Wintersong

I can understand how an American on this forum might get a bit upset at some of the posts. The ones which take the piss out of "ignorant America" and stereotype all Americans must be particularly infuriating. I do think that, to a certain extent, you need to learn to laugh at yourself (as a nation, not as an individual!) I find stereotypes of British people and British culture, for the large part, absolutely hysterical.

What I find strange about your post is the examples of thread types which annoy you;

"Why can't I find English sausage/bread/beer etc here?" - to be fair, it's more often "Can I find...?" or "Where can I find...?" In other words, it's not that people are surprised that the brands are different over here, it's just that they have compared the two, have found the American brands to be vastly inferior (or just plain not what they are used to) and are missing the stuff from "back home". It can be found over here, so asking on a public forum where to get it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

"American Football is boring even though I haven't a clue as to how it's played!" I'm sorry, but any game which takes 3 1/2 - 4 hours to get through 60 minutes of actual play time is, by definition, boring. I've never seen a thread complaining about it, though. I don't understand why you take it as a personal insult, or "anti-American". I find cricket boring too but that doesn't make me anti-British (or Australian, or Indian....)

"I saw an American do X, therefore all Americans do X!" Most comments of this ilk are more along the lines of "An American did/said X - how dumb is that?" It's taking the piss out of individuals, not out of a nation. Visit any American expat board and you will find precisely the same kinds of threads about what Brits have said to them. It's just funny!

The main point from the OP's article was statements like this:
And she says it like it's a good thing - to take everything for granted, to demand rights, to waste food and generally be a throw-away society.

As far as I'm concerned, small children take everything for granted, demand their rights with no thought to their responsibilities and don't care about waste. As you grow up, you realise that what you thought were rights are in fact privileges which you have to earn by way of certain responsibilities to society.

CarlM

Its safe to say most Brits are aware of their shortcomings - and we also love to laugh at our fish-belly white countrymen on the beach, and our ludicrous attempts at speaking other languages. But for us its all about fun. Why does any comment that an American doesnt like end up categorized as Anti-American..?

You need to lighten up, and not take it personally - we all took the time, and made the effort and commitment to move here (to the land of free speech!) and we are Brits sharing Brit humor. If it offends you, stop reading - we would still all be having a wonderful fun time without you quite frankly!

mandpete

I can't seem to get the link this morning but managed to read it yesterday.

American supermarkets also have rows of empty shelves. I went to Wegmans last night and the Heinz Beans shelf was completely empty and so was the Patak's Curry Sauce shelf.

gruffbrown

Tonic water....what is going on with that? No Schweppes and no Canada Dry, not just at one store but 2! Am I drinking THAT much?

Lord Lionheart

Hopefully there's not many smokers in your neighborhood, an open flame such as a cigarette lighter could take out a few city blocks.

NJ_Dave

Drink Shoprite brand instead. They never run out

gruffbrown

Eeeeewwww good point, the curried bean caper

gruffbrown

Yep we like Shoprite, never tried their tonic, I will explore

NJ_Dave

Just add a little gin and a piece of lime, and you'll swear you're drinking schweppes

AmerLisa

PMSL!!!!

AmerLisa

All those hours of posting on BE.....its come to this! You're drinking the grocery stores dry..

mandpete

Someone must have been having problems because there was no Weetabix either.

NJ_Dave

Beans + curry sauce + weetabix = a lot of people farting sawdust

gruffbrown

There's actually six of us posting in relay, while the others scour NJ for tonic

gruffbrown

A great cure for constipation