Doug Miller (in ) said:

| Could it be that they just don't like the U.S.?

I don't think that's the case. They don't seem to have any problem
with individual Americans; but do seem to have issues with the
direction our political leaders are headed.

A week after the 9-11 attacks I saw little memorials (almost like
little shrines) for the American victims set up in many places - often
in little "Mom and pop" stores away from the normal tourist track. In
Epinal I stopped in a MacDonalds for a bag of /pommes frites/ (fries)
and was, of course, immediately recognized as an American. The lady
behind the counter grabbed both my arm and spent about a half hour
tearfully telling me how devastated she was over the attacks. She was
interrupted several times by other customers who had to take time to
tell me how sorry they were about what had happened. It was the same
everywhere I went. The least demonstrative was an old gentleman in the
open market in Auxonne who identified me as an American (How do people
/do/ that?), grabbed my arm to get my attention, looked me in the eye
and wished me (I think perhaps /all/ of us) "Courage" (with a soft
"g") - and then disappeared into the crowd.

A couple of days before I returned to the States, I self-consciously
apologized to a Paris store clerk for my (surely horrible) American
accent - it'd been 40 years since I'd studied French in high school
and I hadn't spoken a word of French before this trip - and she
laughed and told me (to my everlasting surprise) that many French
women considered an American accent sexy - and seemed bemused when I
told her that it worked exactly the same way in reverse. Perhaps it
was true or perhaps she was just trying to make me feel good - but
even if just the latter, she succeeded.

None of my experiences - *none* - even hinted that we aren't liked. I
suspect they're having a lot of difficulty trying to figure out what
we think we're trying to accomplish as a nation - and I suspect
they've decided that we're making unwise choices for reasons they
can't see.

But I haven't seen or heard anything that would lead me to believe I'd
feel unliked if I made the same trip today.

Having had that experience, I find this whole "Freedom Fries" thing
worse than silly. It strikes me as the small and mean-spirited
behavior of people who can't figure out who their friends are.

I don't know about anyone else but I'm going to brush up my French -
and *keep* my American accent :-)

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html