It's official. The cheese-eating surrender monkeys running France just love U.S. action-movie hero Bruce Willis, whose support for the Iraq War (3d item from top, here); comments in 2000 about Al Gore; and partnership with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush to promote adoption haven't made him many friends on The Left. AP reports:

France has honored Bruce Willis, making him an officer in the Order of Arts and Letters, one of the country's top awards for cultural achievement....The award is conferred on those who have particularly distinguished themselves in an artistic or literary field.

Sacre Bleu! The cosmos is in disorder, non?

American Thinker Publisher and Editor Thomas Lifson sorts it all out. First off, he says, the French aren't total dolts: witness their love of art, beauty, nuclear power and high-speed rail. Yet:

...the French have not dealt very well with the nearly 2 full centuries of eclipse...Political instability, military failure, pretentious arrogance, and a willingness to shake hands with devils ranging from Hitler to the Iranian mullahs have marked France’s desperate attempts to maintain the fiction that it is a leading nation of the world...

...the French...do...preposterous things...like denouncing American “unilateralism” in Iraq while dispatching...French-only...troops to the Ivory Coast to protect its citizens’ considerable investment in that former colony. Or making a bestseller of a book claiming that the crash of civilian airliner into the Pentagon was a hoax.

...as the cafes and boulangeries of their cities close down, one by one, in the face of a faster pace of life and the availability of more economical alternatives, it becomes the fault of Americans, and McDonalds restaurants are fire-bombed.

....Mr. Willis is not just an American, not just a movie hero figure whose character never hesitates to unilaterally take on the bad guys with guns (!), he is a member of one of the world’s smallest clubs, Hollywood Republicans. And the French culture minister is honoring him? Maybe I was wrong about the French. Maybe they really are as subtle and nuanced as they would have us believe. Perhaps it is all a matter of irony upon irony, far beyond anything Seinfeld ever attempted. Or else the French origins of the word “hypocrite” are entirely appropriate.

It all gets me thinking. U.S. Senator Bruce Willis. That has a nice ring to it. I think it'd be just great if he challenged Barbara Boxer.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 14, 2005 05:19 PM

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Matt Rosenberg, with an assist from the French (!), makes a case for Senator Bruce Willis. (And if Willis runs, does McGehee have to change his blog again?)... [Read More]

Tracked on April 15, 2005 07:18 AM

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