=== Second, MtheGM's comment:
-I can only say that, if you over there persist in regarding this as just a symbol without known origin or meaning or arrière-pensée intent, then you wilfully reveal yourselves as nothing but a bunch of innocent Yankee·Doodle noodles after all.
Macaroni! - Michael-
demonstrates, once again, how some folks over there really just love trying to lord it over us "colonials" as to their feelings of some sort of intellectual superiority===

Thus Big Mick, cited few posts later by MTed.

May I please draw attention to small word 'if' — a tiny word, but surely makes all difference to what I said: without it I accept that the post might well have been, what Katlaughing now claims she was solely attacking in her fragrant formulation 'a load of fucking crap'. But I did use it, didn't I!

So, please, my American friends [& I have visited US many times and have much family living there, in Chicago, LA {my initials are not entirely adventitious - Louis B Mayer was my 1st cousin 2ce removed, i.e. my grandfather's 1st cousin, tho the Cal branch spell surname slightly differently}, NY, Va ...; & I have always been made to feel at home & welcome in USA] —— let me just ask you all: which part of if, as they say, do you not understand?

Love - Michael