John J. Miller & Mark Molesky
Our Oldest Enemy: The History of
America’s Disastrous Relationship
with France.
Doubleday, 261 pages, $24.95
Recall that the “rush” to war with Iraq was attended in the
U.S. by an efflorescence of Francophobic fever. Our
streets ran red with
Bordeaux (a revolutionary excess
worthy of
the Reign of Terror); France was placed in
an “axis of weasels”; in public discourse, Frenchmen were reduced—quelle
injustice! quelle effronterie!—to shiftless Pépé Le Pews,
reeking of Gauloises and raw fear.
For all that this reaction was condemned
as boorish or “xenophobic,” one feels there is a great
gulf between “Chirac est un ver” or “freedom fries” and,
say, Jean Baudrillard’s comment about 9/11: “How all the world
without exception dreamed of this event …” (Tell us what
you really think, Jean.)
The question is not “Why do they hate
us?” but “Why don’t we hate them?” The answer is on display
in Our Oldest Enemy, John J. Miller and Mark Molesky’s
amusing, and amusingly overzealous, study of French treachery, from the
Quasi-War of 1798–1800 to Vichy France to Derrida: We don’t quite
hate them because it’s far more fun to laugh at them.
If good humor and thick skin are American traits, leaden
self-importance and sniffling pique are their French
counterparts. Bernard-Henri Lévy, in The New York Times Book
Review, called the book “a mad charge (whose only
equivalent I know is the fascist French literature of the 30’s)
against a diabolical nation.” Do you think that’s any
accident? Dig a bit deeper, Maigret, and you’ll find the joke’s
on you.