Why do some Americans not like the French?

Question

I'm not French, but I am cultured and have a degree in history...
I should be writing this in French, but because I want most to understand it, and the very slim hope that an American can speak another language, I'll write in the Queen's tongue.
Why would anybody hate the French? Especially from the USA?
They invented democracy, movies, financed your revolution against Britain, gave you your statue of liberty, sold you all of the land west of the Mississipi...shall I go on? Without France, it's very doubtful that the USA would have gained their independence from Britain.The French, along with other Europeans just know the cost of war more than any American. They know what war is, and what it's like to be occupied, and live in fear of bombing erveryday.
Just so happens, the French almost conquered all of Europe a couple hundred years ago. Moreso than those Nazi wussies. If anyone has anexcuse to hate the French it's Africa and SE Asia from their colonial exploits.

Jojo...you're why the average French is much cooler than the average Yankee.
My girlfriend is Chinese, and she doesn't shave her armpits either. Does that mean she's dirty.
To the first dude, you're just pissed off cause they have the #1 Healthcare system in the world, and most people only work 6 hour days. Yeah, I wouldn't want to trade my chips in for that.

Jojo...you're why the average French is much cooler than the average Yankee.
My girlfriend is Chinese, and she doesn't shave her armpits either. Does that mean she's dirty?
To the first dude, you're just pissed off cause they have the #1 Healthcare system in the world, and most people only work 6 hour days. Yeah, I wouldn't want to trade my chips in for that.

Jojo...you're why the average French is much cooler than the average Yankee.
My girlfriend is Chinese, and she doesn't shave her armpits either. Does that mean she's dirty?
To Albert H, you're just pissed off because they have the #1 Healthcare system in the world, and most people only work 6 hour days. Yeah, I wouldn't want to trade my chips in for that.

Yes, Jojo...Americans did not save you from WW1...the war was almost over, after all it only took until one year before the war ended before they got inviolved...and were dealing with Nazi Germany and let your country and Eastern Europe, Norway become occupied, before they did anything...because the JAPANESE attacked them.

mark g,
it took a bombing from japan to get america in ww2...there were nazi investors financers in the USA in the late 30s..the US let most of Europe become occupied? How was that coming to the aid of France at a time when it needed it? It took Japan...not Germany to get the US in the war. You should know that.

cultured means, i'm 27...speak english, french and mandarin...and have studied in three countries...Canada, England (B.A.), China (M.A.)...have lived in four (currently China 4 years)...and traveled to 18 countries in total.
I think that suffices for culture and education.

P.S. Anybody else who mentions WW2 is embarrassing...not only did the Americans sit on their *** for three years, but it was Stalin and the USSR that defeated Hitler....not what your Hollywood movies propogandize.

Answer 1

Strangely enough, I am French and discovered only a few months ago many articles on Yahoo where people from the US do French bashing, always implying that the French dislike the American. They obviously know better about what's going on in French mind, as I always kept in high standards my view of the American people.
Not being jealous but rather looking at them with admiration. They obviously do not represent the American I envy and I can assure you that the way they speak about us will not make me jealous of them.
I don't think many people in France hate the american people but I'm still surprise to see so many guys like those answering to you, coming from the first country in the world, talking with so much hatred of my fellow countrymen and showing so little intelligence in thinking that our values are not the same.
Why do they spend so much energy in showing so much despise for the French when never, I say never, I see responses so negatively directed as the ones you get for your post from the Frenchmen? And they always keep on saying the same degrading things about us...
For many years I thought I would one day go and visit the U.S. and their so friendly and open people, but the internet came along and I think that I wouldn't be welcome anymore.
Even if they don't buy French wine or other French products, that won't stop me fron drinking the beer I enjoy the most: the "Budweiser" and see their movies or even go to a Mac Donald. But instead of visiting the Grand Canyon I will go to Ayers Rock and on the Gold Coast in Queensland where I will feel not so negatively judged.
Fair Dinkum, mate, I will have a taste of your vegemite which I'll wash down with a couple of Fosters for a change.

Answer 2

The french have a way of making us Americans look like idiots. Because they don't agree with when we go to war or why we go to war, or any other issue. The truth is, I don't think a lot of Europeans agree with most of the things that the US does or has done. Their governments pretend to though. The only reason the English still back us is because we saved their butts from being Nazi Britain and they are now a weaker country(not to mention white). Personally, I think the french are smart people as of recent. They stay out of other peoples crap and don't try to instigate their own. But in history, they have been some d****. All dynasties must come to an end, its just a matter of time. Maybe someday the US will wise up and start making their way to a more open minded peaceful place, like the EU. Then french and americans can tolerate one another and make hot little euro-american babies...

