Not anti-U.S. but anti-’Doubeliou’

Paris —  Americans haven’t been very nice to their French friends lately.

First, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, frustrated at France’s outspoken position that the international community pursue a peaceful disarmament of Iraq, dismissed the country as part of “the old Europe.” Then America’s longtime allies were called “weasels,” “cowards” and “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” There were threats to boycott their wines and cheeses as punishment for not supporting a speedy war. And then there was the old standby about which language they’d be speaking if the U.S. hadn’t saved their behinds in World War II.

It’s not the first time the French have heard that one, but bringing it up in the midst of a moral debate about the justifications for war has left many people in France -- which, like every country living in the shadow of a superpower, seems always to have more to lose -- feeling hurt and insecure.

“We’ve had some really bad press lately,” said Manuela Depres, 42, a decorative painter and mother of three. “The Americans are mixing everything up -- saying we’ve forgotten that they saved us in ’45. That’s a bunch of nonsense. But it’s very serious to say those things.”

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin used his close-up at a recent U.N. Security Council meeting to take the moral high road: Those from the old country, he said, had a firsthand knowledge of war, occupation and barbarism that convinced them an armed conflict was the worst and last option.

French satirists have had plenty of fun mocking “Doubeliou,” as President George W. Bush’s sobriquet is sometimes phonetically spelled. On a nightly television institution called “Les Guignols de l’Info” (The News Puppets), a Bush marionette tends to leave the talking to his spokesman, Sylvester Stallone. Bush is often seen falling backward in his chair, twin pistols in hand and cowboy boots in the air.

But the French media have made a consistent effort to point out that Bush -- no great diplomat -- does not speak for all Americans. Recently, the erudite literary talk show host Guillaume Durand ran an interview with George Clooney, in which the actor expressed his pacifist views. A clip of Susan Sarandon’s antiwar sentiments has been aired dozens of times.

Media pundits, political commentators, the plumber, the lady who runs the Chinese takeout, neighbors, strangers at a cocktail party have also gone out of their way recently to clarify that objecting to a war in Iraq does not make them Saddam Hussein lovers or anti-American -- that vague, loaded, all-purpose label that gets slapped on people who don’t agree with U.S. policy.

“You will not meet any French person who will say, ‘I hate everything about America,’ ” says Camille Labro, 32, an American-born French journalist who grew up in France and moved back recently after living for a decade in New York. “They will tell you that ‘Easy Rider’ is their favorite movie; that Louis Armstrong is their idol; that burgers are their favorite food. French people aren’t anti-American -- they’re anti-Bush.”

Not a two-way street

French people are always amazed at America’s lack of curiosity about the rest of the world; as an American who has lived for the better part of the last eight years in Paris, I am constantly amazed at how much the French know about us.

The United States is in the headlines here every day, often the lead story on the evening news. America is the subject of endless fascination and minute analysis, a point of reference, a best or worst-case scenario, a glimpse of the future, an inextricable ally.

When something happens in the U.S., the French take it personally. The attacks of Sept. 11 sent shockwaves of empathy and grief throughout this country, and the aftermath of that event has provoked a deep sense of disenchantment with an America that figures in the landscape of many a French person’s dreams.

But the French have a hard time relating to Bush -- they complain about his lack of introspection; his finger-wagging, good-versus-evil rhetoric; his single-minded economic agenda. They find his you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us stance so simplistic as to be almost incomprehensible, a too-reckless manifestation of a cartoonish American individualism.

In less critical times, the French have spent considerable energy marveling at how someone who even my Republican grandmother wouldn’t call the most articulate man in the world became president of the United States of America -- Les States! -- the greatest country in the world!

“It shocks French people that this country with a huge tradition of democracy has a leader who doesn’t seem to care what his people think -- who wasn’t even elected!” Labro said. “They think he is an impostor.”

“We used to see America as the country that represented freedom,” said Brice Poisson, a 23-year-old who delivers groceries for a Paris supermarket. He was in the midst of reading Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men” in translation, which, he said, had given him the idea that not all Americans shared the values of the Bush administration. “George Bush represents money. Now I have the impression that everyone in the U.S. is a slave to their work.” He added: “I just hope now there isn’t a war between the U.S. and France.”

Gael Gillon, 30, who makes cultural documentaries for a French radio station, agreed that he no longer regarded America as the great symbol of freedom it once was to him.

“But, my God, we love America!” he said. “Practically all the movies that have meant anything to me are American. We love the music; the literature is the greatest there is. It’s the politics in this moment that we don’t like, but Bush won’t be there forever. And the social culture -- the death penalty, the anti-abortionists. But that doesn’t make us anti-American!”

Not being anti-American doesn’t mean that the French don’t have strong opinions about the U.S. government, or that they are timid about expressing them.

“Bush seems to take himself for the king of the world,” Depres said.

Others have characterized the conflict with Iraq as a showdown between two dictators who were both using their people to further a personal cause; employing the rhetoric of religion to frighten and manipulate; chipping away at personal freedoms and discouraging public debate.

Last weekend in Paris, a few hundred thousand people strolled down the broad boulevards in one of the many anti-war marches worldwide. They wore heels or Saturday clothes, carried shopping bags, stopped for a beer in the chilly winter sun along the way to the Place de la Bastille. Some chanted “Bush, Bush, As-sa-sin!” or carried signs that read “Stop la Busherie,” a play on “stop the butchery,” or “U$ Stay Home” or “No blood for oil.” A group of self-consciously smiling Americans carried a banner reading “Americans Against the War in Iraq.”

Gabriel Rosset, 52, had taken the Metro in to march, but for the moment, he was standing on the sidelines smoking a cigarette. “I work in data processing for the French army,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m for the war.”

Did that make him anti-American? “Mais, non!” But, no! “Just because you’re against an idea, or a policy, doesn’t mean you’re against the people,” he said. “It’s Bush’s political agenda we’re against, not the Americans.”

But possibly the most radical notion on the streets of Paris was the idea that the march wasn’t just a symbolic act; the belief that on this calm Saturday afternoon in February, a war on Iraq was not inevitable; it didn’t have to be too late.

“I haven’t given up,” said Rosset, before wandering off to join the crowd. “There’s always hope.”