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David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
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Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
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Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
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The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
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Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
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Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
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Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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January 30, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
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Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
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Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
August 2, 2005
/ 26 Tamuz, 5765
French Logic 101
By
Daniel Berczik
Sure the newscycle has been depressing lately. But a new book by one of JWR's longtime contributors — a resident of France for twenty years — will leave you smiling. A perfect summer read!
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There is a scene in The Pink Panther Strikes Again where Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau goes up to a hotel front desk to
register. He notices a dog behind the desk and asks the clerk, "Does your dug bite?" "Non," answers the clerk. Clouseau
bends down to pet the dog and of course, the dog bites the hapless inspector.
"I thought you said your dug did not bite!" Clouseau cries.
The clerk stares with proper French bored disdain and answers, "Zat ees not my dug."
There are many moments like that in The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can't Stand Us — and Why the Feeling Is
Mutual by Richard Z. Chesnoff. Chesnoff, a JWR columnist based at the New York Daily News and contributing editor to U.S. News &
World Report, who has spent much of the last twenty years living in France and has forty years of French memories to back up his
anecdotes and the crash history lessons he sprinkles around the book.
This is not heavy work; at 180 breezy pages including addenda (one, a very funny and helpful guide to French insults for
tourists) Arrogance can be digested on a good Sunday afternoon. It was just after noon, the sun was streaming through the windows of the sun room and I decided to see
what Mr. Chesnoff could tell me about the French character. I wanted the moment to be correct and the atmosphere to be just
so. I opened a nice bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape that I've had since before freedom fries and settled in with the balance of
the day given over to Frog Squashing.
I had anticipated a litany of grievances, citations and intrigue and was prepared to put the book down periodically in order to
adjust my blood pressure. Instead, I found myself laughing, wearily shaking my head and marveling at how a people so filled
with craven self-loathing and clueless comedy could have survived a thousand years. Instead of leaving the book determined to
hate the French even more than I did on the day before, I finished feeling more sorry for than disdainful at what Mr. Chesnoff
describes as a pathetic archetype of a nation on the down side of cultural evolution.
I'm not sure that this was Mr. Chesnoff's intended reaction. There are many moments in the book where Mr. Chesnoff wants
us to laugh at haughty French behavior, as in when he relates a story of a neighbor in his Midi village whose effort to stake a
claim to a long-neglected patch of earth leaves the author insulted and confused, or when Mr. Chesnoff has his own
Clouseau-like episode with a grocer and a bicycle (it is truly funny). Mr. Chesnoff uses these vignettes to introduce the reader
to what he sees as the tragicomic flaw in the French character: Cartesian logic.
René Descartes' famous dictum, cogito, ergo sum — "I think, therefore I am" — appears to have been coalesced in the French
mind not as a basis for reasoning, but as an excuse for manipulation and buck-passing. For something to be "true" and
protected from question, it must be conceived not merely clearly and distinctly but very clearly and distinctly. The result, as Mr
Chesnoff says, is "a closed system and the core of what we know as French arrogance. Indeed, I think it logical to say that
many of France's woes and discomfort in the modern world stem directly from this peculiarly French application of Cartesian
thinking."
This fairly explains the French attitude towards the rest of the world. We find here, though, an insight that also explains the
French attitude towards the French. All is chauvinism. Mr. Chesnoff quotes a local expression that translates to "the worst
foreigners come from Paris." But what is not explained in this formulation is the greatest of French passions, far beyond wine
and cheese (how many? 246? 426?), philosophy and La Vie En Rose: Anti-Americanism.
Mr. Chesnoff provides a concise, understandable history of French-American relations going back as far as American history
will allow. There are no revelations here, but it is helpful to have all the facts in a handy, CliffsNotes version for easy reference.
Maybe it's Mr. Chesnoff's years of writing for periodicals that serves him in being able to articulate through spare sentences
and pointed quotes the arguments he desires to put forth. In all the pages in which we learn or re-learn the
love-hate-LOVE-HATE that passes for bilateral relations, nothing quite gets to the core as Mr. Chesnoff's quote from French
writer Marek Halter: "'We have been replaced by another empire that is like us but also very different. We are jealous of the
successful similarities and detest the differences. We may not like George Bush, but we really want him to love us.'"
