Death to America, Daddy-O

I don't know about you, but if a week goes by in which I haven't been lectured in ponderous tones as to why Americans are so hated, I feel all empty inside. So to fill the gaping void in my soul, I rooted around and found this article, in which the author ponders "the reason which has prompted growing distaste for us in a country which is our oldest ally and dearest Continental friend." Here's a sampling:

Before World War II the writer once engaged in argument with the buxom, faintly mustachioed patronne of a small Paris bistro. "Ah," said she by way of summing up, "you Americans were chics in 1917 -- not now."
We who were so chics in 1917 and again a quarter of a century later are no longer popular in France. This is one of the disappointing features disclosed by the present crisis. On both extreme Left and extreme Right an ugly current of anti-American feeling is running. Why?

I know, you're thinking that you know the answer to this one. It's because of George Bush -- his arrogant smirk, his swaggering unilateralism, and his obsession with oil (the French would never let their foreign policy be tainted by oil concerns) caused our faithful friends the French to turn away in disgust, right?

Well, there's just one problem with that theory: the article in question was written in 1958, when George Bush was ten years old. If you're scratching your head as to how the French could have come to hate us without the help of Chimpy McDeath, here are the reasons given by the author:

-The relative changes in the international stature of America and France. "No nation likes to see itself slipping on the scale of grandeur. It is human nature to resent those that replace it."

-Our opposition to the French at Suez, and the supplying of small arms to the Tunisians (i.e., interfering with their ill-gotten colonial booty).

-The lack of contacts by the French with everyday Americans, leaving them to garner their impressions of us from "films, books, soldiers, business men and tourists." One French journalist quoted in the article notes - with requisite disdain, naturellement - that the uncouth Yanks "drink Coca-cola among the most magnificent vineyards." Quel horreur!

-And, lastly, the deliberately distorted image of Americans painted by European intellectuals, charicaturizing us as a nation obsessed with, among other things, rock and roll, juke boxes and stock car races.

So there you have it. If only we didn't behave like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, everybody would love us. Now that we have that solved, I'll leave you with this:

There is no hate for the United States in France. France remains friendly to the United States. But the French people just don't like the American people.

That little tidbit was said by Charles de Gaulle. Leave it to either a Frenchman or John Kerry to come up with the nuanced position of "our country doesn't hate your country, our people just hate your people." Whatever.