Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, June 22, 2004

The leading voice of this movement – which gained a fresh inhalation of steam when Jacques Chirac decided to boycott Ronald Reagan’s state funeral – is Fox News star Bill O’Reilly.

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Almost two years have passed since the Iraq war became the causus belli between U.S. and French consumers.

What effect has the French boycott movement had?

Bill O’Reilly reports on his "The O'Reilly Factor" TV show that his "Boycott France" bumper stickers at $2.50 apiece have sold in the tens of thousands and continue to fly out the door.

Another question: Has the French boycott – so eloquently advocated by O’Reilly – masked the real boycott, the one by French, European and other consumers against America for our invasion of Iraq?

These days, CNN, Financial Times, Advertising Age and the like are burning column inches – not about the boycott-France campaign, but about ominous reports that the total percentage of consumers worldwide who use U.S. brands has fallen to 27 percent from 30 percent just a year ago.

This survey reviewed 15 major American brands, including such heavyweights as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Disney and Nike.

According to a recent study by market research consultant NOP World, the percentage of those saying they “trust” Coca-Cola fell to 52 percent from 55 percent, McDonald’s to 33 percent from 36 percent and Nike to 11 percent from 14 percent.

The study is entitled “America, the World, and the New Challenges for Global Brands.”

NOP managing director Tom Miller warns: “[I]t seems to be an erosion of support. It is clearly a warning sign for brands.”

Gone apparently are the heady days in 2003 when angry Americans could point to double-digit drops in French wine consumption by U.S. sippers. Despite the dip, however, those French vintages never lost their No. 3 ranking in sales in the U.S. – behind Italy and Australia.

And about a year ago Fromage.com, a French cheese distributor, was reporting that its U.S. sales had gone down 15 percent. But such relished factoids are missing from the headlines these days.

Dresden Revisited

O’Reilly believes the boycott has worked – and recently caused a ruckus by comparing France to a latter-day Dresden – shell-shocked and burnt out by the economic clout of Americans eschewing French cheeses, handbags, perfumes and stinky foie gras.

When John Magnus, a trade expert, was on "The Factor," he pointed out that "the vast bulk of what France sends to us is not identifiably French by the time it gets to consumers and would be very difficult to catch with a boycott." Such disguised French goods include chemicals and engine parts.

The imperturbable O’Reilly fired back that the French make profits of $9 billion a year from exports to the United States.

On another controversial show, O’Reilly said that France had suffered to the tune of "billions" because of the boycott. He took heat again as the pundits debated where that figure is codified.

All wishful thinking aside, France steadfastly remains (just as before the boycott) the world’s fourth-largest economy, the third-largest host country for international direct investment, the fourth-largest investor, the fourth-largest exporter, the fourth-largest importer, the leading exporter of agro-food products, the third-largest exporter of service, and the leading country for tourism (60 million tourists).

Other Economic Factors

Meanwhile, whatever dips France has suffered recently in its U.S. trade (about 5 percent at last reckoning) are handily explained away by that country as owing to the U.S. dollar slip against the euro, which means that goods going to America are at a cut rate.

And if fewer tourists are visiting France, France’s supporters say, that’s because of the chilling effect of terrorism. A good argument, actually, when considering that tourism has fallen off as well in the United Kingdom – the land of the staunch ally.

But economists suggest that the large rumbling engine that is France can no more be derailed by scattered boycotts than the titanic U.S. freight train could slip the tracks owing to legions of slighted Frenchmen choosing not to enjoy Coke.

Furthermore, France has a long history of weathering boycotts.

In 1985, when the French would not allow U.S. military planes to fly over their airspace on their way to bomb Libya, U.S. consumers boycotted French industries, including fashion, food and wine.

Another boycott covered 1995 and 1996, when France refused to stop testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific.

The question becomes whether or not the current boycott has in effect run its course.

There are still some ominous rumblings. For instance, Capitol Hill is mulling whether Congress should pass laws that would impose new health standards on bottles of Evian and other French waters.

Despite the boycott, France has remained the leading exporter of water to the United States, selling 65 million gallons just last year.

According to NOP World, the current bad news for U.S. brands has nothing to do with any backlash at America for attempts to boycott all that is French, but is rather owing to a mixture of America’s controversial involvement in Iraq, its handling of the war against terrorism, corporate scandals, and its failure to sign the Kyoto environmental agreement.

France’s Latest Insults

Those who wrote off the recent French boycott as a matter of 15 minutes of fame apparently were wrong.

And the rhetorical war between the great democracies remains alive and well.

The latest dose of vitriol toward La Belle France – and especially its president, Monsieur Jacques Chirac – has been administered by O’Reilly, who didn’t appreciate that the French leader did not bother to attend the funeral of late president Ronald Reagan after the G8 summit in Georgia:

"Imagine if President Bush was in Normandy and a former French president died and Bush split?" argued O’Reilly. "Imagine the outcry over that?

