Excellent piece, but I would take issue with one of Frank's comments: "The French are always characterised in American popular culture as a nation of snobs: they drink wine, they eat cheese, they’re polite."
Where did this "they're polite" thing come from? The French are always portrayed in US culture as the embodiment of, er, hauteur -- when, that is, they're not being characterized as plain nasty. Americans just aren't as funny about it as the Brits. See also "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and the merciless "taunting" King Arthur & Co. receives from the French soldier on the ramparts:
“Hello stuffy English k-nig-ots and Arthur King who has the brains of a duck you know. How you English say again, I unplug my nose in your general direction, you sons of a window dresser. So you think you could out-clever us French folk with all your knees-bent dancing about silly behavior. I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second-hand electric donkey bottom wipers ... you English bedwetting types. I burst my pimples at you and call your door opening request a silly thing! You tiny-brained wipers of other people's bottoms! ... Depart... or we shoot fire arrows in the tops of your hands and make castanets out of your testicles already.”
Carl
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