When rubbish like intelligent design is being taught in US schools and the word of the bible is taken as literal truth, you know you’re dealing with some major-league loonies.

Generally speaking, I have no problem with individual Americans. Apart from their inability to keep quiet for any reasonable amount of time, (which goes hand in hand with some of the most annoying accents on the planet), most Americans are OK. But for some strange reason, they keep electing the most inappropriate men to lead their country. It’s frustrating. Just when you think that they’re going to turn a corner, they whip around and make complete eejits out of themselves again. There’s only so many times that you can slap your forehead in exasperation without turning yourself into, well, into an American.

I was going to illustrate this post with some links showing the utter ridiculousness of the American mentality. Then I did a search on Google. With over 8 million results, I wasn’t going to trawl through that lot looking for the perfect example. I’d probably end up just absorbing the lunacy through some form of Internet osmosis.

Then it hit me. (For any Americans reading, that’s figuratively, not literally. And if there are any Americans reading, it’s colour, not color and favour not favor.) Everybody around the world has the same stereotype – “stoopid Americans couldn’t find America on a map if it was pointed out to them with a large pole.” So someone has to defend the, admittedly fewer, intelligent Americans.

So in the best traditions of modern popular culture, I give you the “Definitive 2008 List of Americans Who Are Not Representative of The American Cultural Stereotype”. In a break with the usual list making tradition, the following Americans are not listed in any particular order, apart from maybe shoe size.

Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic weapon, developed quantum theory, especially quantum electrodynamics – for which he won the Nobel Prize – and superfluidity. He also investigated the Challenger Shuttle disaster. Between all of this he played the bongos, painted and wrote books. Altogether, he was a pretty cool guy.

Martin Luther King

There’s nothing that I can say about this man that he couldn’t say better. In his own words:

Isaac Asimov

He may not have been born in the US, but he is considered to the one of the greatest and most prolific American writers. His writings have influenced more people than probably any other writer. He wrote over 500 books, published under every conceivable topic, except for philosophy. His writings, although considered Science Fiction were based on hard scientific fact, and he often went to great pains to explain the science behind his writing.

Bob Dylan

A renowned singer, songwriter, poet and author. For five decades Bob Dylan has been creating works that capture time and place like no other musician. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times. In a poll of 172 musicians and critics conducted by Rolling Stone Magazine, “Like a Rolling Stone” was voted number 1 of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Rolling Stone Magazine also ranked him number 2 in a list of the greatest artists of all time. (He was beaten to the top spot by The Beatles.)

That’s four intelligent Americans in the fields of science, politics, literature and music, that have in their own way changed the entire for the better. So next time you hear an American utter something that’s almost unbelievably nonsensical, close your eyes, take a deep breath and start humming: