Got a slightly peppery e-mail from a Franco-American correspondent, who appreciated the good words I had for the French, but thought I had been wrong not to note that there are plenty of French people who are very conscious of what America did for France in liberating them twice. He says we shouldn’t take the actions and views of a minority of Frenchmen for those of the entire nation.

And then he told a great anecdote, about an admirable woman:

One of the most moving things I have EVER seen was my father’s 60-something assistant, a wiry, austere, formal French woman, bear down on an American college student who was wearing short-shorts and listening to his boombox in one of the cemeteries in Normandie. She grabbed him by the ear and dragged his face down to one of the crosses and proceeded to explain to him that he owed more respect than that to the 23-year-old who died on a nearby beach to help liberate Western Europe (somehow, this point gets lost) from Nazi domination.

Isn’t that great? I got another letter, entirely in French, from a Parisian gentleman. He said the France I love has mostly disappeared, and that his countrymen are a depressed, malcontented people. He doesn’t understand Chirac and de Villepin’s actions, and complains that the newspapers there are “practically all anti-American. Happily, regular reading of NRO and the Wall Street Journal allow one to stay informed.” The gentleman calls The Corner “un bonheur quotidien” (a daily pleasure). Thanks, copain! I won’t identify our Parisian confederate by name, for his own protection, but if Rich will spring for plane tickets, I propose that Jonah and I head to Paris and take him up on his generous offer to take us out to dinner.