MMario... Thanks for your point on my thread reply... It is well made... these things are of course familiar to me because I am English.

I really don't mean to sound smug but if you showed me a picture of the Whitehouse or the Capitol I think I'd know I was in Washington District of Columbia not Washington State or Washington, Tyne and Wear, UK.

If I showed you a picture of the Eiffel Tower or the Champs Elysee I think you'd know you were in Paris, France not Paris, Texas.

My point was is that I don't believe the stereotypes about US citizens. With a population of around 250,000,000 they are far to diverse a culture for such things to have any meaning.

However, if the US movie industry goes about explaining the obvious in films - it's not a great leap of imagination to see why some lesser souls outside of the US get the impression that the makers of these movies make assumptions about the intelligence of their own population.

The argument - "Well look at them - they even have to be told where they are and whether it's day or night" - has been fired at me by many a closet racist at the time...

I assure you - comments like this p*ss me off as much as they annoy the people who they are aimed at.

Hyp