‘The Weakest Link’

* So Norah Vincent, in her April 30 commentary on “The Weakest Link,” thinks we British are a nation of “colossally repressed, over-educated, xenophobic perverts.”

Colossally repressed? When did she last visit Britain? You hear four-letter words in regular conversation there, and after 9 p.m. British TV can be extremely sexually explicit. Our women go topless and frequently naked on every beach in the world. Public drunkenness is commonplace and British pubs can be positively Dickensian in their licentiousness.

Laid-back California is more repressed. Try going topless while drinking a glass of Chardonnay on the beach at Santa Monica--and you’ll find yourself in the slammer.

And over-educated? The U.S. is a country awash with higher degrees we can’t even match, nor would wish to. Xenophobic? We hate foreigners? Since when? We’re on good terms with all our former European enemies and share economic and political ties. The Channel Tunnel links us to France, and London is as cosmopolitan and multiracial a city as you’ll find in the world. And unlike Americans, we, by the millions, take holidays in foreign countries. As for us being perverts, is there some Kinsey report on the British that Vincent knows about and we don’t?

I’m sorry America got lumbered with that silly schoolmarm Thatcher-clone, Anne Robinson. But, hey, in the past you’ve dumped toxic TV products on us like “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Starsky and Hutch.” You can’t blame us for taking revenge.

STUART WHITE

Los Angeles