Last month (not coincidentally during university finals time), a Belgian radio presenter did a world record attempt for longest non-stop radio presentation, and since apparently Guinness didn't have that record yet, it was accepted as a world record (it was something like five days or so, I don't remember the number).

Last week, a US radio presenter went and broke the record. When interviewed about it, he mentioned that he'd gotten an anonymous email from Belgium which had motivated him to keep going and get that record if it killed him. The email said, well, let me go look it up exactly, it kind of illustrates several points at the same time... (translated from English to Dutch and back to English, so it may not be 100% accurate)

"Please don't continue with that radio marathon. First off, you Americans can't handle that 187 hours and don't underestimate how strong we Belgians are. I've lived in the US for 14 years and if it taught me one thing it's that you're the laziest people on earth. Just this once, let us Belgians keep the record. You Americans always have to be the best in everything, but know that the rest of the world considers you the biggest and most careless idiots."

Now what can we conclude from that story, and from the fact that my newspaper found it worth putting on its website:
1) Some people are utter idiots
2) Anti-Americanism really is an issue in Europe sometimes
3) With green cards being so hard to get for most people, evidently some imbeciles who really don't deserve them still manage to acquire them, and as someone who actually likes the US and might like living there, I'm annoyed by that
but also
4) People from smaller countries don't have as many things to be proud of, so they're sometimes proud about strange things
5) Some of them get pretty pissed off when said strange things are insulted, minimized or carelessly and effortlessly outdone
6) The press in smaller countries can generally be relied on to follow *everything* involving the country in question or its inhabitants in the foreign press or blogosphere (to the point that whenever something happens in Belgium that's international news, the Belgian newspapers will inevitably start publishing articles about how the news is being reported on foreign media)
7) If it even needs to be pointed out anymore: big countries inevitably get a lot more media attention than small ones, meaning inhabitants of small countries inevitably will know more about big countries, and follow their news more, than the other way around
8 ) And finally, Americans don't exactly like it when their country is insulted, either

Of course, with regard to the issue at hand, I should immediately point out that the UK is not a "smaller country", and so the above isn't nearly as true for them as for Belgium, but in comparison to the US every country counts as a "smaller country", even the small handful that are actually bigger in absolute terms. And of course, the Olympics are a rather bigger deal than a radio marathon record of a month old.