Public Eye

It’s un-American to like the French, excepting only Brigitte Bardot and the Marquis de Lafayette.That’s an absolute rule.

John Kerry, for instance, was denied the presidency not because he was Swift-Boated by Boone Pickens or photographed windsurfing but because he speaks fluent French, and has French cousins, and is in fact a French dude. Just as New York City and New Orleans are near America, but not of it. Being French, he lost.

So, call me irresponsible, but I like the French.

I like the French women in their perfectly elegant shoes, in their sheath dresses showing just the right amount of tan calf, in their deliciously stinky cigarette breath, in their Hermes scarves.

I like the French men up to a point, especially when they are at that very moment pouring me a glass of their best Sancerre and jamming into my vest pocket a Cuban stogie, lamenting the fact that “weeth ze idiotic blockade you are unfortunately denied ze pleasure of buying such as zees pure Havana.”

I like the French food, the French country roadways with their tunnels of trees, the fields of lavender covering the Haute-Provence, the GTV (er: shows you how bad my French is: that's TGV, as in Train a Grande Vitesse; thanks, Sid, for pointing it out) fast train slinking through those fields, the Mediterranean girls in their monokinis on those pebbly beaches once the train stops. I like the French president marrying a chanteuse super model and no one saying boo.

I like Paris and could live there forever, and cannot recall that grand cliche of a Parisian being particularly rude to me, a situation certainly not aided by my own command of French, which is minuscule, the best efforts of Mrs. McGee in the third grade at Noyes Elementary, along with other teachers, notwithstanding.

We all know of the essential trouble between the French and the Americans, and we know that it will never go away, this rift as deep as that between cowboys and Indians.

But next Thursday, Feb. 21, the Honorable Philippe Larrieu, consul general of France in Los Angeles, will come to Pasadena to at least examine the future of French and American relations, in a speech at 7 p.m. at Caltech’s Beckman Institute Auditorium, 400 S. Wilson Ave.

The lecture and discussion is presented by the Alliance Française de Pasadena and Caltech, and is free and open to the public.

The good people of the Alliance, which teaches French language and culture at its Old Pas headquarters, try to play down the rift: “Historically, the relationship between France and the United States has sometimes been strained, but the bond between the two nations runs deep and extends to the very founding of this country. Throughout their differences, mutual admiration has for the most part prevailed. The influences are hard to separate: America’s love of French fashion and luxury brands, its admiration for French cuisine and the good life, are matched only by France’s love of American cinema and pop culture, the stunning beauty of its national parks and the can-do spirit of its people.”

They like our movies and Yosemite, see.

But the consul will address more serious issues as well, and I for one am going, if only for a gander at those sheath dresses, at those calves.

R.S.V.P.: afdepasadena@earthlink.net or (626) 683-3774.