Answer 3

First of all....I don't hate the French.....But the French I have known over the years have no problem telling us Americans what they think of us. And the land they sold wasn't their land to sale.....They took it from the native Americans. It would be great if everyone could stop the finger pointing and learn to share this planet together without all the blaming, accusing and fighting. But this will never happen because people are self-centered and in their eyes their "cause" is the only cause that is important. It I would be great to lay all this aside and fight the real "enemy" Which is poverty, starvation and disease. I would like to add again that I do not hate the French...I do not hate anyone because of where they live....What color they are....It would be great if the human race could come together and fight the really important issues. We all stay so lost in fighting against each other that the important issue get lost and so do we. I know this will never happen because people are quick to judge and even quicker to hate. What a wonderful world it could be! One last comment.....Please don't tell me that Americans don't know the cost of war....I have had family in the the civil war.....WW1...WW2....Korean and Vietnam....so please don't have the nerve to say we don't know....We know what war is and how many lives we have lost. and most of it was sticking our necks out to help others to obtain the "freedom" they say they want so badly and then condem for us doing so. Freedom does not come cheep...There is a price to pay for it.

Answer 4

I am not sure what your reference to being cultured means other than you have a very high opinion of yourself, but as for the history degree I can relate.
You are very correct in your statements about helping us with the Revolution and giving us the Statue of Liberty. You think you should go back in history a little farther to look for the inventors of democracy. As far as selling us all the land west of the Mississippi you did. But try not to put that down your great intrest in Americas growth. France had ulterior motives for that and if you are a history major you know that too.
I believe that America has ALWAYS come to the aid of France every time she has asked for it. As you stated, if you had not helped us, we would still be British. If we had not helped you, you would now part of greater Germany. But when we had hostages in Iran, wanted to bomb kadafi, you refused to let us fly over French air space. FLY OVER not take an active part. You have fought us on almost every part of the Iraq problem, to disagree is your right, but to publically condemn, when your government was actively involved in abusing the oil for food money, and paying millions of dollars, illegally, that Saddam used for weapons not for food, There was not so much as a "Sorry about that one"! Weapons our soldiers have had to go against. If you know what it is like to live as an occupied country, then speak to older French people and see if they share the same thoughts about Americans as your government and younger people. Bet they wished that someone would have stopped Hitler early. With that lesson in mind I think stopping Saddam before he took over half of the Middle East would have made sense to you. Most Americans feel as if a friend has stabbed them in the back. And there is nothing harder to forgive than a friend that has turned on you.

Answer 5

Too many people got their shorts in a knot because France wouldn't just get in line behind Bush in the middle east. Oh, well. As it now can be seen, other countries that DID are now taking issue with the war and pulling out.

The French resistance was a key element in the defeat of the Nazis, and France is a central element in Interpol, which has been CONSISTENT in bringing international bad guys to justice. I can't see why any Bushites would cry about THAT.

Yes, France has "given" us many things, but, you know, people just have to have something to complain about when things don't go their way.

Oh, well.

Vive la France.

Bon jour


PS - one thing I find really hypocritical is that in spite of all the whining about the French, we sure like their wine and we support them with a lot of tourist $$.

Reminds me of a Laotian coworker I had; the "Americans" were just distasteful in their constant ribbing. They would always say they were just "joking," but you knew that underneath it all there was nationalism and hatred. But.......come holiday time, when we had our big pot luck buffet, the Laotian's home made egg rolls were ALWAYS one of the first items to disappear!!!!!!!

Answer 6

Yes yes. Its a wonderful historical friendship we have with another Free People and we LOVE Julia Child's cooking, and that wonderful crusty french bread.

What people are disliking in recent history is...

The French government refusing to allow our pilots to fly over their airspace. They're so afraid of terrorism that they refuse to help fight it, maybe?

The French government opposing the US in the UN and siding with Syria and other murderous regimes.

The critical comments about US internal affairs, while their own house is NOT in order. (Riots by young, unemployed Muslims, violence against Jews...)

I'm personally a little miffed at the cultural snobbery. There is an academic council that works to "preserve the purity" of the French language by rejecting words that come form English or other language roots.

