A Big French FU for the EU

Well, Bush, we might have known it, no? I don't know much about European politics (I suspect we have something in common there, eh, you and me?) but I do know a big fuck-you when it stares me in the face. Leave it to those Frenchies to screw things up for everyone, right, Bush? I mean, remember a couple of years ago, when you were planning for your war? You didn't get much help from those frog-leg eaters back then, did you? Being a something of a Brit still, in my heart of hearts, I have to admit to a certain innate prejudice when it comes to my former neighbors across the Channel. Centuries of it, really. Of course, in my younger days, when I was still living over there, some of my best friends were French. It's not French people I take issue with; it's just "The French." You know what I mean?

And I take comfort in the recently ascertained fact that I'm not alone in my nasty prejudice. Did you catch that piece--I think in the New York, but maybe the Los Angeles Times the other day? About these researchers who had polled people (a random sample, I'd be willing to bet) in any number of European countries on their opinions about The French? They came up with a score of adjectives to characterize them, and not one of them polite. I wish I'd kept the list, Bush, so that I could share it with you now. It was everything fom "arrogant" to "pompous" and "self-centered." I'm sure that "chauvinistic" would have to be in there somewhere: was M. Chauvin the creation of the Baroness Orczy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, one of my all-time favorite books when I was growing up? Or did she borrow him from the history of the Revolution? I honestly don't know.

Anyway, I do remember that the last word on the researchers' list was "dirty." Now that's going just a bit too far, wouldn't you say? Even I, with all my prejudices, would not have come up with that particular offensive word. Their showers don't work too well, it's true. But after all, they did invent the bidet, which I believe to be one of the world's greatest achievements in the field of plumbing. Give credit, right, where credit's due?

But listen, Bush, I bet you're having a bit of a chuckle over this one with your Rumsfeld, to see "old Europe" in such disarrary. I myself am frankly a bit disappointed, but not surprised by the contrarian spirit of the French. Although spectacularly uninformed about the Common Market and the European Union, I was counting on them to provide some counterweight to the American hegemony in the world at large. I was looking forward to what I fondly imagined to be a kind of United States of Europe. But I guess that won't happen without a constitution, so it's back to the drawing boards for now. A pity.