REMEMBER THE MAINE: Mark Falcoff has some thoughts on anti-Americanism in Spain, which certainly has differentiating factors to the one in the rest of Europe. He's spot on when he writes that Spaniards think they know the US without having been there, basically from the movies and TV series. Talk about the drawbacks of soft power!

Even some normally thoughtful people seem weirdly unable to grasp the difference between movies and reality. I've seen not-uneducated guys making a point about how the Americans are using a movie as evidence, it's ridiculous. When I find someone like that, I often make the reverse argument: I ask them what would people from other countries think of Spain if all the information they got was from the movies by Andrés Pajares and Fernando Esteso or by Alfredo Landa, who always played the chubby middle-aged balding horny hillbilly trying to knock the first scantily-clad northern-European tourist spending in vacation in Spain. To wit.

Let me tell you, this technique usually helps.