We can complain that France, once our putative ami and always our continental doppelganger has too much of an inferiority
complex to be taken seriously. We can remember and speak about the depravity and cowardliness of Vichy France which sent
thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps. We can recount de Gaulle's scheming to "liberate" Paris, his betrayal of Israel in favor
of the Arab demographic and his game playing with NATO defenses. We can identify current French President Jacques
Chirac as the national poster boy for French waiter behavior. We can — and must — get to the bottom of decades of French
governmental crime, graft and perfidy. (The words "French" and "perfidy" have become inextricably linked since the run-up to
the Iraq war and have taken on a higher meaning in the wake of revelations of French double-dealings with Iraq and the UN
Oil-For-Food Program). But what we can't seem to do is affect a change in French attitudes without being sucked into the
vortex of c'ést logique swirling around Elysee.
There are many instances where Mr. Chesnoff enumerates France's myriad problems adding "things are beginning to change"
as if to assure us that all is not lost in Gaul. He then gives us an entire chapter of responses to two sets of questions he posed to
a group of French University students. The questions:
1. What is your opinion of America and Americans? Is there a contradiction between love of American culture and disdain
for American values and politics?
2. Many Americans consider the French arrogant. Do you agree?
The answers are illuminating and illustrate a woeful and distressing lack of knowledge of current historical facts. They also
betray a school system that relies most heavily on rote learning and eschews independent thought. We read the same tired
stereotypes of a broken American health care system, a deep trough between rich and poor and a United States bent on world
domination and the debasement of the global environment (no matter that the French are per capita worse polluters than
Americans). It is tempting to dismiss these answers as ridiculous paranoia except for the fact that this is coming from a
generation that will soon take over the seats of French power.
I was an acquaintance of a waiter at a local French bistro just up the street from my house. Bruno considered himself a
professional and he was. He also insisted that he was a philosophe and took it upon himself to try and educate me whenever
we met. A day or two after September 11 we were having a lunch at the bistro. Bruno saw us, and although he was not our
waiter that day, came over to greet us. He immediately expressed a sincere sympathy. He should have stopped there.
"However," he continued, "you must admit that this was bound to happen sooner or later. I don't understand American logic.
| BUY THE BOOK |
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Why fight? We had our own problems with terrorists, you know. But we made a deal and now they leave us alone. They're
your problem now." He shrugged as if to punctuate what for him was perfect logic. In order to deal with an intractable
problem, one must not confront, but misdirect. All is well if the problem is someone else's. This is the Cartesian logic Mr.
Chesnoff enunciates and it pervades every social stratum and generation of France.
Mr. Chesnoff spends much of the last pages on an accounting of all things that have gone wrong in the Fifth Republic. High
unemployment is chronic. Deficits continue to mount as Paris ignores EU economic strictures. Race relations worsen with
radicalized Muslims refusing to assimilate and attacks on Jews mounting each season. Government officials continue to refuse
to admit that terrorism isn't a problem reserved only for America. Even the famed French cuisine is showing signs of wear.
Growing numbers of French now buy processed or frozen food and the search for a transcendent meal is more likely to be
satisfied in New York or London than in Paris.
And yet, Mr. Chesnoff still has hopes for La Belle France, even as he admits that the American romantic notion of France
hardly exists anymore. His prescription comes down to allowing France to be heard if not heeded. France fears being ignored
more than anything and wishes above all else to be taken seriously. Mr. Chesnoff seems to be advising that we, the lone global
Super Power, say to France, the land of lost power: "Yes, we will promise to take you seriously. As long as you promise not
to take yourselves so seriously." Would that work? Could better relations come down to so simple a solution? It might be
worth a try. For all of our just complaints the reality is that France still commands one of the largest economies in the world and
exerts, rightly or wrongly, an influence well beyond it size.
So if we take a look at the current state of bilateral relations we can possibly see the value in stepping back for a moment,
raising our hands and proclaiming, "C'ést logique!"
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Daniel Berczik blogs at Bloggledygook.com Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Daniel Berczik
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