The Purple State | French media highlights American follies but ignores assets

Jordana Merran Guest Writer

As a French-American citizen living in the United States, I refused for a long time to admit that Europe, or at least France, is anti-American. I actually wrote one of my college admissions essays on the “freedom fry movement” that followed the U.S.’s Iraq UN resolution and how Americans have got it all wrong: the French don’t hate America—in fact, they love America! French teens spend exorbitant sums on Levi’s jeans; they read about Lindsay Lohan’s weight problems in magazines; they listen to Beyonce. There are just other factors preventing an ex-African-colonialist country from allying with the U.S. and engaging in a war against the Middle East. A 10 percent Muslim population, for example, or close proximity to the region...

All good things come to an end, though, and October break two weeks ago officially and finally ended my denial of the fact that beyond the frivolities of pop culture, France is indeed rather anti-American. I traveled with my mom to Nice, a city on the southeastern coast of the country, and without Internet connection in my grandparents’ apartment the only access I had to the outside world was through television. Watching the news on TF1, one of France’s largest and most popular television channels, on Oct. 20, I can confirm that Bush’s milestone admission that Iraq’s insurgency could compare to the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive was not processed into a very complimentary story. It was covered for about 50 seconds—the 50 seconds it took to show that Bush had agreed to the comparison, not the additional few minutes it would have taken to hear further explanation of what he meant.

My patriotically torn soul would like to say that this is an anomaly, and one that is comparable to what goes on in the United States—it’s not as though Bush was doing too hot on American stations either, after all. But when a Sylvester Stallone puppet decked out in Rambo-style machine guns is cast as the token American in a popular French political satire show, denying just becomes denial. The United States to France (and arguably to Europe) is politically irrational, cocky, and stubborn.

While that’s not news, that’s also not where the criticism ends, either. My uncle, for example, who I know is not alone in his opinions, speaks of American higher education as expensive name tags to stick onto a resume. He told me over break that after spending a year in San Francisco doing medical research he had been disappointed by the two-dimensionality of American political and intellectual discourse. Our news stations are theatrical, our broadcasted debates predictable, and our general sense of the outside world extremely limited.

Now, I don’t think this is all entirely fair. I like to believe that we are a smart and capable nation and that there exists with us a strong culture of intellectualism—we have produced great writers, scientists, artists, and, more broadly, political movements. One must recognize, however, that these are not assets and values heralded by the mob and the press. The 2004 presidential debates serve as a good example of this problem; rather than presented as an intellectual, political discussion in which Bush and Kerry argued with each other, responding candidly and without campaign slogans, there was an undeniable, pervasive element of performance. They looked at the audience instead of at one another, half the time not even answering the actual questions asked. While the whole spectacle may have been fun to watch, the irrefutable dumbing down of our mass media generally casts our abilities in shadow, particularly to foreign eyes. Meanwhile, we prove ourselves mature by renaming fast food staples.

With the Iraq issue, it seems that by now the damage has been done to our political reputation, and at this point, we (as in the United States and pretty much the rest of the world) must agree to disagree. There is no excuse, however, for the U.S. not putting her best foot forward in other areas visible to foreigners. Obviously, changing mob culture is not an easy feat, if even conceivable. But it could start with the basics: education, funding, more public programming... I guess elections results this week will have already determined that one.

Editor’s Note: The Purple State is a column by contributors to thepurplestate.com, which is an online publication for political commentary. The Miscellany News is not responsible for content on thepurplestate.com, with the exception of material reprinted on thepurplestate.com from The Miscellany News.