After watching the stupid American's video I'm very embarrassed to be an American listening those idiots.
I would hope that you don't think all American's are that uniformed or ignorant. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in world affairs, but all of the questions except for two were extremely easy to answer.
Not knowing where Australia is - I can't even think of what to say about how stupid you would have to be to not know that one. I do know where most counties are or at least could come very, very close to their locations. One thing about that though in defense of American's - You live in Europe and I'm sure just by where you live and the proximity you are to other countries you would be more familiar to the locations of all of the countries around you and considering the size of the US being similar to the size of Europe, I could tell you the location of all of our 50 states - would you or most Europeans be able to?
I'm not a war monger and I don't like that we are at war. I don't want to invade anyone.
You also mentioned Michael Moore. When his work first came out there was a lot of discussion about it and as you may understand that in the US the two largest political parties are the Democrates and the Republicans. Moore is a Democrat and President Bush is a Republican, so to Moore, anything the Republicans do is wrong. The main criticism about his work is that it was very bias to his message. He only showed what would help his cause. It was only a partial truth or a selected truth - he didn't present the entire story or both sides of the situation. I suspect the producers of this video did the same thing. I'm sure there were people that answered the questions correctly, but they chose to not have them shown. They only picked the idiots. I'm sure they could have had a segment showing only the ones that got the ansewers correct thus projecting a different feel to the piece.
All I'm trying to say is that without a complete picture it is difficult to be fully informed or educated about any given subject and one should take what ever is presented to them with a grain of salt. It would be like being on a jury during a trail and hearing only one side of the story from the prosecutor and then deciding the guilt or the innocence of the accused without hearling the defense present their case.

Ok - I agree with your first comment, but my remarks were put forth partly because of the language you used in your opening statement regarding the video. You used such words/phrases as "....not particularly informed about foreign politics...constant confirmation." or "No (now) there's even more proof." or "This video is as much dark comedy as frightening sad." Those comments seem to have been made with more of an intent of being truthful than just for a humorous take on the video. You do also offer up the point that you don't live in the US and that "...not all Americans are so utterly ignorant.", but the flavor of your writing does sound like you agree more with what the video portrays than not. I would agree though, that there are a lot of stupid Americans and not all are not particularly informed about foreign politics, but I don't think to the extent the video makes it out to be - at least not with the people I associate with - friends/family/co-workers.

I also would agree with your second comment, kind of. I guess I was being a little simplistic or overly broad in my comment. I should have been more articulate in my choice of words and maybe phrased it more towards President Bush rather than all Republican issues. I would also like to add - the video was funny, but you also need to look at it from the perspective of being an American or being a European or more specifically an Italian. We both see our own little part of the world in our way and see other parts of the world from different points of view and thus will have different feelings or opinions on what we see.

Even though that's true, it's not exactly what I had in mind. I wasn't referring to stereotypes, but more about the environment we live in and the sources of our information and news and how our own politics and personal situations will affect how we view others and other situations.
Just as different parts of any particular country, town or neighborhood may affect our lives and how we think and act - in a more global sense the way we think and act could be very different on opposite sides of the planet. The same set of circumstances could be viewed very differently say for instance between you and me - in America and in Italy.
To illustrate my point - I would not have used the stereotype for Italians you did. My brother's in-laws are Italian, being born there and they don't fit any of what you described except for the accent part, sort of. If I were to give a stereotype to Italians I would use words like - Machismo, artistic, using lots of hand gestures, pasta eating wine drinkers and the typical American as being a loud, brash, somewhat arrogant know it all.
BTW - do you fit your stereotype and have a terrible accent when you speak English? And, to fit my stereotype of an American - I don't speak any foreign language.

Actually, I could describe myself almost exactly the same - I don't like football (American football), I would hope my English is de-accented, I watch films in original language (as long as it's English), I have blue eyes, I have blonde hair, sort of (more of a light brown), and I'm not hairy as well.
I don't think I've been thought of as Icelandic, Norwegian or Swedish, but my grandparents on my dad's side came from Germany and Slovakia on my mom's side. So, technically I guess you could call me European - American. I have on occasion though, pretended to be Australian or German or Italian or Chinese or used some other kind of accent for fun.
So, where does your non-Italian features come from and why do you speak English so well?

I don't want to seem like a stupid American - I assume you went to the Italy location, but for all I know, since you speak and write English so well it could have been in Wales or the U.S. BTW - Have you ever been to the U.S?

I need to apologize - your Curriculum Vitae does have the location. My mind was on half power that day. Anyway, sounds like a great experience and I'm sure you made the most of it.

Mere supposition can sometimes be like a stereotype - based on reality - and some of what you indicated is true for some of us. As I've never been to Europe or "overseas", I would have to use the same supposition for my view of others in your part of the word as you do for Americans - perhaps with different descriptors or subjects. Not every nations people are the smartest in all areas or the most knowledgeable about everything.

I think maybe you know more about our politics than we know about yours is that we (the US) are probably in the news worldwide more than any other country. Our politics and ideas and doings are more public knowledge around the world than most countries. Take as an analogy the guy down the block with the loud car or barking dog or noisy kids - the entire neighborhood knows about them rather than the quiet old lady right next door that doesn't bother anyone.

As in my stereotypical description of an American I had us as being loud and brash. That not only applies to the individual person (myself NOT included), but it also applies to our government and foreign policies. You simply know more of what's going on here than I know what's going on in Italy.

Another classic example of generalization. The video does far from proving its point, but rather presents racial degradation (towards Americans).