Now that the Olympics have finally come to a close, I just wanted to go back to the event that generated the most comments from a U.S.-France relationship’s perspective.

Alright, we all know that sports events, and the Olympics in particular, are often the place where some of the worst nationalistic sentiments often take over the more noble purposes they are supposed to serve. Granted, there are certainly many more important questions in this troubled world than the Olympics, but I – and apparently I am not alone – can’t resist it (to my credit, I am a genuine sports fan who follow sports not just every four years.)

In matter of sports, France and the U.S. are rarely competing. A few tennis confrontations here and there, an Olympics basketball final in 2000 in Sidney, but that’s about it (maybe I forgot something, but really nothing comes to mind right now…). At least, nothing to really unleash the over-enthusiast and often blindly passionate and nationalistic supporters of either country.

Interestingly though, and to keep with this blog’s raison d’être, this year’s Olympics offered the opportunity for a few (a lot?) French-bashers to express all their, huh…, feelings.

Nothing unusual among sports fans of course, as they have a tendency to get a bit over their heads, but somewhat more surprising (although?) was the fact that a lot of it came from the mainstream media.

So for those who missed the whole episode, France and the U.S. were competing for the gold in 4×100-meter swimming relay.

Usually, not that many people care about swimming, but this year, the Olympics’ U.S. coverage was (somewhat understandably) all about Phelps and his quest for 8 gold medals. NBC had even succeeded to shift all the swimming finals in Beijing in the morning so that they could cover it live and in prime time in the U.S. With close to $1bn spent to acquire the Games’ rights, NBC obviously had some influence over the IOC…

A little opportunistically, NBC and the U.S. team announced the French team as the huge favorite. More objectively though, 3 teams were in fact competing for the gold – France, the U.S. and Australia – and the U.S. relay team had just broken the world record in the semi-finals. This race was also thought to be one of the only possibilities for Phelps to fail in his quest.

Broadcast on Friday night in prime time, that was a nice setup for a nice race…

Add the fact that France and the U.S. were swimming side by side and you had a script for quite a drama.

To spice it up even more, Alain Bernard, the leader of the French squad, was reported to have trash talked before the race, announcing:

“The Americans? We gonna smash them. That’s what we came here for. If the relay goes according to plans, then we’ll be on a roll.”

The NBC commentators were all about this comment before the race and repeated it frequently.

To say the least, the race lived up to expectations. Five teams finished under the previous world record. The Australians first took the lead with their fastest swimmer (who established a new 100m WR on this occasion), the U.S. then took over and finally the French team, just before the last leg, led by Alain Bernard. With a half second advantage at the onset of the last relay, France and its leader seemed unstoppable (the U.S. commentator even announced they had lost, upsetting a lot of people). That was without counting Jason Lezak, the last American swimmer who swam the fastest 100m of his life and of all time (even if it’s not considered a WR as only the lead-off legs are eligible for records in relays).

Whoa, what a race! A big disappointment obviously in the French squad and a tremendous burst of joy and triumph for the U.S. team and the commentators.

As expected, they didn’t let go with the boasting French comments. That was one of the first question they asked to the American team after the race: “So, who’s talking now?“ “We are. United States of America.” replied Weber-Gale, one of the American swimmers.

Most of the media articles that followed could not help but razz the French with enthusiasm. Nothing that surprising at this point (after all, it was well deserved, wasn’t it?). But this whole story was good French-bashing material and we didn’t have to wait very long to get the “arrogant country” comments.

Even the mostly usually reserved Washington Post got into it (humm, Tracee Hamilton again…):

“Roll? Make that a croissant to go, Monsieur Trash-talk.
Hard to say which was more fun, seeing the U.S. 4×100-meter relay team win in such dramatic fashion or seeing the French team lose in such dramatic fashion.”

In this expected flow of reactions, I found a couple of gems from someone by the name of Chris Chase, who writes “articles” for the Yahoo sport blog.

First, in his comment about the relay, soberly titled “Did the French choke?” After mentioning – how gracious - the fair-play attitude of Bernard after the race, he couldn’t help concluding with this nice little piece of French-bashing:

“To his credit, Bernard was gracious in defeat, clapping when the Americans received their gold medals and shaking the hand of Michael Phelps after the ceremony. Or maybe that was just his way of surrendering. The French are pretty good at that one too.”

Obviously happy to see the French team beaten, that may have slipped from his mouth. But a couple of days later, he had to comment on Alain Bernard’s success in the individual 100m. Obviously, the Frenchman’s victory ridiculed his “choke” comment (objectively, Bernard’s swim was far from a choke: his leg was the 3rd fastest in history) and he titled his post “The Frenchman doesn’t choke twice.” Classier? Not really. Again, he had to conclude with that:

“The gold provides some redemption for France’s sprinting star, but it won’t erase the memory of the loss to Lezak. No matter how many more medals he wins, Bernard will always be known for that relay collapse.”

To say the least, this Chris Chase seems to have something against Bernard. Well, I’d suggest he reads the French papers to see how Bernard will be remembered…(I guess the Legion d’Honneur is coming…).

But beyond these pity comments, what was interesting is the large coverage that the whole story got and the wave of reactions and over-reactions that followed the race. Posts on various sports blog such as Yahoo, the NY Times and others were among the most commented, largely to express anti-French sentiment (only posts about controversies in gymnastics - possibly underage Chinese gymnasts, jury bias, drew more comments…). As the NY Times put it: it “stirred so many Americans’ wrath, beyond their usual resentment of the French”.

But…

It’s interesting to note that Bernard’s comment was almost never mentioned in the French media (to my knowledge not a single time before the race, and only buried in one Le Monde article afterwards).

How come the French press never mentioned Bernard’s comment? He was one of the French squad’s big stars coming into these Olympics, one of the only French world’s record holders along with Laure Manaudou. Several articles in the American media mentioned that the statement was made at a news conference prior to the start of the Games… but again, no hint of it in the French press!

Could it be possible that Bernard never actually said the now-famous statement about “smashing the Americans”? Or at least not in these words?

A few points:

- First of all, Bernard’s attitude - be it after the relay loss, his victory in the 100m or his defeat in the 50m – was always fair-play and to all observers gracious. He even took his Brazilian counterpart, who just happened to win the 50m in front of him, in his arms. Of course, he could be a gracious trash-talker. But I haven’t found anywhere else than in this famous “smash” statement the arrogance that it implies.

- Secondly, and I find this quite telling, the supposed statement was echoing the exact same words that Gary Hall Jr., a U.S. sprinter, used at the Olympics in Sidney 8 years ago before losing to Ian Thorpe’s team:

“We’re going to smash the Australians like guitars” said Gary Hall before the race.

- Thirdly, U.S. journalists tracked down Bernard just after the race to interview him. Here is his answer, which seems to imply that the statement is genuine. However, it is striking how much Bernard struggles in English. As a bilingual speaker myself, I find it hard to believe that he would have used such idiomatic English as “smash [the Americans],” even more so with words sounding exactly like the words of Gary Hall 8 years ago. Do you know a lot of 20-year old Frenchies who, having never lived in English-speaking countries, are able to lay down this kind of English:

“The Americans? We gonna smash them. That’s what we came here for. If the relay goes according to plans, then we’ll be on a roll.”

- To my knowledge, there is no audio of Bernard’s words

To add to the confusion, articles from the New York Times or the Washington Post indicate that Frederic Bousquet, not Bernard, made the statement:

“Before the 4×100 freestyle relay final on Monday, Fred Bousquet of France talked trash about the Americans.”

“The French had never won a medal in this event, but came in as the top seed — and even talked some trash beforehand, with one swimmer, Frédérick Bousquet, suggesting that the Americans feared them.”

Finally, Phelps has often spoken about how he uses his opponents’ talk as a motivational tool. His coach, Bowman, is also reported as being the one who told the U.S. team about the Frenchman’s trash talk. Later in the Olympics, another of Phelps’s main competitor, Cavic from Serbia, was widely reported to have said that it would be good for swimming if Phelps was thwarted in his bid for eight gold medals. Again, Bowman played the quote card to motive Phelps a little more. So could the Bernard’s comment be just a distorted rumor amplified or spread by the Phelps coach to motivate his team? Could it have been completely made up?

So what to think of all that?

