Via NRO:
If you hang around a British person long enough, you are practically guaranteed to hear him make a derisive quip about Americans.
In all likelihood, he won’t even notice that he’s done it.
I have been at many dinner parties at which it has been baldly stated, without embarrassment or regret, that Americans are “all fat” or “all stupid,” or . . . well, you can pretty much choose your epithet at random, and I have watched with irritation as the line was met with general agreement.
It is a peculiar thing that reflexive anti-Americanism is tolerated in Britain and beyond to a degree that no other rudeness is. On occasion, I have tried to point this out, puckishly inquiring as to whether the speaker would make the same charge with a different nationality. “Nigerians are all stupid,” perhaps? I think not. Ugly as it is, this tic is unlikely to change anytime soon. Making jokes about Americans has been endorsed and indulged by the British literary and political classes for over 200 years now.
Here is a fairly typical crack, from Oscar Wilde: “America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.” Ha ha! Europeans knew it was there, you see, but they kept it quiet. Why? Because the inhabitants are so frightfully uncouth, daaahling.
Here’s another one: “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” That’s from Oscar Wilde, too. And it’s funny because somebody witty and sophisticated said it, and because everybody just knows that Americans aren’t witty or sophisticated. Indeed, even witty and sophisticated Americans are happy to confirm this . . . Casual discourtesy of this sort has been a staple of the European chattering classes since pre-Revolutionary days.