Not a bad summary!
Same here. Never had a problem. (Maybe because I speak just a little French, and everyone gladly switched to English as soon as they heard me try it out!)
Dude! What the hell! What did we ever do to you? Summer festivals, delicious artery-clogging foods, hot French-Canadian girls in miniskirts, liberal attitudes towards sex, pot, booze, and the speed limit…
You must have been here in February. We’re all bitchy in February. The women want to be outside in miniskirts, drunk and making out in the streets, but it’s just too damn cold.
Hmm, looks like a nice day tomorrow. Think I’ll wear a miniskirt and sit on a terrace with a drink. 
Most of the French as the punchline for jokes didn’t come about because of their not winning any wars or battles. The jokes came because the French were constantly being bailed out by the US, and then the French just get back into the same messes, all the while castigating the US for some thing or the other. Say what you want about losses and death and war, but that sort of boorish behavior demands the ol’ horselaugh. (I’m not exactly sure what 'the horselaugh" is- I heard Audie Murphy use that term on one of his movies.)
hh
I’ll be there! I’m always ready to provide another chance, especially if it involves women in miniskirts who want to make out!
Just wanted to pop in and mention:
I made my french housemate read this thread. Mostly he was just laughing. He said, “Many of this is true. But not all.”
I couldn’t get him to elaborate.
Oh, and Antigen? Just where in Montreal are you?
::sits by with pen and paper and a car full of gas::
In all of the visits I’ve made to France, both as a tourist and on business, I’ve never been treated badly. French waiters can be snotty, but they’re even snotty to the French, so it doesn’t count. I’ve spent as long as a month at a time in Paris, so it’s not a matter of just interacting with hotel personnel.
Sorry, folks, I’m already taken… by an American who most definitely appreciates everything French about me. 
See what happens when you sit around making fun of the French? There’s still hope, though - come redeem yourselves during the Jazz festival. Plenty of jolies jeunes femmes (pretty young ladies) up here for you to put the moves on.
Yes, because I think the French arguably had the “most mechanized and sophisticated military in Europe” not the Germans, who in reality just out-thought and out-fought the Frenchies to take away their homeland. Throw in Indochina, Algeria, etc.
Would you believe France and England going at it after the Treaty of Paris in a prequel to the Napoleonic Wars?
But isn’t that what happened to Germany and Russia? Speaking of losses, the Russians had horrendous losses in the millions. The second wave of infantry had no weapons; they were instructed to pick up weapons from their fallen comrades, which must not have been conducive to martial valor. My point being that the German army and navy mutinied and the Russians had a revolution.
I’m not sure how Spartydog was, so I hesitated before responding, but I must admit that it baffles me why we seem to have such a bad reputation in English Canada and the US. I started a thread about it at some point, and the answers I had were unconclusive. There seems to be a hostility to Quebec that rivals the hostility to France that we’re discussing in this thread.
They’re just jealous. Trust me.
Let me say outright what I think some people are merely intimating.
Much of the ridicule and contempt directed toward France and the French is based on xenophobia, ignorance and provincialism and is pandered to by way to many political opportunists.
The classic rap on the French is their poor showing in 1940 when Germany, after securing its Eastern flank by overrunning Poland and cutting a deal with The Soviet Union, was able to turn its full military might on France supported by a not all that impressive British force. Innovative strategy and tactics made the difference in 1940. The same tactics and strategics nearly took the Soviets out of the war in the first six months. It took from 1941 until 1945 for the combined military and industrial might of the US and the British Commonwealth and the Soviet Union to defeat Germany. The French failure in 1940 was not the consequence of some inherent incapacity on the part of the French nation. They never had a chance.
The inescapable fact is that we have inherited England’s fear and unease of France. Unlike late Medieval, and early modern and Georgian England we have no reason to fear France as an imperial rival. We resent its status as the cradle of modern Western culture and art. Just look at Post-Renaissance visual arts as a fair example. We resent Frances tendency to blaze its own trail in matters of international politics and most of all we hate that (unlike the present British government and its immediate predecessors) France has refused to be America’s bitch.
I think that Americans, as a whole, are proud to be citizens of the world’s most powerful country, of what is now the only superpower. And many Americans are convinced that their country does good in the world, and that the other countries should follow their way. And they are wary of some second-rate country doing what it wants. France, despite not being a superpower anymore, still wants to be an important force in international politics, and its citizens, as a rule, support that. This, what Spavined Gelding has called “refus[ing] to be America’s bitch”, is probably one of the reasons why Americans tend to dislike the French, but it’s probably not the only one: after all, Americans don’t seem to hate Venezuelians, even though if there is a country whose government opposes the US as a matter of principle, that has to be it. But Venezuela is a third-world Latin American country that isn’t quite a stable democracy yet, while France is unquestionably a Western liberal democracy where the citizens ultimately decide the foreign policy, so that might explain why Americans hold the French more “responsible” for opposing them. This said, there appears to be a large number of Americans who dislike the French but don’t even know that it’s a liberal democracy: even on this board, there have been many times where people thought that in France, suspects were still presumed guilty until proven innocent. So I guess the answer is that, as Spavined Gelding suggested, America inherited the English dislike of France and all the other reasons we can find (cheese-eating surrender monkeys, overblown sense of importance in the world, stereotypical uncleanliness, etc.) are just rationalisations to explain this feeling.
For a book-length answer, see Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France (2004), by John J. Miller and Mark Molesky.
That having been said, I too have been to France twice, and was never treated rudely. When I was there last year, the hotel room in Paris was excellent and the food was excellent.
Another mostly-Francophile here. On my visits to France, I have never encountered any rudeness on their part, and on a few occasions they were helpfull way beyond what most Americans would have done. In fact the only rudeness I encountered were from other tourists (American and, especially, German).
I do have a problem, though, with their government. I didn’t have this problem until I was a victim of one of their nation-wide strikes, during which everything, including transportation, shut down. For a country that relies so heavily on tourism, you’re not winning friends by stranding people who may be on their once-in-a-lifetime trip to your country. Don’t assume they’ll come back someday and spend more Yankee bucks. They won’t.
And in terms of having power, Americans are the newbies.
I would be arrogant too if I lived in a country that was a living work of art! That country is gorgeous! And Paris is arguably the most beautiful city in the world.
When I was there I found that if I was friendly and courteous, so were the French. They even seemed to be a bit nicer to older people there.
Yes any rudeness is centered in Paris (which is probably common place in big cities. I encountered lots of rudeness in London and New York too). Paris has a reputation for rudeness among the rest of France too. In my experience in Paris, they expect you to know the system. So when you are fumbling for the phrase book, trying to work out when and how to pay the waiter, and is tipping included in the bill…and generally holding up the queue. then they can be a bit short.
Ignorance, and people always remember the asshole or bigot they meet when traveling. They’ll tell every friend about the asshole they met in the other location.