TILTING AT WINDBAGS: OR WHY I LOVE PROKOFY NEVA

This post has very little to do with MellaniuM and not a little to do with Prokovy Neva. The heart of the matter starts with a chat I had with my dentist which affected me much more that any periodontal heights he was about to scale. He explained in great detail how much his old English school teacher had influenced him growing up in Budapest,Hungary and how ridiculously difficult it is for an immigrant to become proficient and totally fluent in the English language. He then stated in quite a matter-of-fact fashion that Leslie Howard was Hungarian and my stolid English cultural bias was shattered. Well, of course, after Googling for some time I found he had been born, Leslie Howard Steiner to an immigrant Hungarian Jewish family in London around the turn of the 20th century. Now let's get to the point Leslie Howard is famous in the US as the actor who played Ashley Wilkes the consummate classical gentleman who Scarlett kept swooning over in the epic movie"Gone with the Wind". However in England he is remembered in "The First of the Few"for immortalizing R.J. Mitchell who designed and built the Spitfire (which is an archetypical British icon). In his movies like in the "Scarlet Pimpernel" he plays a veritable fop, a dandy, but he is a real action hero with a keen wit and nerves of austenitic steel. To cap it all Howard is killed during WWII when a german fighter shot down a passenger plane flying from Gibraltar to London (it is suggested that they thought Winston Churchill was on board, he could very well have been he was always scooting about during the war)) So Leslie Howard epitomizes the archetypical Englishman we (us daft boomer Brits that is) all want to emulate. The point is though that here is a completely assimilated Hungarian Jew who actually becomes the absolute pinnacle of Englishness in speech and action. It struck me then that the real cultural richness of any society is nourished by assimilants, by those who grasp the culture to their heart and could almost be called converts. In religious circles it is often the converts who are the most devout and faithful.
Now I must state my case that I hope dearly that Prokovy Neva is not US born, that somewhere in her past the totalitarian environment in which she was nurtured has moulded her to the extent that now she is the veritable doyen of the US culture she has so obviously embraced. Any proud citizen born of the U.S.,Canada or Western Europe has absolutely no concept of liberty or freedom. One cannot know freedom unless you have been persecuted and suppressed. She blogs like a fiend and I am in awe of her irrepressible energy and clear logic and, in addition, may I say the religious fervour she displays in her over-arching tirades against the sychophants and cliques she encounters in her fight to cultivate both her properties and renters within Second Life. She is without artifice and logically disects and analyzes the ongoing machinations within the VW community. I must thank her for the entertaining way she weaves the Second Life phenomenon with her ongoing determination to have her say in the American milieu which is sadly tainted with individuals who have their own self-centred, determined, focussed view of "real politique". In my opinion she not only tilts at windbags but she successfully deflates them and sends them packing.