Two essays appearing today are a reminder that it's possible to be cultured, enjoy all the benefits of western civilization, and have no compunction about tearing it down.

First up, Lee Harris asks, "Am I anti-American enough to win the Nobel Prize?"--and thankfully, he's not:

Here, it seems to me, I have a real problem on my hands. In my book Civilization and Its Enemies, I actually defended America, kind of, as I have done in a number of articles for Policy Review and right here at TCS. Thus I have foolishly left one of those awkward paper trails that nominees to the Supreme Court have so much trouble explaining away to unsympathetic Senators, and this does present quite a serious obstacle to my Nobel Prize aspirations. Can I really expect the committee to give the prize to someone who has said nice things about America, even in his dotage?

But that is precisely why I decided to go ahead and publish my acceptance speech now, because that way I could make it clear to those guys in Sweden that I know exactly what kind of thing they are looking for in a Nobel Prize laureate, which is fanatic, frothing-at-the-mouth, virulent anti-Americanism of the most vicious kind.

You see, by reading my speech ahead of time, the committee would realize at once that they were dealing with a man who could spew as much bile and hatred against America as their previous choices for the prize have done, and that way they would jump at the chance of awarding me the prize, with the added plus that they wouldn’t have to bother about actually wading through my books and articles.

You don’t really think that the committee actually read Harold Pinter’s plays before giving him the prize? If The Caretaker is pointlessly boring and tedious in English, one can only shudder to think how it must come across in Swedish. No, they probably called him up and said, “Listen, this year we’re down to you and Maureen Dowd, and since we can’t give it to an American, it’s gotta be you. So, can you give us a really vicious attack on America?”

Now anyone who has read Mr. Pinter’s acceptance speech knows how well he came through for the committee, and, I must confess, that it has set a standard that will not be easy to surpass. Indeed, its effect on me was downright daunting. How could I top that?

Hold it right there for a minute. That’s how we define “assimilating” into western society at the dawn of the 21st century? If a fellow deals a little coke while wearing pants with a gusset located at calf height while singing along to the re-mix of “Slap Up My Bitch”, we say, hey, he seems to be fitting in very nicely? No need to worry about him getting any wacky ideas down at the madrassah, he’s an impeccably secular pluralist Peugeot-torcher.

It’s true that the rioters look rather less foreign than, say, the stern young men in the mosques of Peshawar or the training camps outside Jalalabad. But, on the other did, so did Mohammed Atta and his 18 confreres. They were very well “assimilated” by Clichy-sous-Bois standards. If you recall, in the days after 9/11 a flurry of all-American cocktail waitresses, lap-dancers and prostitutes popped up to say they remembered Mohammed and Marwan and Majed and the rest of the gang chugging vodkas, groping strippers, renting porn videos – just like fully assimilated citizens of advanced western democracies. They were said to have patronized, inter alia, Shuckums of Hollywood, Florida, Cheetah’s of San Diego, the Pink Pony of Daytona Beach, Nardone’s Go-Go Bar of Elizabeth, New Jersey, none of which rates a mention in even the racier suras of the Koran. And none of which prevented the guys from drinking up, leaving a tip (lousy, according to the gals), and flying their planes into the Twin Towers on Tuesday morning.

The July 7th London bombers were also impeccably assimilated: they ate fish’n’chips and loved cricket. Omar Sheikh, the man believed to have masterminded the beheading of Daniel Pearl, is, in fact, an Englishman, educated at an English public (ie, private) school and the London School of Economics. And so it goes: somewhere right now far away from these shores, there’s a guy sitting in a Yankees cap, wearing a Disney T-shirt, listening to Britney Spears – and plotting to bomb America.

The two are not mutually exclusive. They never have been. The Merry Widow was both the biggest smash on Broadway and Hitler’s favourite operetta. In a not entirely persuasive attempt to humanize the old KGB hard man, Yuri Andropov was widely touted as a Glenn Miller fan. The world’s former Numero Uno Commie, China’s Jiang Zemin, could hardly attend a state banquet without getting up and singing Elvis’ “Love Me Tender”. Saddam Hussein is not just assimilated with western culture, he’s eerily assimilated with National Review’s back page columnist: The old Baathist mass-murderer and I share the same favorite singer – Frank Sinatra. If you dialed up Amazon.com’s “We have recommendations for you!” CD page, Saddam’s and mine would be identical. Even more unsettling, we share the same favorite candy – Britain’s “Quality Street” chocolates, especially the big gold-wrapped toffees the shape and size of the old English penny.

There’s no contradiction between a liking for western pop culture and a loathing of western civilization. Merely the latest in a long tradition, Mahmoud Khabou, the 20-year old unemployed son of Algerian immigrants in Clichy-sous-Bois, understands more clearly than the media that jihad is by no means incompatible with conventional forms of western delinquency. Asked by a reporter to name his heroes, he replied, “Osama bin Laden and Rodney King.”