A feeling common to most Canadians is that Americans, when met individually, can be so likable, while the country as a whole is not. The American I liked best in my travels about Europe was the young man I encountered one day at the Acropolis as tourists scrambled to record that crowning achievement high above smoggy Athens. He was standing outside the Parthenon, offering to operate the cameras carried by an endless series of puffing couples in pastels and pinks. He had grown so ashamed of the gaucheness and vulgarity of his fellow Americans throughout Europe that he decided the Parthenon--the site of the photograph of a lifetime for Madge and Henry--was the spot for revenge. He took all their pictures for them-- while carefully cutting off their heads or including only their feet. He cackled as he imagined all those tourists, safely back home in Iowa or Louisiana, finding out when the drugstore returned their Kodak prints that a saboteur with the same passport had betrayed them.
Allan Fotheringham, in "Capitol Offences: Dr. Foth meets Uncle Sam"