have found sugar-daddies to support them." Money-mad males survive by corruption. "Most of America's metropolitan areas are controlled by grafters and gangster elements," added Coulter, who in his seven years in the U.S. has done most of his traveling as a New Jersey-Manhattan commuter. Before taking a driver's test in New York, he related, he was assured that he would never pass "unless you 'accidentally' leave a five-dollar bill on the seat beside the inspector."* Recounting one attempt by a New York lawyer "to put money into his pocket and mine that should have gone to my employers," Coulter insisted: "Seldom a week goes by without someone offering a 'fix.' "

People Gushed. Other Coulterisms: "The mad struggle for money" breeds "immorality, delinquency and degeneracy." "A businessman told me how thoroughly enjoyable it was being a bigamist." Marriage clinics abound on the theory that "very few husbands and wives find their marriage sexually satisfying"; to release their "inner resentment, completely uninhibited husbands and wives gushed out the most astonishing intimacies."

Coulter, 53, a greying Londoner who has a degree in economics from the University of London, an apartment in Manhattan and a country place in New Jersey, allowed that "there are many aspects of American life which are excellent. The Americans' willingness to experiment and change is completely refreshing. Their generosity is fabulous." At his Rockefeller Center office, Coulter confided: "I enjoy living here. It would be a hardship to live anywhere else." Why, then, his disparaging article? "This is rather embarrassing," said he. "The piece was intended for British consumption. People without skills who think of coming to America to find the pot of gold should be discouraged." The U.S., in short, is a nice place to live but no place for People people to visit.

* Questioned by TIME last week, Coulter admitted that the inspector refused a $5 bill, did not report Coulter to the authorities, as he could have, and gave him a license anyway.

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