38 Reasons To Love The French

Once, some years back, there appeared in The Village Voice a nasty article entitled “1001 Reasons to Hate the French.” In fact, the author cited only about 50 reasons and invited his readers to send in more so that the magic number of 1,001 could be reached. Although I am not French, I could retaliate with “1001 Reasons to Hate New Yorkers,” a theme likely to elicit sympathy not only in Paris but also even more in places like Idaho and San Francisco, especially during this time of political strife. But, turnabout is not always fair play and I prefer to be a lover rather than a hater. Thus, my desire to sing the praises of the French. The French are, indeed, a misunderstood people. At a certain level all peoples are misunderstood, but the French seem to arouse more antagonism than most nations since they are highly visible on the world scene and always seem to want to be different. When General de Gaulle was single-handedly “assuming France” in his London exile, the only way that he could find to be noticed and to be taken seriously was to be “ornery.” By saying, “No” to everything that Churchill and Roosevelt wanted, de Gaulle forced attention on himself and the cause of the Free French. His strategy succeeded, for he ended up as head of the provisional government when France was liberated. He had less success with his own people, who rejected his proposed Constitution in 1946. Upon his return to power, in1958, de Gaulle again applied the method of contrariness to foreign relations. But, this is getting us far afield. When I first came to France as a student, I attended a series of indoctrination lectures, one of which particularly caught my attention. A French politician, waxing emotional, declaimed: “On ne vous demande pas de nous admirer, mais de nous aimer.” (“We do not ask you to admire us, but to love us.”) Being young and analytical. I thought that this request was pretty damn silly: How can you love a people that you don’t admire? But, as time went by, I began to understand what this orator had meant.  I found myself loving France and the French without necessarily passing through the stage of admiration.  The track of love is not the same as the track of admiration.   Pondering the subtleties of the politician’s proposal, I came to suspect that the French spirit contained many mysteries, and concluded that it was worthy of study as one of the fine arts.  It is impossible to explain, in logical terms why one loves Bach or Chinese pottery.  If you accept the French spirit as a Fine Art, you accept it as an end in itself and not as a means of proving something.   When Descartes said “Je pense donc je suis,” he was really saying: “This sure beats working for a living.” Ever since, countless French intellectuals have found ways to shoot the breeze as an excuse for not working, with the result that reducing the workweek is the official policy of the French Government.  What other nation has had a cabinet member called the “Minister of Free Time”?   This is reason enough to love the French, particularly if you’re Japanese, for you can be sure that the free-timing French will be listening to Von Karajan or Barbra Streisand on a Walkman or other Japanese hi-fi equipment.             Today, we’re witnessing a confrontation between a certain type of American, seeing no shading between good and evil, and the French, for whom detecting nuances is as natural as having 400 kinds of cheese to choose from in a fromagerie. And when binary-brained Bush dons a black hat and suddenly discovers the joy of making preventive war, the French can be forgiven for preferring the guy with the white hat in American westerns, and for remembering that Napoleon tried preventive wars and ended up ignominiously serving time on the Isle of St Helena. But, enough said by way of introduction. It is time to get to my 38 reasons to love the French.    Les voila:   1.      Paris has not yet been ruined by gratte-ciels. 2.      French women have helped to teach the women of the world how to be sexier at 35 than at 25, as they have mastered this for hundreds of years. 3.      For every arrogant Frenchman, there is a beautiful French woman who is cuckolding him. 4.      Even Chinese food tastes good in France. 5.      The French have 400 types of cheese and still manage to import Kraft. 6.      The French can take Italians like Yves Montand and Serge Reggiani and turn them into French crooners in one generation. 7.      The French name their streets after artists, poets and statesmen; there’s not a single French city with numbered streets. 8.      Sigmund Freud was not French. 9.      The French have stopped writing operas. 10.  The French have not started a war in 100 years, or won one in 50. 11.  The French hold their elections on Sundays and never close their bars. 12.  The French take eating more seriously than religion. 13.  The French do not put ketchup on their oysters. 14.  The French always hold their revolutions during warm weather. 15.  In sports, the French prefer losing by one point to winning by 10. 16.  The French consider American movies of the 1930s to be works of art. 17.  French police always salute automobile drivers before they issue traffic tickets. 18.  When dubbed in French, John Wayne sounds like a good actor. 19.  Picasso lived in France and was allowed to remain a Spaniard as long as he paid taxes. 20.  Voltaire hated Rousseau. 21.  The French wash their hands before going to the toilet. 22.  French trains run on time, when they’re not on strike. 23.  The French do not sing La Marseillaise before every soccer match; they sing it after, if they win 24.  The French serve water without ice. 25.  French politicians can finish a sentence. 26.  French people in the provinces hate the Parisians as much as foreigners do. 27.  The French drive better than the Italians or the Turks. 28.  The French do not put sugar in their bread. 29.  The French do not use French dressing on their salads. 30.  The French eat a…