Ahhh, ze Fronch! Zey are so… how you say? Sophistiqué? Non? Zair weet and sense of hyoomair is much too subtle for zose feelthy Américains, yes?

Not particularly. But for whatever reason, English-speakers tend to attribute unearned sophistication and credibility to people they believe to be French. A certain vice-presidential candidate learned the error of that way of thinking not too long ago. According to the New York Times last Nov. 5:

As a top adviser in Senator John McCain’s now-imploded campaign tells the story, it was bad enough that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska unwittingly scheduled, and then took, a prank telephone call from a Canadian comedian posing as the president of France. Far worse, the adviser said, she failed to inform her ticketmate about her rogue diplomacy…

One of the last straws for the McCain advisers came just days before the election when news broke that Ms. Palin had taken a call made by Marc-Antoine Audette. Mr. Audette and his fellow comedian Sebastien Trudel are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state.

Ms. Palin appeared to believe that she was talking to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, even though the prankster had a flamboyant French accent and spoke to her in a more personal way than would be protocol in such a call. At one point, he told Ms. Palin that she would make a good president some day. “Maybe in eight years,” she replied.

Wotta rube! The NYT is right; anybody who could fall for such a transparent ploy by some jerk posing as a French politician does not deserve a position of national prominence.

Here’s another example, from a major American newspaper:

To the Editor:

As mayor of Paris, I find Caroline Kennedy’s bid for the seat of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton both surprising and not very democratic, to say the least. What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat? We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling.

With all the respect and admiration I have for Ms. Kennedy’s late father, I find her bid in very poor taste, and, after reading “Kennedy, Touring Upstate, Gets Less and Less Low-Key” (news article, Dec. 18), in my opinion she has no qualification whatsoever to bid for Senator Clinton’s seat.

We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model. The Kennedy era is long gone, and I guess that New York has plenty of more qualified candidates to fill the shoes of Hillary Clinton. Can we speak of American decline?

Bertrand Delanoë
Paris, Dec. 18, 2008

Editors’ Note: December 22, 2008
Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.

This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.

We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë’s office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

The readers of… the New York Times. Très gênant, non?

(Hat tip: Ann Althouse)

Related posts:

• Sen. Ted Kennedy Wears Flip-Flops It’s probably a little karmically questionable to pick on a...
• Present Obama Suffers Another Outlandish Attack from Past Obama During the neverending 2008 presidential campaign, Senator Barack Hussein Obama...
• Bill Clinton: Putting an End to Obesity With Burgers and Shakes Today the Centers for Disease Control sponsored their inaugural...
• Obama Administration Graciously Accepts Apology from Repugnant Filth Yesterday, the greatest president in American history said this about...