How can anyone not like Americans? Look at how good we are – coated with chocolate and dripping with gooey caramel. No wait, that's a Baby Ruth bar. Well, a Baby Ruth bar is sort of like an American – sweet, nutty and full of chemicals.

We love puppies and violent female wrestlers and guys who go on Jerry Springer to find out that the woman they married is a hologram. We've invented diets that involve nothing but candy bars and milk shakes. We make the best darned Christmas movies ever. How can people not love us?

Well, they don't. According to an analysis by Gannett News Service, our recent military victories and slack-jawed, lumbering rut through the world of diplomacy have unleashed simmering resentments against us that have made even our friends sound suspiciously like the French.

All the sudden, they don't like our trade policies. They think our cars are too big. They think our butt looks fat in these pants. Why did the rest of the world even let us buy these pants if it thought they made our butt look fat?

But in America, when you learn about your deepest, most tragic flaw, the only thing to do is to get an image makeover. Hair, nails, facial. Surely the Saudis will love us then.

Let's address the complaints one at a time:

1. Our cars are too big.
You can make your car look smaller if you get really, really fat. Once you reach about 500 pounds, even the hardiest SUV starts to look like a riding mower. Even better, though, perhaps other countries would be less upset about our cars if we offered them rides. How about Senegal? It looks like it wants to go somewhere.

2. Our fast food restaurants are ruining the world's cuisine.
You know why foreigners feel that way? Because, when handing the customer his Triple Bacon Patty-O-Plenti, somebody didn't serve with a smile. It says right on the front door, "We serve your Bacon Burger with a smile." But you didn't smile, and now you've irritated the terrorists. I'm going to bust you to your supervisor.

3. We know nothing about other cultures, though they know everything about us.
That is so not true. We know all about foreign countries such as Canada and Alaska and that one country that looks like Portugal, but isn't. That's because every culture on earth is faithfully replicated somewhere in Las Vegas. Even the Taliban are represented by an amusement park ride at the MGM Grand, the Taliban-A-Rama. And once you visit other countries this way, you'll realize that, no matter where you go, all over the world, everyone is pleasant and speaks English, though the drinks are watered down and the waitresses already have a boyfriend. Our problem is that we just don't show off this knowledge enough. Other countries will respect us more if we show how much we know – by running around telling them what to do.

4. We're always running around telling other countries what to do.
Oh for ... What do these people want from us?!

5. The culture we've exported throughout the world is soulless and superficial.
We've got to start being profound, so we need to increase our marketing research into what profound things actually sound like. Preliminary results may surprise you. For example, among males age 18 to 25, the sentence, "After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb" (Nelson Mandela), is not perceived to be as deep as the sentence, "Superboy would so totally not do that in real life."

And if none of that works, and we can't make people think we're brilliant and sensitive, at least we can make them think of us again as big, good-hearted slobs, just like they used to. We try to be nice. We mean well. We tip too much when we're in Europe because we keep forgetting that the funny-looking Monopoly money they use over there is actually worth anything. We're trying to export the concepts of personal liberation and open democracy. We're good and decent people, and anyone who doesn't think so isn't a real American. Even though they already don't live here. Sort of. My head hurts.