But really...Most of us don't waste one minute of our time even thinking about the French, unless someone brings it up.

By the way, I am American, and I larned Spanish AND French in High School and college. Your potshot at American education is no more generally true than some of the french stereotypes you decry.

Answer 7

WE do not hate the French we are in competitiion in most respects and it is a tongue in cheek friendly bashing..... they do it to us as well. Besides most of the French now are really Children of American GI's and French ladies from WW2, After 2 devistating wars the only French men at home were gay or crippled. See it still works..............

Answer 8

Cos they have Fox News and there's a lot of stereotypes about the french (arrogant cowards) that all you need is one high-and-mighty attitude (or question) to set an american off on a flagwaving, apple pie eating, gun toting rant against how the french would be speaking german if it wasnt for them.

I think if someone has a go at your country (american vs french or vice versa) then you're gonna stick up for it and reach for whatever easy comeback you can. "you're cowardly" "yeah, well you have no culture" zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Answer 9

I live in the USA, but I'm one of the ones who isn't nuts.

It pretty much all started when France and Germany wouldn't go along with George Bush when he wanted to invade Iraq under false pretexts. If you live in the USA and you want to have an opinion of your own or you state facts that prove that your president is lying and/or nuts, then you are unamerican. We can't be free and democratic unless we give up our right to be heard and represented. This goes hand-in-hand with liberty. Since France stands for liberty and they gave us the Statue of Liberty, we offered to send it back. France wouldn't take it back, so in protest we renamed french fries to "freedom fries." Which is pretty much what George Bush would like to do to freedom, if you really think about it, he'd like to fry it. Renaming pommes de frites to "freedom fries" really bothered the French, since the pommes de frites were about as French as Jamaican sushi. So since the French didn't want to go along on the fake Iraq war, they wouldn't take back the Statue of Liberty, and they just laughed at us for renaming french fries, about the only thing the crazy people in the US (including George Bush and all of his cabinet) could do is to pretend that they hate France. Or, if they're really, really crazy, they really DO hate France.

We didn't want to push it as far when Germany wouldn't go along in the war on Iraq that we're fighting under false pretexts. We like Germany a little bit better because they once had the chutzpah to invade Poland under false pretexts, and our crazy people over here sort of respect that, for some reason.

Now do you understand? Me neither. Since you have a degree in history, I thought you might enjoy being really, really confused, along with all of us here in the USA who aren't totally nuts.

So we invaded Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction that they were planning on using against us. We knew this because our president's father still had the bill of sales. But we didn't find any WMDs, so we said we were fighting this phony war because Saddam helped the terrorists on 9/11. Our own CIA said this wasn't true and proved it. So George Bush said it didn't matter that he lied twice about why we went into Iraq, we have Saddam Hussein now and he'll never hurt anybody again, and he'll especially never gas 10,000 Kurds again, and that's all that matters. So in celebration, we started a civil war in Iraq that's killed 85,000 people so far and counting. We also retaliated for the 2,700 people who were killed on 9/11 by killing 3,000 of our soldiers. But none of that matters now because we hung Saddam last Sunday. He was almost seventy years old, so who knows, maybe we might have stopped him from killing three or four hundred more people, who knows? So it was all worth it. And since France was right and we're crazier than a poop-house rat, we go right on hating the French. (And hating liberal Americans who just don't brainwash all that well like me.)

And Dick Cheney, the first George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, James Baker III, (Oddly enough, these guys are/were all in THIS George Bush's cabinet,) and all the other pentagon guys who propped Saddam into power and gave him the mustard gas in the first place, they all lived happily ever after, and they still hate France.

---The End.

Answer 10

Hi! I'm french.

As far as I know, I think it deals with the fact that women don't shave their armpits.
I would'nt say they don't like us. I'd say they hate us. Because we always surrender, and instead of greeting George W. Bush, we much prefer to kiss Ossama's hand.
But they like our food. And by the time they see me naked, they'll love France. I'm sure about that.


hey one second please I want to add sthg:

Americans didn't save us during WWI! That isn't true. They came in 1917, we gave them weapons, outfits, and even money! The job was almost done.

It's true for WWII. But it'd be great for Americans, if they could admit that they only came in late 1941, and that Roosevelt didn't help us in 1940!
Anyway, thank you America!!! If i'm free, I know it's because many of your grand parents died for free Europe. But don't bullshit about WWI or go back to your history books!