Frying the French
Veteran foreign correspondent and New York Daily News op-ed columnist Richard Chesnoff began his love-hate affair with France as a Paris-based reporter in the late '60s. Since then, he has spent 15 years (including six years writing for U.S. News ) in the land of good wine and stinky cheeses. Ensconced in his 13th-century house in the south of France, Chesnoff sounds off on Gallic gall in his new book The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can't Stand Us--and Why the Feeling Is Mutual ($24).
Why live in a place that you can write a 208-page diatribe about?
I absolutely adore France. It's the French attitude that bothers me.
You critique their arrogance. Aren't Americans arrogant as well?
I think our arrogances are different. Ours comes from a sense of strength and power and the idea that we have an obligation to do something with it. The French arrogance is rooted in a sense of superior culture.
What's wrong with that?
Many Americans, myself included, were outraged by the degree to which the French were nonsupportive of us over Iraq. One of the major reasons we went to war was that Saddam thought the French would back him up.
A bold view. Must have made for difficult dinner-party talk.
When the Iraq war broke out, you stopped talking about it at parties with French or Brits. It was just too difficult a conversation to carry on amicably.
Why?
I think Americans remember World War II, D-Day and the rest of it. We saved this nation from utter defeat twice in less than 50 years, and they don't like to admit that.
Is it a case of irreconcilable differences? Should France and America save the world the drama and just break up?
It's a love-hate relationship like any other. It's tied up with concepts of jealously, envy, anxiety, and all kinds of sexual elements. And it doesn't make any sense because this is a country that absolutely adores the U.S. and our pop culture but has great disdain for our values.
Will you continue living in France?
I think I'll stay. Unless someone burns my house down.
This story appears in the April 25, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.