French Bashing

I never quite understood French bashing, but I've heard these jokes a million times. I always took them to be lighthearted. The more malicious bashing, however, comes from guys like this one.

What got me thinking about the absurdity of Francophobia was a passage in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder: "But the reality is that France never opposed the notion of war with Iraq. Responsibly seeking to avoid, if possible, the inevitable horror of armed conflict, it only opposed Bush's mad and irresponsible rush to war in Iraq. Such a war, French president Jacques Chirac feared, would outrage Arab and Islamic public opinion and 'create a large number of little Bin Ladens.'"

So we single out France and change our menus to read "freedom fries" while forgetting that Germany, Russia, China and other UN members also opposed our rush to war. We characterize the French as pacifists even though they sent thousand of troops to join our efforts in Afghanistan.

Anyway, why am I talking about this? French bashing is so 2003. China bashing is the newest trend... Though they deserve every bit of scrutiny over their human rights abuses. And so do we.