When I was a volunteer at a Kibbutz in Israel some years ago I met a young American girl whose total ignorance of the most basic political geography truly stunned me. Of the many examples were:
"So, is Europe in Germany?", "What language do they speak in New Zealand?' and, (my personal favourite), after originally expressing total disbelief at the fact that the seasons were reversed in Australia compared to the northern hemisphere: "So does that mean the sun rises in the west and sets in the east? Wow!".

I have spent some years since looking for evidence that this was in fact an exceptional case. Still looking.

The author mentions "Americans’ lack of consciousness of anywhere outside the US"! This is completely untrue - American's lack of consciousness is much greater than that - in many cases they don't know anything outside their own county! I remember once being on a flight from Denver to Fort Worth, and sitting next to a pleasant and talkative young lady from Hicksville, Wisconsin. I think I spent most of the two hours of the flight telling her about California, Colorado, New York, and Texas about which her "lack of consciousness" was almost total

I think really it is quite unreasonable to expect someone whose geopolitical consciousness it pretty much limited by the horizon to have any knowledge of what goes on a thousand miles further afield. American culture is in many ways a time capsule of rural English values from the seventeenth century when a well-travelled man was one who had been as far as the next valley!

And it's getting worse; more and more Americans consciousness extends no further than their own epidermis - and I offer Ms Hilton and Ms Richie as exemplars of this.

sounds like that 'group of teachers' were graduates of one of the many 'christian' colleges in the usa.

yanks come in all sizes and shapes, and some are smart, well educated, handsome, like me.

but the ones who fight their way to the top of the political tree don't alienate large blocs of voters such as the 'ignorant jerk bloc', or the 'religious nutter bloc'. consequently, american foreign policy varies between naively inept and dimwitted brutality.

ozzies needn't feel too superior, it's not that they're better than yanks, just that they don't matter due to being few, powerless, and far removed from the real world, as the americans call it.

I must say I share Boris's irritation at this story, especially at its inordinate length, unrelieved by any contrasting view. And I'm not an American. Mr West could have taken a cue from Michael Gawenda's recent (far more measured) piece in the Fairfax press (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/05/27/1180205070036.html).

Or perhaps my irritation comes from the fact that I watch 'The Simpsons' too, and could have written the piece myself.

Romany's and Dylan's experiences are congruent with many of mine! It's no wonder that in a nation of such closed minds fundamentalist god-botherers proliferate. Actually I am waiting for a sect to arise which claims that not only is the universe not 13 billion years old, not only that it is not six thousand years old, but that it is only two hundred and thirty-one years old next month and that nothing existed before then!

A bit of a puzzle, this. Why spend so many words carping about another nation, and in such petty terms too? What's the point?

I've worked for a while in the US, and I have to say that I found a grain of truth in every section of the article. I still dine out on stories of US parochialism and idiosyncracy.

But to imagine that these examples, however true, provide anything like a picture of America or Americans is like saying that Crocodile Dundee represents everything anyone needs to know about Australia. Yes, we have an outback. Yes, there are crocodiles. Yes, blokes drink beer in pubs. Is that "Australia", or just a couple of snippets?

In any event, I suspect that the average belly-at-the-bar in the pub at Walkabout Creek knows little of life in New York. So what?

Michael Gawenda, in the article DNB brought to our attention, says:

>>Foreign correspondents in America often deliver a one-dimensional sense of this place<<

Casual visitors with a chip on their shoulder? More so.