We may never know for sure what was actually said and what was just the result of the distorting prism of media and rumors. What is certain is that the U.S. media and a lot of French bashers seem to be just ready to seize any opportunity to spread their French phobic rhetoric.

Interestingly, smack talking in US sports is actually quite common (I would go as far as saying that Americans pretty much invented it ;-). In baseball, football and basketball, it is common knowledge that many athletes use and abuse it. Michael Jordan, for one, was a notorious trash talker. Even if this is mostly not supported, it is often considered part of the psychological game to try to get to your opponent’s mind. It’s even more relevant in duel sports like boxing (remember Mohamed Ali?) or in short and adrenaline-saturated events like sprints (remember Maurice Green?). Even in the muffled world of women pole vault, this Olympics demonstrates that trash talk is everywhere! For some reason though, it didn’t receive as much echo…

Such a buzz around Bernard’s “quote” was probably just the magnifying French-lens effect. It seems that everything done or said by France or the French people will simply receive extra-attention and reactions, particularly when it is material for controversy. The jump by the U.S.’ mainstream media on what appears to be at the very least a non-verified quote, and at worst a made-up one, speaks volumes about them, as well as about the spreading of French-bashing.

“On a le droit de dire « je rêve de tuer Obama et voilà comment je m’y prendrais », mais tant qu’il n’y a pas le moindre commencement de mise en pratique, tout cela relève de la liberté d’expression”.

One is allowed to say “I dream of killing Obama and this is how I will do it” but until there are not concrete action initiated towards that goal, it all comes down to freedom of expression.

Guillemette Faure of rue89 is also amazed at how freely people of various opinions are expressing themselves at the convention and how tolerant the attendees are of people with different ideologies:

“Cette faculté de la société américaine à laisser s’exprimer les adversaires est toujours étonnante. On s’en fait encore une idée à l’extérieur de la convention où des groupes anti-avortement portent d’immenses photos de foetus sanguinolents et traitent Obama de » tueur de bébés » (parce qu’il défend le droit à l’avortement). Chacun passe devant eux sans leur dire quoi que ce soit…”

The ability of the American society to let their opponents express themselves is always amazing. One telling picture is the fact that outside the convention, anti-abortion groups carry large photos of bloody foetuses and call Obama a “baby-killer” (because he is pro-choice). Everyone walks by without saying a word..

François Clemenceau points out to a second wrinkle of these elections that is unique to the US. He wonders why traditionally red states (Kansas, West Virginia, Arkansas, Colorado, Caroline du Nord, Tennessee, Wyoming, Kentucky) have elected democrats as governors. He explains:

“Il semble juste que ces Etats du Sud et du Grand Ouest font la distinction entre des gouvernements de proximité, où l’on peut programmer des politiques assez centristes et de bon sens, et l’Etat fédéral à la tête duquel on cherche à placer quelqu’un qui « incarne » l’Amérique.”

“It seems that the Southern and Southwestern states make the distinction between local state governors, who can implement political strategies that are fairly moderate and based on common sense whereas for the country as a whole, they are looking for someone who embodies “America”.

The final characteristic that seems to have stood out to European bloggers at the convention is thirst for the melodramatic speeches and the hollywood-like atmosphere of a political meeting:

“Ce n’est pas de donner dans le mélo qui est critiquable, c’est l’ambivalence qui consiste à jouer Cendrillon sur la scène et Machiavel en coulisses. Les américains savent qu’on ne gouverne pas avec des bons sentiments. Ils veulent des hommes « strong ou tough » pour diriger leur pays.”

The melodramatic speeches are not to be condemned, it's the ambivalence of being Cinderella-like on the surface and then Machiavelli in the background. Americans know countries should not be governed by good sentiments. They want people who are “strong/ tough” to lead their country.

After President Clinton's endorsement of Obama, Guillemette Faure notes that 16 years earlier, Bill Clinton made his supporters at the convention repeat in unison “we can do it”, reminiscent of the ubiquitous “yes we can” Obama slogan.

For one thing, it’s none of my business who Americans choose as their next president. And while it’s true that the last one had such a terrible impact way beyond America’s borders, one thing’s for sure: the next one simply cannot be as dense, hebetudinous and inarticulate as the present one. Pretty much a statistical impossibility.

