As the United States gets ready for the Super Bowl in about 18 hours, much of the sports coverage on the Monday evening news will be about a game that the rest of the world neither fully understands or really ever follows. But such is the cultural cringe about all things American.

Late last year, the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent, had this valedictory dispatch from Kevin Connolly, who will be leaving the US after three years as the Washington correspondent for the BBC. It makes excellent listening.

And I have to concur with his observations. Though my impressions of the place was not made after three minutes of landing there, I did meet some of the most hospitable and friendliest people, within three minutes of landing.

From New York to Memphis, from Cincinnati, to San Francisco and everything in between. During my travels on my American Journey in the summer of 2008 my observations and reflections on the United States are akin to Connolly’s. From people who are (in my words) ‘painfully nice’ to the enormous servings of ‘entrée’ dishes, from the widening gap between rich and poor to the self-imposed segregation among the many races. It is a land of wonder. It is American Exceptionalism.

But do listen to Kevin Connolly’s guide to American culture and see for yourself.

“This is, after all, a country born out of a tax-revolt during a rebellion against centralising authority, and then expanded by settlers who exchanged the comforts of the Eastern seaboard for the dangers and opportunities of the wild interior.”

“…they could speed up their journeys to work by not insisting on holding every elevator for everyone who wants to catch it as though it was one of the last helicopters leaving the roof of the Saigon embassy in 1975. There will be another lift along in a minute.”

“…after three years of eating steaks the size of elephant’s ears off plates bigger than satellite dishes, all of our crockery back in Europe now looks like it was borrowed from a doll’s house. They may take some getting used to.”

Photo: Lady Liberty, (Johnny Vulkan).