Europe = The World?

"Canadian? Since when was it cooler to be Canadian?" asks Vince Vaughn in this USA Today article about how U.S. citizens are getting verbally abused overseas. The rap is a familiar one: Americans are "culturally inferior, ignorant of world politics, arrogant in our interaction with the rest of the world" etc. The article justifies at least one of these accusations by employing the Lost Generation notion that "overseas" means "Western Europe." Even on the distorted Risk gameboard, Europe takes up a small portion of the world map. Where's the rest of the gorgeous mosaic? What's going on with all the backpackers in Nepal, the sandalistas exploring Central America, the pedophiles cruising Thailand?

And one other accuracy problem: Vince Vaughn is defined as an "A-list celebrity."