"Even some French journalists are saying that French President Jacques Chirac’s decision not to attend former President Reagan’s funeral is a bad idea. Talking Points believes that Chirac despises America and will even go out of his way to hurt this country."

Ouch! And just when the French ambassador was thinking that French-bashing was passé – to borrow a word from Le Francais.

Recently, the French Ambassador to the U.S., Jean-David Levitte, referred to French-bashing as an unfortunate aberrant phenomenon, "which fortunately now belongs to the past."

The hopeful Levitte likes to conjugate those pesky French irregular verbs in the past tense when recalling the painful months of yesteryear:

"I still see no reason why the French were called 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' by Jonah Goldberg (National Review) or 'weasels' by the New York Post. Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) once asked Condoleezza Rice, 'Why don’t you send a couple of American divisions over to get Jacques Chirac?' while David Letterman said, 'The last time France wanted more evidence it rolled right through Paris with a German flag.'"

Dreadful stuff from those untutored Americans, and, as Levitte noted, the slings and arrows hardly rolled off the back of the proud nation:

Hate Mail

"[W]e were inundated with hate mail. We were disparaged as 'immoral cowards; a nation of effeminate, improbitive [sic], whimpering, timorous poltroons.' And isn’t it racist to say 'I hope you enjoy Islam. I hope you do not expect to move to the U.S. when the Muslims run you out of your own country'?

"I definitely don’t think such words are deserving of our common values of tolerance and human dignity. And I still don’t perceive the link between our past disagreement on how to disarm Iraq and these insults directed at all French people. I would be glad not to qualify such comments as 'racist' if you could offer me a better word to characterize them."

Levitte’s racist charge seems to be the French comeback du jour.

Furthermore, His Excellency dropped the verbal bombe square in the lap of – yes, you guessed it, Fox News and Bill O’Reilly.

The French taunt became the burning subject matter for a recent O’Reilly "Talking Point": "Jean David Levitte says that Fox News is being too tough on his country and calls it a 'racist' campaign!"

"[T]his racist business, that’s cowardly; he shouldn’t do that," bemoaned O’Reilly to his guest Loick Berrou of the D.C. bureau chief for French television. "So he goes out to UCLA and he tells the students out there that Fox and me are being racist because we disagree with the way France handled the run-up to the Iraq war. I’m almost speechless."

It didn’t take long for O’Reilly to kick up into high gear:

"You got a dictator that violates the cease-fire 17 times. And your government basically says, you know, we’re not going to really go along with Britain and the U.S.A. to remove him. And that, you know, people are upset about that, Mr. Berrou. But I don’t think we should be called racist because we have a difference of opinion with you about it."

Berrou really had no clue either about how you glean racism out of criticism over policy matters, offering only:

"I know what Saddam Hussein is about. But we’ve been following you in Bosnia. We’ve been following you in Kosovo. We’ve been following you in Somalia. We’ve been following you in the first Gulf War. Should we follow you if you jump off the bridge?"

Suddenly, it was 2003 again with the old arguments flying.

O’Reilly to Berrou: "Now, I wouldn’t mind if you guys just sat on the sidelines, but you didn’t. Chirac sent people down to Africa to try to persuade people on the U.N. Security Council to vote against the U.S.A. You were proactive."

Yes, déjà vu all over again – with bumper stickers too.

The March 11, 2003, O’Reilly Talking Point:

"Once again, today French President Chirac said he would veto any Security Council resolution to remove Saddam by force at this juncture. And beyond that France has sent diplomats to Angola, Cameroon, and Guinea to try to convince those countries to act against the U.S.A. and the U.N.

"While Russia, China, and Germany also oppose America’s position, they have not nearly been as proactive as France. So my conclusion is that France wants to embarrass the United States even as it is protecting a killer like Saddam. ...

"Remember, that country also opposed President Reagan when he bombed Libya in the '80s, and it opposed the bombing of Belgrade, which led to the removal, of course, of Milosevic."

Apparently, Le Monde never changes – no matter how many times it turns over on its axis of weasels. And America seems to have to pay for French mistakes – last century American blood was sacrificed twice to save France from its authoritarian enemies.

Already perhaps forgotten – unfortunately so – the image of an emotive Chirac pinning the French Legion of Honor about the necks of brave World War II vets at the touching D-Day ceremony at Normandy.

All seemed right in Franco-American relations for one brief shining moment.

Question: Why are there big trees up and down the Champs Elysees in Paris?

Answer: Because the Germans like to march in the shade.

If you got a chuckle out of that one and found yourself unconsciously nodding your head, go directly to Bill O’Reilly’s Web site, www.billoreilly.com, and order up a dozen or so of his "Boycott France" bumper stickers.

O’Reilly’s war may have suffered a setback with the backlash against American products, and French trade may have survived the negative PR onslaught, but the battle for the hearts and minds of many Americans wages on.

Editor's note: