Matt Reed said: "Ask just about anyone from England about their obsession with tennis"

And therein lies the generalisation.  99% of English people couldn't give half a shit about tennis.  It is a spectacle observed for the 2 weeks of Wimbledon, usually by people who are there for social reasons.

Europe has an older tradition of intellectualism, simply by dint of it being 'older' in terms of its educational establishments.  I don't think there is any real doubt that the US is now the residence of the top level intellectual vanguard, as evinced by academic research.  It is just, as John Webb observed, a huge country with lots of people in it, so there are plenty of divvies there as well.

This bipolarity can be observed with reference to many individual people, too.  An individual can love Gogol, Swift, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, yet still scream abuse as Celestine Babayaro misses another clearance and Newcastle United go a goal down.  We can discuss the ramifications of the Litvinenko assassination and then laugh as someone falls off a ladder on 'You've Been Framed'. 

The generalisations begin to emerge when a large number of people swim only in one particular pool.

Joe Zhang wrote : " No offense intended to our European friends, but to the continent that gave us Imperialism, Colonialism, African slavery, World Wars One and Two, Communism, and the Spice Girls, I really don't care how much more intellectual Europe is supposed to be. "

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Joe, this is stereotypes ! And old ! There is crap everywhere in the world !

... and Spice Girls are from England ! ( this last sentence was made to light up the whole thread, as it is going meaner by the post ! )

I love being taken to task by a Canadian. Marcel, ever hear of Oprah? She's the Queen of pop culture in America who evolved into a bastion of cultural taste. When I speak of this country, yes it was established by men. But the culture in the last twenty years EDIT has taken a decided turn toward feminized redefinition. That wasn't all bad at all in certain cases. I don't want to return to a time when women had to endure being groped by a stranger. I'm speaking to the cultural impact of a feminized society. The male-oriented fiction and film of the past had a quality that is missing from the compromised structure of a society where emotion has replaced fact, where emotional context is all. This is the result of many people being all too willing to "feel" instead of "think". All human beings balance these forces, but somewhere there has to be an adherance to logic, to understanding what must be done (whatever IT is) instead of decrying the doing. Men in this day and age are ashamed to be men, and that shame creates clownish caricatures that define them in this particular culture.

I'm not walking around beating my chest about what it means to be a man. I'm not man enough to do that. But I understand that what I dig about the culture of the past was that men had a concept of what was required to be a man in the world. You stuck to your word, you didn't hit women, you took care of your family, you worked for your dollar, and you respected the law. That didn't mean you were a prognathous-jawed monkey.

What I see here is a media-inspired tempest in a thimble.

The media presents and reinforces ALL of our stereotypes of one another. What I see on TV and in magazines (on the rare occasions I'm exposed to either) differs hugely from what I experience in my daily life and my experiences with actual real people.

I have yet to run into anyone who cares if the couples featured on the covers of People, US, Them, We etc...stay together, adopt a child or have themselves dissected and placed in jars.

Run the numbers.

The #1 television show in the country is viewed by less than 10% of the population. Sometimes FAR less. The network evening news is viewed by even less. The #1 magazine is read by even fewer than that. When we get to the world of pop music and movies the penetration becomes even less. How can a media consumed by so few pretend to reflect America? Obviously their shrinking footprint on our culture is shrinking because regular folks no longer relate to it.

That said, I would never judge any culture by how its media presents it. I would no more judge a Brit by his tabloid papers than I would a German for his horror movies.

With the web and satellite TV and niche publishing there is no longer anything resembling a unifying pop culture. Gone are the days when nearly every home subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post or tuned in en masse to a single popular television program or immersed themselves in the latest bestseller.

Each week we are force fed the latest big movie or hot comic or hit music act. If George Clooney has a movie coming out he is, for that month, "a genius", "the sexiest man alive", "sportsman of the year" and "an actor for his generation" on magazine covers everywhere. At least until he is nudged from this premier place in our national psyche by the next month's superstar.

These phenomenon surface and are consumed by a few and then tossed aside. Pop culture moves at a more dizzying pace than ever before and becomes ever more forgettable. Quality and universal appeal have been abandoned for the big opening weekend, synergy and market position. We're all expected to be in the entertainment business now.

But all of this whirls around a shrinking and fragmenting minority of consumers while the vast majority of Americans trundle on with actual lives only dimly aware (if at all) of who Jennifer Aniston is dating.

Chris Hutton: And I wouldn't be opposed to having Larry the Cable Guy put away for life for his insipid "Git 'R Done" line, that so many in my blue collar town enjoy plastering all over their pickup trucks!

Oh, I know what you mean!  The linemen on the local high school varsity football team all have sleeveless muscle shirts that say that on the back.  I cringe every time I see one.

I liked it better several years back when the shirts said "We bust our's to kick your's!"