True, McCain at this time may look a bit like some cartoonish warmongering extremist, but my feeling is that he’s just playing to his constituency, which on his right side would never vote for him were it not for said warmongering, since on pretty much everything else he’s either on the opposite side of the issue, or was 10 minutes ago.

My only hope if McCain is elected: that he finally stops telling this stupid nonsensical joke.

Yeah, Obama had the better judgment on the Iraq war, but one also has to hope that he doesn’t really mean business when he essentially offers protectionism as a recipe for what ails the U.S.’ economy. At the same time, if even the Economist isn’t worried, why should I be?

Either way, I don’t think French-bashing will significantly abate, and it may even be greater under a president Obama, as hardcore rightists are famous for loudly slandering not just anybody whom they disagree with, but also anyone they think is a friend of their “enemy” (tune on to pretty much any radio talk show to confirm this…)

[Pic source: Jerome ITU]

In his review, Schwab highlights the effectiveness of the video clips produced by the McCain campaign that frames Obama as a “celebrity not fit to lead” and his “cult-like” following.

Schwab also notes that this strategy of ridiculing Obama as a celebrity is the central theme of Jerome Corsi's book on what he calls “the Obama Nation”. This is the same Corsi, Schwab notes, who penned the pamphlet, “Unfit for Command” that successfully questioned John Kerry's military past in the 2004 elections in what is known as the “swift boat”strategy.

He adds:

“Il faudra néanmoins rester très vigilant jusqu'au bout dans ce genre de “basse campagne” et les trois débats télévisés officiels à venir auront toute leur importance pour corriger certains tirs et redresser certaines vérités. Car la campagne de John McCain a rappelé dans ses rangs un certain Steve Schmidt, artisan des campagnes victorieuses de Bush et Cheney en 2000 et 2004, mais aussi celle d'Arnold Schwarzenegger en 2006 pour sa réélection comme gouverneur de Californie. Ce redoutable directeur opérationnel est notamment le concepteur des deux clips républicains de l'été, “Celebrity” et “The One”, fustigeant le côté star et messie d'Obama.”

One has to be very mindful of this kind of “low class campaign” happening until the end of the elections. The three official televised debates to come will be critical to rectify some errors and correct a few distortions. Indeed, the McCain campaign welcomes into its ranks a certain Steve Schmidt, main contributor to the the successful Bush/Cheney campaign of 00 and 04 but also Arnold Schwarzenegger's for his reelection in 06 as the governor of California. This remarkable director of operations is notably the creator of the concepts behind the two Republican advertisements of the summer, “Celebrity” and “The One”, deriding Obama as a star and a messiah.

However, another European blogger, Julien Landfried posting at Ilovepolitics, points out the smear politics and accusation of elitism might be backfiring for McCain:

“le clip réalisé par Brave New Films ci-dessous démontre bien à quel point McCain est mal placé pour faire du “populisme”. Avec une dizaine de propriétés à son patrimoine (estimé à au moins 35 millions de dollars), sa vie est dans doute éloignée de celle d'un Américain ordinaire, en particulier à l'ère de la crise des subprimes…”

This video clip produced by Brave New Films demonstrates that McCain may not be the best person to “act as one of the common people”. Owning a dozen of real estate properties (estimated at at least $35 millions USD), his life is as far removed from the lives of regular American people as it gets, especially in this era of subprime crisis…

Write your own caption or dialogue.

The ones you’ve escaped: here and here.

[h/t to Domy]

So when I caught some glimpse of a rivalry with the Americans, which I had assumed would be the favorites in pretty much any swimming event, I was floored. And not only was there a rivalry, but there was trash talking! From the French!

And I watched the race (you know the race I’m talking about). Whoa, what a thriller!

Am I disappointed that we lost? Yeah, maybe a little bit. But like I said, 24 hours ago, I didn’t even know who Alain Bernard was! In any case, congrats to the Americans.

More interestingly, I looked at the MSM coverage this morning. This could certainly have been an opportunity for French-bashing, but I didn’t see any. More like a respectful rivalry. Oh, there will always be the individual idiots making stupid comments but that’s in every country, and probably to be expected with all the trash talking.

You guys saw anything different?

