Le voix de l'etat n'est vraiment pas moi!

It's easy and fun to belittle the French. I'm American and French, more of the former and (in my estimation) the most obvious and sometimes best parts of the latter. I ususally get incensed when friends call the French timid or cowardly - you try holding the Maginot line when there's three Panzer regiments bearing down on you! (Curse those Belgians and their docility!) I patiently defend the French from those friends of mine who complain of being treated awfully in Paris (where even Parisians are treated awfully) and I expound on the virtues of meandering vineyards in the Loire valley. Yes, the French can be smarmy and snobbish and curt - just like the British, the Italians, the Germans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Swiss, the Dutch and the Russians. And you know what? Each of those countries has, to one extent or another, earned that right. There are cathedrals in France two and a half times as old as the United States! Cultural accretion can and does account for a lot of political bias. What is inescapable, however, is that France and America are buddies, nationally speaking. They love to come here and write alternatingly brilliant and insouciant prose on America's triumphs and failings. We love to go there and enjoy eternally temperate weather and sit outdoors and eat and inhale culture and an unhealthy dose of cigarette smoke. Some of us go to speak a language as self-loving and whimsical as any that has ever existed.
We tend to think of the French as residing somewhere between quaint anachronisms and aggressive Laputan descendants. No one I know cares about our longest-standing ally's politics, certainly not to the extent we care about India's, or China's, or Israel's, or even Iran's. Why don't we hear about French minutiae in the way we hear about, say, North Korea's (for example, why do I know Kim Jong-Il loves musicals and theater? The guy misfires some short-range missiles and I'm supposed to care that he wrote an opera?)? In the interest of mending the cultural rift between the average American and the average Frenchman, I link to this piece on CNN; nothing stirs American passion and empathy like a school hostage situation! At least in France the wacko just demands to speak to an education administrator. I pray (to the cosmos, in lieu of belief in the divine) for a swift resolution. For an internal take on the standoff, look here. (Warning: subscription to speaking French required)
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! (Unless you're Muslim)