Weekly commentary by Andy Rooney

France's Unpaid Debt
NEW YORK, Feb. 16, 2003

A weekly commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.
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You can't beat the French when it comes to food, fashion, wine or perfume, but they lost their license to have an opinion on world affairs years ago. They may even be selling stuff to Iraq and don't want to hurt business.

The French are simply not reliable partners in a world where the good people in it ought to be working together. Americans may come off as international jerks sometimes but we're usually trying to do the right thing.

The French lost WW II to the Germans in about 20 minutes. Along with the British, we got into the war and had about 150,000 guys killed getting their country back for them. We fought all across France, and the Germans finally surrendered in a French schoolhouse.

You'd think that school building in Reims would be a great tourist attraction but it isn't. The French seem embarrassed by it. They don't want to call attention to the fact that we freed them from German occupation.

I heard Steven Spielberg say the French wouldn't even let him film the D-Day scenes in "Saving Private Ryan" on the Normandy beaches. They want people to forget the price we paid getting their country back for them.

Americans have a right to protest going to war with Iraq. The French do not. They owe us the independence they flaunt in our face at the U.N.

I went into Paris with American troops the day we liberated it, Aug. 25, 1944. It was one of the great days in the history of the world.

French women showered American soldiers with kisses, at the very least. The next day, the pompous Charles de Gaulle marched down the mile long Champs Elysee to the Place de la Concorde as if he had liberated France himself. I was there, squeezed in among a hundred tanks we'd given the Free French Army that we brought in with us.

Suddenly there were sniper shots from the top of a building. Thousands of Frenchmen who had come to see de Gaulle scrambled to get under something. I got under an Army truck myself. The tank gunners opened fire on the building where the shots had come from, firing mindlessly at nothing. It was a wild scene that lasted, maybe, 10 minutes.

When we go to Paris every couple of years now, I rent a car. I drive around the Place de la Concorde and when some French driver blows his horn for me to get out of his way, I just smile and say to myself, "Go ahead, Pierre. Be my guest. I know something about this very place you'll never know."

The French have not earned their right to oppose President Bush's plans to attack Iraq.

On the other hand, I have.

© MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

excellent! thanks for posting jtivat.

the french have always been thankless punks. i wouldn't visit their little stinking country if you paid me.

There will always be a rift between the Americans and the French. Don't hate em due to events surrounding WWII. Hate them exclusively due to events surrounding Iraq.

Calls for help in World War 1 were answered with "Lafayette!! We are here!!". A lot has happened since then....

Dan

tkl:

Russ, now calm down. You don't want to aggravate that weekend malady your just getting over.

Several years ago (when I was a photographer), I covered a French women swimmer who was competing in a US swim meet in Toledo Ohio.

The job was for Paris Match Magazine.

Paris Match sent a young reporter who's father owned a newspaper in Paris. So the kid was not only French, he was rich French.

The weekend did not go well between the reporter and myself despite the fact that I went out of my way to be pleasant to a guest in our country.

On the last day, the French girl lost her meet to an American swimmer. This further infuriated the reporter to the point that he would barely speak to me.

I was packing up the film for him to take back to New York, when I could not resist the urge to needle him a little.

Being of German decent, this brilliant statement came to mind.

I said, "Gee, I'm sorry we did not get along better, but then the German's and the French have never really been good friends."

When the French snot returned to New York, the first thing he did was tell his editor that I was a Nazi.

I ended up writing a letter to the editor explaining what transpired in Toledo, and at the end of the assignment I did make the remark about the French and the Germans just to needle him.

I explained that I was seven years old when WWII started. I would have been very difficult to be a Nazi living in Ohio at that age.

I also explained that my father, who was born in America, fought in France during WWI, probably against some of his own relatives, to help France.

Got a nice letter back from the Paris Match editor apologising for his reporters manners.

I don't know to this day whether or not Paris Match's New York editor was French...but I doubt it.

Unbelievable, can you believe de Gaulle of those people?

I had to laugh this morning when I opened my newspaper and saw this:



Full Size Picture

From "The Sun" newspaper (one of the UK's best selling tabloids)