[Opinionated Blowhard]

I'd say that her comment is something that elitist Europhiles have been saying for hundreds of years, but that would be giving her too much credit.

[katana]

They were also writing that our beastly climate and the native foods we were by necessity eating such as maize, beans, potatoes, squash, etc. would over generations cause the original hearty wheat fed European stock to degenerate into a sickly population of imbecilic dwarves. They never quite grasped that the best of them were the ones who looked around, said **** this, got on board reeking leaky ships, survived weeks of being tossed at sea in floating petri dishes of disease, and then thrive in a maelstrom of make it or die 'cause you're on your own freedom. Like the elongated humans in the science fiction book series Expanse adapted to life in zero G corridors of carved out asteroids, we are a strong new race (of no particular color) adapted to this land. It's the ones our ancestors waved goodbye to as the ships left port who degenerated.

[hinckley buzzard]

Exactly right. Europeans have been saying these things about Americans since at least the eighteenth century. Of course, true Americans never much gave damn.