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Come on, you know can't asterisk your way out of that kind of bombastic, flamewar-inducing generalization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries
That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that is fairly unique to the United States, I haven't seen that sort of sentiment anywhere else.
(The implications of "freedom fries" is a much more interesting and curious conversation than the correct words to use to generalize across disfavored cohorts of Americans.)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CheeseEatingSurr...
You can downplay it all you want, the fact is that this sort of thing happens and it can't just be shrugged off by 'oh, we were just joking' because of the context in which those things happened. Symbolism is a thing and by having your official governing bodies involved you lose the 'it's just a joke' defense.
And see, that kind of thing goes both ways. Every stupid thing anyone says in France against America, we hear that and take it seriously.
You've got your hotheads. So do we. As we ignore our own, maybe we should ignore each others' as well.
Seriously: the US is a great country in many ways. But this sort of thing does enormous damage to its international reputation, much more than you might think. That joke became world news at the time and put the US in a very bad light. The person who made it happen (Walter Jones) eventually recanted and wished he had never done it (props to him), but the damage is real and lasting, and unfortunately reflects some aspect of American society that isn't all that nice. Just look at your own comment: if 66% of Americans polled see/saw it as a joke ('har har, those cowardly French, upset at a joke') that implies that 33% see it as reflecting reality. That's the thing you should be amazed at, rather than to trot it out as proof that it isn't a problem.
"The poll, conducted March 14-15, shows that 64% of Americans currently express an unfavorable view of France, while only about half that number, 34%, have a favorable view. "
That's the kind of damage such a thing does, silly idea or not.
The US population's approval rating of our own elected government officials swings to a similar extent in basically every election cycle, so it's hard for me to imagine a world where that shift applied to a foreign country moves the needle on perception of the US.
The trope of the French as 'cowardly cheese eating surrender monkeys' is well known enough to have it's own wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese-eating_surrender_monkey...), and even though it started as a joke and never was intended to be used in any other way those sentiments have a way of leaking out of their container and infusing society.
You will not find a mirror image sentiment in France. Whatever the cause and whatever the effects it seems strange to have such sentiments towards a country that was instrumental in the birth of your own, including shipping the Statue Of Liberty at a time that France could ill afford such symbolic luxuries, and yet they felt it important enough to make that gesture.
So this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_U... is a bad symptom and as far as I am concerned should not be the case.
I'm not sure the polling data for how favorably the French population views the US aligns with what you're saying.
French favorable vs unfavorable views of the US flex similarly to US views of France, and are likewise triggered by policy/political decisions in each country.
The way I read the article is: Europeans on average are positive about their relationship with the United States, with the French sitting at 84% positive, the reverse is reflected in the views of the United States versus Europe as a whole at 73%. Individual sentiment of the United States versus various European countries is not broken out.
The graph I linked from the article specifically breaks out France from the UK and Germany, and shows that the French population's position on the US has inverted several times in the measured period, with low points during the Trump and Bush presidencies where only around 40% of French respondents viewed the US favorably.
I'm going to stop responding here rather than keep digging the thread deeper.
That's completely orthogonal to a comment being pure flamebait.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
You can disavow it, and I do not doubt that you do have that historical awareness but unfortunately the sentiment exists, is real and likely will be more and more forceful in the coming years.
If France had had that attitude then likely the USA as we know it today would not exist, and for that the French deserve lasting recognition. It also underlines - at least for me - that we, the 'free world' are in this together and that if we don't stand united eventually we will fall. The French had plenty of reasons to question the Iraq war - some good, some not so good - but to be insulted like that was counterproductive, to put it mildly.
In France and amongst French people the prevailing sentiment is that an everlasting debt is owed to the United States and other allied forces that helped liberate France from the Germans at the conclusion of World War II. This is for instance apparent in the maintenance of war cemeteries, names of many streets and commemorative plaques and annual ceremonies. It is taught in schools from an early age and an important part of the history curriculum. No equivalent reciprocal feeling exist in the United States for the contribution that the French had to the origin story of that country. On the contrary, the French are often portrayed in negative ways when it comes to their stance with respect to engaging in military action, such as exemplified during the run-up to the Iraq war by certain elements of the United States administration and some of their followers. A number of Americans is unaware of the historical ties between France and the United States and has a negative view of France as an ally.
As to factually correct, I dunno, I think you're falling for the same kind of stereotype that some Americans ascribe to the French. France's critical contribution to the American War of Independence is taught in schools. Sometimes in schools named after Lafayette, or in counties, towns, near streets or squares named after him. As is the fact that one of America's great symbols, the Statue of Liberty is a gift from France, etc, etc.
This all reminds me of a bit from David Sedaris's humor/satirical book Me Talk Pretty One Day which I'm going to paste in here so we can wrap this up on a lighter note:
I chickened out, realizing that I was afraid of France. My fear had nothing to do with the actual French people. I didn’t know any actual French people. What scared me was the idea of French people I’d gotten from movies and situation comedies. When someone makes a spectacular ass of himself, it’s always in a French restaurant, never a Japanese or Italian one. The French are the people who slap one another with gloves and wear scarves to cover their engorged hickies. My understanding was that, no matter how hard we tried, the French would never like us, and that’s confusing to an American raised to believe that the citizens of Europe should be grateful for all the wonderful things we’ve done. Things like movies that stereotype the people of France as boors and petty snobs, and little remarks such as “We saved your ass in World War II.” Every day we’re told that we live in the greatest country on earth. “And it’s always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos were born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it’s startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are “We’re number two!”
The pop-culture reputation of the French as surrendering cowards is, I would agree, a poor representation of what happened in the Second World War. What happened in the Second World War was that the Third Republic was absolutely filled with fascist sympathizers, Anglophobes, and other willing collaborators. The problem wasn't an unwillingness to fight so much as an unwillingness to fight Germany in particular in an alliance with Britain. Unfortunately, this doesn't exactly make France look like a very good ally, either. Nor does the time France unilaterally withdrew their troops from NATO in the 1960's because they, once again, wanted the option of making a separate peace.
Pearl Harbor.