Quotes of the Day

Lately I have been hearing from concerned friends in the States. I'm American, and I live in France — so am I "O.K.?" They want to know how the French are treating me. Do I feel "afraid?"

Not of the French. No matter how hot things get between governments, the French people I know are not personalizing matters. They are kind to me about half the time and coolly judgmental the rest of the time — same as they always have been. Of course they exhibit infuriatingly French tendencies — stubbornly adhering to ideals no matter how glaring the inconsistencies, binding up their own wounds and disappointments by disdaining other cultures. I still find myself waiting in line at France Télécom for hours, only to be told at noon that the workers have "a right" to break for lunch. In the brasseries, people continue to share their abiding disgust for the unproven dangers of genetically modified food, through a fog of cigarette smoke.

But these days Americans are acting even more French than the French. On Thursday, a Florida congresswoman proposed a bill to help American families pay to exhume the remains of their war dead from Normandy and other patches of French soil. This comes two days after a congressional order requiring House cafeterias to re-name French fries "freedom fries." And outside Washington, I am told, a handful of restaurant owners have been self-righteously pouring out their stocks of Bordeaux.

And we accuse the French of hollow, petulant gestures?

Well, yes. In Toulouse, a citadel of gastronomy in the south of France, a collective of union reps and politicians is fervently mobilizing against the Ronald McDonald Foundation. The mission? To stop the Foundation from building a charitable hostel for the parents of hospitalized children — a facility everyone, even the protesters, agrees is sorely needed. The money has been committed, architects are finalizing the plans and a panel of doctors has endorsed the concept, noting that children tend to recover faster when their parents can stay nearby.

But to the protesters, the project is just another step down the slippery slope to privatized health care. "Eventually, we will end up like your country," warns Didier Bergé, secretary-general of the local hospital workers' union. Never mind that the hospital — and indeed the entire country — is already well on the road to privatization. The Ronald McDonald House is nothing but a bald-faced marketing strategy, he insists, adding that it would be vulgar to have a McDonald's House in the same hospital where French children are increasingly being treated for obesity. (We all know which country brought the world obesity.) Never mind that the facility will not serve fast food. Never mind that the Foundation already successfully runs four other Ronald McDonald Houses in France that have accommodated more than 1,500 suffering families over the years. "We are here in the south of France with gastronomic customs, like foie gras," Bergé sniffs, a voice of resistance in a country under attack. McDonald's opens a new restaurant in France every six days and still runs the country's most frequented restaurant — the one on the Champs-Elysées. You see — it's all about the symbolism of food.

So it goes, now, in Washington. Never mind that French fries are not really French (and neither is French toast, the other food renamed by Congress). Never mind that there is no need for the French to return the alleged slight, since any food with the prefix "American" is already debased. And let's not even get into more substantive issues — like, say, the fact that "freedom" should technically encompass the right to disagree with America. It appears our countries have more in common than they recognize. I should have made the connection after the Bush Administration refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and bowed out of the International Criminal Court, two decisions that carry their own whiff of Gallic disdain. Certainly, the shared superiority complex was evident when Jacques Chirac rebuked Eastern European countries for siding with the U.S. How dare such irrelevant countries speak before spoken to! And that is exactly the reaction the Administration (and many Americans) have had to the French since the Iraq crisis began.

In the end, both nations are pursuing their own interests. Chirac's dove act is no more disingenuous than Bush's Great American Liberator routine. The novelty is that suddenly Americans care what the French think. And while the French, and Chirac in particular, are happy to matter again, they are also finding out the attendant cost. After I explained "Liberté frites" to my French teacher last week, she buried her head in her hands. "I would prefer," she said, "to be ignored."

• AMANDA RIPLEY | American Abroad
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