Brits and Americans I: How they viewed us

When I left England, where I spent the last two years of my life, my friends gave me a Xenephobe's guide to the English. I hadn't really looked through it until recently and came upon an amusing comment about Americans. Namely:
The English like Americans and in many ways would probably like them even more if only they didn't insist on being quite so...well...American. The English regard Americans as English people who turned into something else as the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and who would be a lot happier if they had the sense to turn back again. Then they would start talking Proper English.
I did not have problems making friends with the Brits, or indeed the many other nationalities that I met while in the UK. I was often told "You're too nice to be an American", or "You're too quiet to be an American".
These comments were said in the nicest way of course. And, in a sense they may have been true. Americans, particularly American tourists, can be quite loud. Occasionally, we are pushy, obnoxious, naive, and of course overweight. However, we are also of course quiet, modest, kind, intelligent, and thin. I never got a sense that brits don't' like Americans. Quite the reverse. I did get a sense they took an odd pleasure in dumb things we'd do.
The BBC loved to run stories of very very rural Americans somewhere deep in Texas whose only other human contact was rifle practice with their siblings.
Their favorite target, was of course GW Bush. He was the embodiment of what brits saw as wrong with America: He loved guns, god, oil, and didn't listen to Europeans. Despite what their Prime Minister believed, almost all of my friends despised him.
The truth is, of course, stereotypes only get you so far. They are usually based on some element of truth, but truth that is distorted and oversimplified. What counters the stereotype is what is interesting. As they got to know me, and realized that Americans can understand their sarcasm, they can keep their mouth shut, and can appreciate walking, they realized the stereotypes weren't also true. I also hoped I helped them appreciate that even the most loud, overweight, gun-toting right wing American came from somewhere. They have their own views on the world which, even if I didn't understand it totally, shouldn't be discredited. And now I've got lots of British stereotypes to talk about. But, I'll save it for a different post.