My Beloved Colleague in The Food Criticism World...M. Chirac!

It's sometimes tough to be a bigot. I suppose the key is to be a very selective bigot: perhaps an anti-Lapp bigot or something. Claim to have discovered the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Reindeer Herding" and wage a campaign to have all the Lapps deported to Canada.

You become a monomaniac, with one driving quest. It makes things simple. Rid the continent of the hapless Lapp (or Lappless Hap?) and the reindeer will return to their rightful place of glory!

So, pity those of us broad-minded bigots who take on just about everyone as part of our complicated web of prejudices and snobberies. Sometimes you get an overabundance of good when two peoples on your list fight each other: no matter who loses, you win! But there is a cloud in this silver lining: you have the prospect that one of them will also win. So you win one, you lose one, but there is always the hope that there will be much sulking on both sides.

So, when the President of the Franks takes on the Anglo-Saxons, why, what am I to do? Of course the fact that the French and the Englisch are at each others' throats again is one of those great signs of stability in the world. The fact that the French are resting on their laurels in the kitchen is also one of those great signs of stability in the world.

So I must rejoice. Chirac unknowingly makes an ass of himself (the food in England has gotten really good, in fact I bet that it is easier to find a good croissant in London than in Paris, where patisserie is at an all time low. Although he is right about the Finns. Must be the Lapps), the British get their noses out of joint, and those of us cisalpines get to giggle and titter at the hijinks of the barbarians. French food/Englisch food, what difference does it make? When either one of them really want to get down to business they hire Italians for the kitchen anyway.