Once again, this time for a report commissioned by the broadcaster itself, the ostensibly neutral BBC stands accused of a sneaky preference for dressing to the left. Much of the evidence for this is, at best, wobbly, but one witness employee, Washington correspondent Justin Webb, needs to be heard. The organisation, he peeved, is anti-American; it treats the US with scorn and derision and accords it 'no moral weight'.

He is, thus far at least, correct. The last 10 years have seen American stories relegated to a slew of 'and finally' freak shows, a vast country's talents reduced to synchronised gas-guzzling as choreographed by Paris Hilton. The trouble is that it is not just the BBC; disdaining Americans has become a national sport, regardless of the fact that it requires the skill of all sports involving fish, guns and barrels.

Everybody knows the check-list, only their priorities vary: stem cells, lethal injections, indelicate warfare, creationism, the second amendment, Wal-Mart, reproductive choice, pointy white hoods, chewing tobacco and obscene chocolate. We may add personal quibbles: that they call this paper The London Observer, on the solipsistic basis that if all their newspapers are mono-citied, then so must be everyone's. Or that now they finally screen Formula One, they go to ad breaks during clusters of pitstops because, apparently, stationary cars are boring. Jeez.

And yet, still, the view looks different from here. Here, in the house we bought a decade ago, a purchase then widely envied but news of which is now greeted in Britain with rudely choleric disbelief, especially given that we are in Georgia, not even the settlements of Tina Brown!, I heard Justin Webb's lone but plaintive cry and felt a comradely sadness.

The international shimmy from anti-Bush sentiments to blanket anti-American sentiments has been widely noted, especially since the President was elected a second time and so, say critics, the refusal of the nation to bow to experience means not just they have only themselves to blame but that we, by extension, may play the blame game too. Whatever the logic of that, however, it sits uncomfortably in comparison with a British electorate who had three doses of 'experience' before buying Blair another shot; further, the more than half of the US who did not vote for Bush express a visceral dismay at the electoral consequence with a passion that far outweighs the languid, late-night punditry of the more than half who did not vote for Blair. The price of democracy, they queue to tell you here, is how often it sucks.

That these people, by the tens of millions, should be damned with the same contempt deservedly dished to fundamentalist fools (cheering local bumper sticker: 'The Christian right is neither') is not fair; nor does it serve either their or our better interests. For here in flyover America, far from the hotspots better known to foreigners - Noo York, Washington, La-la - is where, and how, most Americans live. And for all that much of it is indeed as corny as Kansas in August, a great deal more is attractive and, frankly, ripe for the copying.

The social mobility yearned for by, say, Alan Johnson thrives here. Not one of our wealthier friends was born that way and both cause and result of this is a genuine, albeit incomplete erosion of what the British think of as class. The southern oil billionaire's accent is the same as his pool-boy's; when I watched an eminent attorney in court, he asked: 'Woz y'all workin' that day?' - not because he was thick, inarticulate or patronising his witness, but because they both speak like that.

We share casual suppers with the first from Daddy's farm to make college and who now holds an engineering doctorate, along with a feisty pizza waitress, a salvage diver, an international bestselling novelist, a lesbian runaway from the Moonies, the local fire lieutenant and a flight attendant who has an MA, Eng lit, but chose her job because she likes to get out more: regrettably, an inconceivable grouping in north London.

The lust for wealth that we love to mock is admittedly real and, if achieved, enjoyed. But by the same token, an appreciation of money ensures that nurses, teachers and firefighters are - relative to the UK - well-paid. It is also a sine qua non that if you have, you give; charity is endemic, not spasmodically wrung out of you by rock stars on a roll.

If you haven't money, the insurance companies will stiff you, but your neighbours, by and large, will not. A lawyer friend recently had a client unable to pay her bill so, for an agreed eight weeks, she found a home-cooked Sunday lunch nestling in her front porch. Which might be altogether too Atticus Finch for your taste, but it doesn't happen in Basingstoke, and you may decide if that is Basingstoke's loss.

God-bothering is, of course, a pain. But at least it is kept out of state schools so no parental piety - real or otherwise - may snaffle a choicer education from a more deserving child. And speaking of children: we only hear of the one who runs amok in West Virginia; from the other 58 million, we have lessons to learn. Even in deprived, no-go-after-dark downtown, teenage boys stand to look you in the eye, call you ma'am and have no familiarity with the language of the monosyllabic grunt - if only because their mamas, white and black, will have it no other way, not because the government is sponsoring 'initiatives' on 'respect'.

Too Pollyanna a picture? Missed out the killing fields of Detroit? Perhaps. But even if none of the above negates any of the problem issues on your list or mine, it does not mean than the pros of America are less real - or less evident, if you take the time to look - than the cons. Moreover, the perpetual sneering from overseas is having a sadly dispiriting effect on people who have achieved, in many areas, very much more than we have.

They deserve a lot better. We deserve a little humility. The BBC deserves its slap. From the land of the mockingbirds: g'night John-Boy.

· Mary Riddell is away