Unhinged in Paris

Europeans used to blame Jews when people got sick. That same impulse still thrives on the continent.
Howard Fineman in Newsweek:

The blame-America attitude gets silly at times. For example, you might have wondered what caused the suffocating heat wave that has blanketed Europe recently. I found out the moment we arrived in Rouen. There, on the front page of the newspaper Le Monde, was a cartoon: an oppressive sun, with eyes made of dollar signs, smoking a cigar/factory with dollar signs, sending out thunderbolts of heat that pierced a prostrate Europe. In Paris, I asked a young businessman about the cartoon. “Well, of course,” he said as if I were an idiot. “Your President Bush did not sign the Kyoto Accord.” In other words, America was at fault because it had not signed a treaty that will not go into effect for years.

This is beyond silly. It is contemptible. And it is retarded.
It is not contemptible because Le Monde is wrong about the facts. It is contemptible because Le Monde and the young businessman in Paris even think such nonsense is plausible. What, too hot for ya? Well, it must be because of those filthy greedy Americans. That’s the first thing that pops into their heads when something annoys them.
We’re a cross between Klingons and the Ferringhi to them, apparently.
They really will find a way to blame us for everything. What’s next? Really. What’s next? Because you know as well as I do that something will be next.
As the French blog Merde in France reported recently:

Remember Americans, you are hated here. Hated more than the worst terrorists and murderers.

It’s one thing to have crypto-racist fantasies about Americans. And it’s another thing altogether to ratchet it up at a time when genocidal fanatics promise to turn America into a sea of deadly radiation because they think we’re a bunch of Satanic infidels. It’s even worse to behave this way and then pretend to be our friend and ally who deserves respect and consultation.
Shelly and I visited France a year and a half ago and we had a great time. Everyone was nice to us, despite their reputation for rudeness with tourists. The French as individuals are fine people, honest to gosh they really are. Politically, as a collective, they’re becoming unhinged. Maybe they think the same about us. I’m sure, in fact, that they do. But I have yet to see anti-French American sentiment come even close to the craziness exhibited by our counterparts over in Paris.
It’s been hot as hell here in Portland this summer. And not a single person thinks the cause is anything other than weather. If anyone thought to blame the French or the Jews or the Arabs or anyone else they would be regarded like a deranged person yelling at cars in the streets.