"France isn't so bad, I swear!"--NYT

(Let me preface this by saying that I like France, or at least many aspects of it, or at least enough to study French and go to France. Cheese and shoes. Other things, too, but really, the cheese and shoes are the hardest to track down elsewhere.)

Interesting op-ed by Felix G. Rohatyn, U.S. ambassador to France from 1997 to 2001. His point is basically that Americans are supposed to care about France, that the country still matters. This assumes, correctly, that many people have ceased to think it does. Anyway...

He begins by offering some vague praise of France, unlikely to convince anyone of anything: "I travel to France regularly and it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world — one that is inhabited by some of the most intelligent and, yes, complicated people in the world."

What country would the Times op-ed pages be willing to say was inhabited by some of the least intelligent people in the world. Just wondering.

Next come the references to what "they"--all French people--think about various matters, as opposed to what all Americans think--guess who comes out ahead?

"While there are, today, some Americans who like to think that the French don't remember D-Day, that is far from the truth; they do remember, and they are grateful...On the American side of the ocean, there is no such curiosity, much less anxiety. There is only a certain dismissiveness and this silent reproach: 'They don't remember.' That is both untrue and self-defeating."

I am under the impression that there's plenty of American curiosity about France--why else are Petit Bateau tee-shirts chosen over GAP ones? But seriously, to say that "the French" do this, whereas those idiotic Americans do the opposite, isn't going to make those same Americans like France any more.

"Although there will still be differences about Iraq and other issues, I know that France and America need each other strategically, economically, culturally."

Does this last part, about the cultural codependence, mean that the French don't just furtively and bitterly consume the jeans, popular music, and fast food with which we provide them? How many French people, in this ambassador's opinion, would freely admit to needing America culturally?