Most Americans have an unfavorable attitude toward the French. This antipathy is based on the abuse most US tourists have suffered from dismissive Paris waiters in the dead of August. Few realize that these garcons are rude to their own countrymen as well as any estrangers. That is not to say that the French don’t subscribe to a haughty self-esteem.

As a Belge friend joked, “How does Frenchman kill himself? By lifting a pistol six inches over his head and shooting his superiority complex.”

It’s even funnier when told in French to the French.

Are the French ‘surrender monkeys’ or ‘froggies’?

>After the horrors of World War I the French High Command decided during the Fall Of France that surrender would better serve the nation. The Gauls have a special way of treating unwanted tourist. They soon learned that the Germans were not tourists.

Cracher sur le plat or spit on the plate is the best revenge for the weak over the strong and despite that I will defend the French, because they are loyal to those people who they love, as I had learned after working at Paris nightclubs in the 80s. My friends from that period are still my friends. All the French I have met around the world are my friends too. They are funny, warm, and generous. Nasty too, but not like the Germans.

So today in Palm Beach I raised a glass of wine with my good friend Lisa Rohan and we toasted the French, “Vive la France.”

in vino revolutio

Also it’s a little known fact that twelve days earlier the Marquis de Sade had set the stage for the storming of le Bastille by shouting from his cell, “Ils tuerent les prisonniers.” so maybe sado-masochists should celebrate his part in the revolution. I certainly do.

>Vive de Sade and Serge Gainsbourg too.