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