The Americans !

Unless you actually live in Britain its very hard for me to overstate just how much George Bush influenced our perceptions of  Americans . Until fairly recently if you asked someone what traits would sum up an American I think the words dumb , stupid , fat and noisy would have been mentioned somewhere . But how could one man ruin the reputation of the worlds greatest country ?
   Firstly lets get one thing straight . Yes, the Iraq war made him unpopular , but that is not the main reason for our dim view of Americans . Its was more the man himself or how his character was portrayed to us . Yes , lets put to one side whether you agreed with or not with  the war  as that is a " red herring " The real problem was our media " sound bite " system of reporting . We only ever got to see a few seconds at a time of this mans speeches and nearly every one of them contained a hesitation , a blank look or a vague pause . This was so much so that to think of this man as anything other than an imbecile opened you yourself up for abuse and ridicule . Day after day the media rammed this imbecile image in our faces .
  One day however things changed  big time for me when I watched several minutes of a speech he made . It was live and unedited . I suddenly realised this man could talk . He was articulate and passionate . He appeared to have charisma too . Had I been duped for years by our British media ? If so why ? Someone appeared to have worked very hard over those years finding silly looks or mispronunciations to edit out to show on our T.V news , often nightly... Well this is how it appeared to me , and I now question how other world leaders are portrayed on our television screens today . Are their sound bites edited to portray an un-true image ? Well today I ask the question ; Was George bush really dumb ? Because its that image of him that tainted our view of Americans most until now . Maybe im right , maybe im wrong ? . I would love to know !