Well, that and the ugly American (which usually is the ugly North American), corporate imperialism (not exactly your average American's fault), our wars, and things like George W. After someone else becomes the world leading power, people will probably wax poetic about the years when we were the biggest PITA the world had to worry about.
I just finished a sci-fi novel written by a British writer with lots of American military characters. It was written in the early naughties and was pretty critical of the US. The interesting thing, and perhaps the only interesting thing about it, was to see how this British man views us when he's doing something as unreserved as writing. It was a bit surprising how this particular man didn't really understand American culture at all. Some of the criticisms were dead on, but others (like calling an Indian woman "black" or calling proper written English "Harvard English") was way off. It just seems odd in this day and age, but it also made me nervous about ever trying to attempt to write something with a British character in it. It was sort of like when you read a book written by a man with a woman lead character (or vice versa) and it just seems off. I knew it has to be challenging for a writer to cross cultural boundaries for characters, but I didn't think that it would be so different in such a visceral way. I think there is more difference between our use of English than changing a few words and adding a few "u"s.
