There’s also a generalized xenophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-elitist streak in American culture that has for the moment specified the French.
The French still look at themselves as a world power in the Western world, which of course, they are not. So they often oppose the US politically.
It’s possibly because the US came to their aid while they were occupied, a sititaution unlike Great Britain, who was able to adjust to their new role in the world. No good deed goes unpunished.
Any country who thinks Jerry Lewis is funny, is unlikely to be well thought of by Americans. 
I don’t think you can truthfully say “the United States entered World War I and then won it.” I seem to recall a few other nations being involved. (See “Verdun,” as mentioned earlier.) The same goes for “our victory in both” the European and Pacific theaters of World War II. I mean, they were World Wars, after all. Don’t forget Stalingrad, among many other crucial battles. I think our entry into the wars was probably what ended up deciding the contests, but that’s not the same as saying we won them.
This only makes sense if you consider the French strange, intellectual, and elitist.
Amen to that.
It’s not much of a leap to equate “strange” with “foreign,” is it?
Cecil speaks: Do the French really love Jerry Lewis?
No, and I figure some xenophobia probably enters into things. It was the “anti-intellectual” and “anti-elitist” bits I wasn’t so sure about.
RR
Um… nuclear power, permanent member of UN Security Council, backs the currency used in large parts of Africa, guards the European space launches with the Foreign Legion, G-7 nation, still has colonies around the world… I think France qualifies as a power at some levels. Not a ‘superpower,’ but so what? A power still certainly.
The ‘surrender monkey’ thing is pretty unfair; France lost a huge % of its young male population in WWI; they went down fighting. No one can figure out why anyone was fighting, but there you have it. I can understand why they weren’t eager to repeat that country-wide Alamo scenario in WWII, even if that isn’t the macho answer. It’s easy to charge the French as being cowards from the safe side of the Atlantic.
Any non-American (or Canadian who’s inundated with our news) reading this has to understand there are two pretty different Americas right now which probably have very different attitudes toward France. You’ve got your coastal urbanites who make up about 50% of the US population & are generally more liberal & generally more internationalist in scope (though not as much as most nations; we’re a pretty maverick nationality on the whole). And you’ve got your more rural middle America, the other 50% of the population, who tend to be more conservative and cautious if not antagonistic toward internationalism.
There aren’t many French-Americans by the way, or at least very very few who identify in that direction… most immigration ended up in (what’s now) Canada, save the very small Cajun population. Thus for a large European group, the French are unusually ‘foreign’ to Americans, virtually all of us being part genitcally English, Irish, Italian, African, Polish, German , Scandinavian, Mexican etc etc, or at least someone we know is, or there’s a bar or restaurant that is down the street. You can find just about everything but a ‘French neighborhood’ in the averge large American city (New Orleans is even actually technically more Spanish than French, excepting Creole surnames). I’m 1/8 French myself, but that goes back 4 generations and there are no cultural/family ties. To my knowledge none of my friends are of French descent. But, geez, everyone seems to be part Irish or German (I’m both and more).
Few countries symbolize “the rest of the world” for both groups of Americans more than France, for all of the reasons mentioned above. I’m in the coastal/liberal group, and unsurprisngly I learned French in college, visited once, have a generaly positive view of the place, etc. I understand exactly why some of my fellow Americans don’t; we’re a divided society culturally and politically right now. You’ll get both types of posts on these boards, on the whole more polite than we usually are with each other…
Finally, there was a round of GATT negotiations (pre-WTO) held up largely by France safeguarding its film industry against Hollywood. This didn’t ban any specific US films in France, but limited the % on screens at any one time that would be from here. I can understand why France would do this, and I was even supportive of France taking that stance for itself. It seems culturally and economically appropriate. At the same that’s simply not the way we do things here, and is culturally and legally inappropriate for us, which (IMO) many Americans unfortunately projected toward France at the time. Here is a good article summarizing a bit of this history from a decidedly minority left-wing perspective from a British immigrant to the US.
Hopefully this lends some insight into the heads of us wacky Yanks for the rest of you. And remember not to get any burger grease on your jeans while you’re listening to rock’n’roll. 
My apologies- I have misremembered. In looking up the topic, I found that France, instead of banning American movies, seems to place an extra tax on them, the funds of which go directly into funding French movies.
But I found a good articles on the French-American culture wars-
Which brings up something else I had forgotten- the recent French law trying to ban borrowed English words from TV. (Recently thrown out as unconstitutional, according to the Wired article.)
As for the “anti-intellectual” and “anti-elitist”, that does actually play into it, somewhat. The cultural wars seemed to promote an attitude of French elitism, that the French government was under the thrall of a snobbish elite that wished to force ‘true values’ down the populace’s throat by legislating away any possible choices- most conservatives believe that if a thing is worthwhile, it will survive in the marketplace; and that therefore France’s attempts to quota French programming and force out English words from the language, etc., are desperate attempts to preserve something that most French really don’t want or care about.
(Interestingly, one could draw paralells between that perception and Europe’s perception of the Religious Right in America.)
I think that the US/French problem goes back to post-WW II conflicts between US and French culture. I see a US attitude that the French are ungrateful, snobbish, and arrogant. Conservatives also think the French media and government are deluded leftists. We in the US are particularly upset with the French because we feel that the French should be more thankful that we liberated them in WW II.
Some US attitudes have a basis in fact (but not much more than a basis).
