March 23, 2007: Hold the Fries

It has become customary in America to make fun of the French. This is not entirely new. And not entirely undeserved.

In WWII, France was known more for knuckling under to the Nazis than for aiding the fight against fascism. True, the lonely heroism of the vaunted French Resistance was real and legendary. Last week, one of its last surviving heroes, Lucie Aubrac, who freed her husband from the Gestapo, died at 94. But during the war, while Aubrac risked her life in the resistance, crooner and later-movie star Maurice Chevalier smiled like a stuffed pig and performed in Paris for occupying S.S. brass. And who is the more famous Frenchman today? "Gigi" beats the Resistance.

Mme. Aubrac and her like aside, the French have never, um, earned a particularly fierce reputation as warriors. "Wine, Women and Song" has long seemed more about the French than their national motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

But to be fair, the French have not always been on the wrong side of the ramparts. Take Iraq.

In 2003, when France officially refused to be part of President Bush's "Coalition of the Willing," and instead passionately made the case for giving U.N. weapons inspectors more time, there was vilification rarely seen in this country against an erstwhile ally. The nearly violent anti-French reaction by many Americans at that time is now summed up best by two congressmen's (successful) bill to have the House cafeteria strike the words "french fries" from its menu in favor of "Freedom Fries." ("French" toast was, well, toast, too.)

Take that, Chirac!

Nitwit yahoos from Boise to Boston made it on early-morning nitwit news shows by gleefully pouring out bottles of Bordeaux into sewers. Conservative radio jocks called the French "wine-drinking, cheese-eating, surrender monkeys." (Which, truthfully, was only a slight recycling of the right-wing's usual label for liberal Democrats.)

In the presidential campaign of 2004, a Bush aide even quietly circulated the observation that John Kerry "looks French." Now, few would argue that Kerry looked stupid, perhaps, windsurfing in his wetsuit, but "French?" This from an opponent and still-White House occupant who looks like Alfred E. Newman?

Well, four years later, it's the French who get to slowly slice off a big wedge of Brie, languidly pour a full, glistening glass of, oh, perhaps a perky 2003 Pinot Noir, toast us Americans with the biggest of merde-eating grins and say, "Ne pas se le faire dire deux fois." Which is French for, "I told you so."

And so they did.

It's not Freedom Fries those super-patriots in Congress are eating now; it's instead a steady diet of crow and humble pie. And if they prefer more familiar comfort food, they'll have to ask for it by name -- as of last summer, french fries and french toast were both back on the menu in the House cafeteria.

In a further twist, as of last November, Bob Ney (R-Ohio), one of the "Freedom Fries" original sponsors, had resigned in disgrace after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy and lying in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. As of March 1, he began serving a federal prison sentence. At FCI Morgantown, W.Va., Ney will be eating his fries, minus the freedom.

Yes, the French may be many things -- arrogant, supercilious, self-righteous. They may use too much cream in their cooking, not bathe frequently enough, and insist on their narcissistic notion that, Civilization -- il est France.

But on Iraq, they were right. Pure and simple.

One thinks of this today as the U.S. House of Representatives, four years after banishing the word "French" from its midst, finally roused itself to begin the painful process of disengaging the nation from a war the French saw from the start for the catastrophe it would become.

Naturally, President Bush says he will veto the bill (which establishes deadlines and a pullout date) should it ever reach his desk. So there is likely little chance he will ever say, in a final, farewell chat with outgoing French President Jacques Chiraq, "Je regret."

After all, he's never said it to us in English.