That is what Newman is arguing also. The confusion, I think, is a rhetorical ploy to argue against veneration of saints in general by claiming that it is idolatrous.
But I agree both with blessed John Newman and David Clayton that there is a difference between the attitude and perception -- not a theological difference, but difference of disposition that exists between the North-West and South-East. I don't know if it is conditioned by the memory of iconoclasm, so vivid still in the North-West, where it remains a matter of theological dispute among Christians, but long forgotten in Mediterranean south; or perhaps by the temperamental differences.
I am inclined to thing it is a defensive reaction against theological criticism, especially among the Catholic British who had to hide their devotions till relatively recently in historical perspective. That is because the Russians, -- the race I know more than a casual thing about -- are Nordic by temperament but treat their icons like family members. Of course, in Russia iconoclasm, while very recent, was mere atheist brutality without any earnest theological concern we are familiar with in the West, -- so the Russians had to hide their icons rather than modify behavior once in the presence of icons.
If my hypothesis is correct, then so much more important is the task of evangelizing the West through Catholic, and especially through Byzantine art. If we do that, our faith in the West will regain the innocence of a child, with which an Easter Christian kisses his icon.
I think there's a lot of validity to your hypotheses, but I think there's something far more basic at work as well: literacy.
Prior to Gutenberg, and really, for some time after, reading and writing were esoteric skills reserved for clerics and nobles. The vast majority of Christian laity was instructed through the visual representations of sculpture, fresco, icons, stained glass, etc.
I don't think there's any accident the Reformation took place within the wake of the printing press and the widespread dissemination of religious treatises to an increasingly literate laity.
What I find curious is that many of the iconoclasts who preach Sola Scriptura fail to recognize that every letter in virtually every alphabet had its origin as some type of pictographic represention. They are perfectly content with a few million ink molecules on a written page that pictographically represent the concept, "GOD," but they become highly uncomfortable, if not downright hostile to a few million paint molecules on a poplar panel that pictographically represent the identical concept.