With the possible exception of Sweden, which is widely viewed as *the* paragon of social-democracy and, as such, frequently targeted by the libertarian press. That obviously reinforces your last point.

Jérôme: yeah, just teasing you

Alex: I agree with Noel Maurer on that one. American Francophobia didn’t spring out of nothing in 2002. That’s not to deny the massive involvement of the VRWC, but the ground was already fertile: just take a look at the US army guide for soldiers stationed in France in 1945 and you’ll that many of the clichés heard today about the French were already widespread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_Gripes_about_the_French

(fair and balanced remark : of course, anti-Americanism is even older in France. See Patrick Roger’s book for the long and version)

Hektor: because not being like the dreaded Other just makes you feel good about yourself and because the failings of the Others’ society confirms the superiority of your own social model? As simple as that, I think. With the added bonus that both French and American tend to think of their own model as universal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States#The_conflict_of_universalism

Kevincure: “I think, if one is talking about economic performance, that a better measure would be GDP/working-age population.”

Nothing beats the good ol’ GDP per capita in terms of relevant economic indicators but you’re right that looking at the working age population (usually defined as people between 15 and 64) makes sense if you’re comparing raw economic performances. Obviously, on that front, France is at the bottom of the European league. The problem about using this indicator is that it also shows that the European and American records in terms of economic growth has been roughly equal recently (The Economist has been quite good in highlighting this fact; the American press, less so…).

Klaus: “The AEI brand is a red flag to me, signalling ideological entrenchment.”

Yeah, I agree. Though the dirty little secret about AEI is that some (not many, admitedly) scholars there are surprisingly good. Like Norman Ornstein, for instance. I’ve also once attended a conference on U.S. politics with John Fortier. I expected to see the kind of dishonnest hack that is the trademark of the AEI but he came out as a thoughtful and reasonable analyst. That was a bitter disappointment…

Anyway, the link to Kevin Hasset’s tripe was of course ironic on my part.

While it is always possible that I am suffering from manufactured memories, I remember it from the 1980s. Calling France the “Other” might have been too strong, but a mysterious anti-French sentiment in the U.S. goes back at least to De Gaulle, and possibly earlier. After all, the whole Americans-in-France thing was often driven by people who quite consciously left to escape things that they didn’t like in America.

Not convinced? Well, here I have on my computer a powerpoint presentation that I prepared before the turn of the century for a class of undergraduates precisely to counteract prejudices about the failure of the French economic model.

So I do apologize, but it’s just wrong to say that anti-French in the U.S. sentiment was “manufactured in 2002.”

Also, the economist cited at Bloomberg apparently works at AEI, and, well, you know, they don’t have a whole lot of credibility post-Iraq. The AEI brand is a red flag to me, signalling ideological entrenchment.

Another way to slice the numbers would be to investigate TFP and capital deepening with some type of Solow decomposition; let’s utilize these more exact measures of economic performance and leave the context-less GDP numbers to the newspapers.

French elites talk incessantly about “Anglo-Saxon” economics or society and how horrible it is, and how multiculturalism and affirmative action are ruining those countries.

Everyone is playing the game, and it would be very interesting to know why.

China’s emergence and globalisation are just pretexts.

It’s the Brits who have a history of seeing France as the other.

At the risk of being facile — okay, /too/ facile — I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with a long, long tradition of viewing France as The Other. You don’t see nearly as much of this sort of thing when talking about Germany, never mind Italy or any other large European economy.

It’s almost as if the Anglosphere is still haunted by the nagging fear that France might offer some sort of, y’know, viable alternative way to construct a society.

Doug M.