Europeans, especially educated Europeans, have different social styles and intellectual styles than we do. They’re much more direct, argumentative, and confrontational. I find that Americans are either shocked by this, or they imitate it, with the result that conservatives seem to hate both the French and the Americans that act European.
Europeans are leftists in large part because imperialism/conservativism are equated to fascism, and therefore Hitler and Mussolini. After WWII, many French and Italians looked on the USSR as saviors. Serious intellectual people believed that a Communist Europe was inevitable. Thank God it didn’t happen, but Europeans are only slowly getting the idea that the US way, with all its flaws, is better than any alternative.
The French, like Europeans, like many civilized societies, are both drawn to and repelled by American pop culture. They like the newness, the freshness, the hip aspects, the idea of real equality and inexpensive pleasures; they hate the superficiality, the provincialism, the social and sexual conservatism, and the like. A real love/hate relationship.
So the French find it hard to decide if they like the US or not. Sometimes they feel compelled to oppose us, to speak their mind, if only to avoid being swept along by the US.
We forget how truly powerful the US is. We’re everywhere, all the time. How would we feel if all the news was about France? If the key international controversy was a French invasion of Haiti, to re-establish a democratic government? If our government had said “Uh, we don’t think that’s a good idea?” and we were mocked and ridiculed for it? If French people said “Oh what do they know, they lost Vietnam!” If French bistros selling nothing but crepes and wine were on every street corner? If teenagers listened to nothing but French music? If all the TV shows were reruns of French shows, dubbed into English? If we had to use computers and electronics and cars and whatever made by French companies?
We’re not ugly Americans, for the most part. A few businessmen and politicians think that the only good business/government is a US business/government. The rest of us are tolerant, but we’re also relatively unaware of how much impact we have. We’re not an 800-lb gorilla, we’re an 2000-lb elephant, trying to do our best but sometimes trampling stuff underfoot without even knowing it.
The French get a bit irritated. We think they’re ingrates. Rather like neighbors who persist in not getting along, out of pride.
The French helped us win the Revolutionary War. Better face facts; we did the fighting, but they helped. A lot. We helped the French win WW I and WW II. They did the fighting, too; they fought for 3 years in WW I before we stepped in, and had to face Hitler without us the first time. But without us, they would have lost. They should remember that more. I know that WW II especially is a sore point with them: who wants to remember such a humiliation. Let’s not make fun of French military exploits; let them not be quick to judge the US as a “cowboy nation.”
Although this thread is specifically about US/French relations, I’ll wager that there are many other countries that also have issues with the French eg The British. I think it is mostly to do with the stereotype (possibly accrued over history) often used for the French eg as already mentioned, they are elitist snobbs who think the world shines out of France’s arse.
Have you heard Rowan Atkinson’s song: ‘That’s why I hate the French’? A tongue in cheek song, for lyrics:
http://www.rowanatkinson.org/french.htm
Ofcourse most countries have negative issues about other countries, no surprise there.
Whoops, I meant Richard Curtis & Howard Goodall’s song - I was introduced to it by a Rowan Atkinson version.
Colophon:
Just replace the torch with her giving the finger and we’ve got it.
Now there was an ill-advised war. In order to divert attention from the problems in the monarchy, Russia decides to go to war with the Japanese over Port Arthur. They send their unprepared fleet to save a day that didn’t need saving, and have their asses handed to them. The expense of the war and the humiliating defeat did nothing to bolster the Romanov rulers, and their days were numbered.
It didn’t help Franco-American relations when the DGSE became widely identified as one of the top intelligence threats to American companies. I’ve sat through security briefings where the DGSE was on the same threat list as the KGB and GRU.
This is more a matter of opinion than fact, so I’ll move this thead to the IMHO forum.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
You nean that Jack in the Box commercial is serious? (pretty good french fries, btw)
I don’t think that many American people actually hate French people. Maybe it’s one of those things like the broccoli in Air Force One incident. I’ve never seen so many so proud to hate a veggie. 
Peace,
mangeorge
Don’t many nations, including France, have quotas on how much locally made entertainment must be used on their TV stations? Maybe that’s what you were thinking of.
Now we just have the Freedom Fryer.
Sorry, but any country with a significant arsenal of nuclear weapons is a power.
The fact is this; the United States couldn’t beat France in a war. It would inevitably be a tie.
One thing that should be mentioned is that tensions between France and The United States weren’t nonexistent in WWII, and they wen’t beyond a “you must suck because you surrendered” feeling. There were a lot of disagreements between De Gaulle and the allied leadership thorughout the war. De Gaulle always wanted a more prominent leadership role for himself and greater respect for the small French force in exile than the British and later the Americans were willing to give him. After the Normandy landings, there were also conflicts about strategy. De Gaulle wanted to focus on liberating French population centers as fast as possible so as to prevent the possibility of Nazi massacres of civilians, which had been threatened to some degree. The Americans and British had a strategic plan that didn’t always put liberation of French cities as the highest priority. When leading his force in France in 1944-5, De Gaulle didn’t always strictly obey commands, such as when he went out of his way to clear the Germans out of Paris. How much simmering tensions left over from all this contributed to the fallout between France and America and Britain in 1969 is anyone’s guess.
On another note, the portrayal of the French as “surrender monkeys” is unfair. Anyone who knows European history knows that they’ve kicked quite a bit of ass over the centuries.