When I was growing up in the Old Country, nobody bothered too much about the rest of the world. But when people thought about Europe, France was the country they they thought about. And people liked France. They didn't particularly like Germany (Hitler) or England (a lot of us being Irish) or Portugal (where?) but nine out of ten people liked France. There was none of the ancient Francophobia that is part of British (and by extension, Australian) culture. Nobody had ever heard- and if they had, they didn't particularly care- about French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We had only heard about the French Resistance, nothing about collaborators or appeasement. We never thought much about Devil's Island- except, I realise now, some of us thought it might be cool to establish our own extrajudicial hellhole in the Carribean someday. When we thought about France, back in the Old Country, what did we think about?
* Snoopy and the Red Baron
* Pepe le Pew
* Lafayette coming to our aid in the War of Independence
* Liberty
* Fraternity
* Equality
You see, we thought the French were just like we thought we were, but with funny accents. We liked France. We thought they were fanatic republicans. We had a crush on France. So I guess the bitterness that you can read on right-wing American websites nowadays is because America feels jilted. It picked up the banner of revolution and mounted the barricades, and cried out 'Vive la revolution!' and France said (pace Mark Knopfler):
"Oh, Liberty, I used to have a thing with him..."
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