" Is the average US pirate kind of tanned, has a really tacky foreign accent, or conveys in any other way a vaguely menacing ethnicity?" You forgot to mention

" Is the average US pirate kind of tanned, has a really tacky foreign accent, or conveys in any other way a vaguely menacing ethnicity?" You forgot to mention the parrot on the shoulder and the peg-leg...and the gratuitous usage of Google Pirate: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-pirate http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-pirate