I really hope we can all have a civilized and polite discussion on this thread.
Having said that, I'd like to offer a semi-outside point of view, since I am actually not American by birth, just have lived in America for most of my young life
Anyway, before I knew Alizée, I had a little or no real interest in France besides it's role in European History which is among my favorite subjects. I also had no strong positive or negative opinions about France or it's people, and though I was young at the time, I thought the freedom fries thing here was silly
After I discovered Alizée, I obviously talked about her to everyone, and one of my friends told me (one) of the reasons he didn't like the French. He said that when his brother visited Paris, people would treat him unpleasantly when he spoke (with his American accent.) So he tried speaking with an English accent and discovered that people would treat him better. I just said that it takes two to tango and that he shouldn't judge everybody by the actions of a few.
So that's just something I figured I could share on the thread's subject. Looking forward to see what other peeps say.