Update: I guess you did. OK, never mind…

The results [fr]:

- 6 F16 shot down by the cheese-eating surrender monkeys
- 2 Rafales shot down by the free and the braves

For some reason, I couldn’t find any mention of it in the American press…

Godfrey Hodgson was director of the Reuters' Foundation Programme at Oxford University, and before that the Observer's correspondent in the United States and foreign editor of the Independent. He reported the presidential elections of 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976 for various British and American media, and was co-author (with Lewis Chester and Bruce Page) of the best-selling account of the 1968 campaign, An American Melodrama (Viking Press, 1969).

Among his other books are The World Turned Right Side Up: a history of the conservative ascendancy in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1996); The Gentleman from New York: Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Houghton Mifflin, 2000); More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century (Princeton University Press, 2006), and A Great and Godly Adventure:The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving (PublicAffairs, 2007)

Among Godfrey Hodgson's recent openDemocracy articles on American politics:

"The United States election: time for ‘change'" (10 January 2008)

"America's change election: reality or mirage?" (11 February 2008)

"'Superdelegates' and the US election" (25 February 2008)

"The lost election year" (15 May 2008)

"Barack Obama: at the crossroads of victory" (11 June 2008)

"A game of two halves" (15 July 2008)

Obama's journey - taking in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel (and the Palestinian West Bank), Jordan, Germany, France and Britain - was also a high-risk attempt to seize one of Senator John McCain's strongest weapons. McCain argues that Obama is woefully short of international experience, and the polls suggest that a large majority of Americans agree with him.

A one-to-many message

The European leg of the trip has been reported, both in Europe and in the United States, largely in terms of the probability that if elected Obama will be a more popular United States president in Europe than George W Bush. That would not be hard.

In fact, the whole tour - in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Jordan and in Israel, as well as in Berlin, Paris and London - was plotted and planned with immense care by Obama's enormous foreign-policy staff. (He has a foreign policy team of 300 advisers, split into some twenty regional or issue teams.) Care was needed. Obama had to steer his way through the hazards with all the mastery of a Tiger Woods.

Obama has to convince many different audiences at once. The primary target - as it must be - is those American voters who are not sure he can be trusted with America's international relations. Another audience is European politicians, genuinely uncertain whether he will be elected president on 4 November 2008, and anxious to learn what to expect of him if he is.

There are others Obama is obliged to try to reach. He seeks to reassure the pro-American forces in Afghanistan that he will not abandon them, that indeed he regards Afghanistan as a more urgent theatre of conflict for America than Iraq. In Europe he stressed that he wants more Nato allies to send troops to Afghanistan. He needs to persuade the government and the military in Pakistan that he understands the sensitivities of the porous Afghan-Pakistan border.

In Iraq, he tried and he may have succeeded, in showing that his conception of a planned US troop withdrawal is not just irresponsible pandering to American liberals, but is actually more in line with what the Nouri al-Maliki government wants than Senator McCain's willingness to keep a massive America army of occupation in Iraq more or less indefinitely.

In Europe he chose to make is one big public address at the Tiergarten in Berlin, rather than London. This was not, as hypersensitive British editorial writers feared, because he thinks Germany is more important to America than Britain, though it is possible that he does.

It was because he and his advisers wanted his speech to be shown alongside clips of John Kennedy's Ich bin ein Berliner speech (26 June 1963) and Ronald Reagan calling on Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" (12 June 1987). The stratagem worked perfectly. Obama succeeded in presenting himself in the company of the two presidents generally perceived in America as the masters of international relations.

Obama was only away for a week. The tour was a indeed a brilliant success. But it is too early to be sure that it has worked in its primary purpose: to persuade middle America that "national security" would be safe in his hands.

Senator McCain, having patronised Obama for inexperience in foreign policy, is now accusing him of something close to dereliction of duty for leaving the country for a week. Indeed for all his proven resilience of character and his engaging wit, McCain is beginning to sound both ungracious and more than a little desperate.

That does not necessarily mean that Obama's journey has disposed of popular doubts about his ability to take charge of America's national-security policy.

If McCain's credentials include dropping bombs on Hanoi and then behaving with heroic courage as a prisoner there for more than five years, Obama's life-experience includes a similar period of time in childhood spent in a modest household in Jakarta, capital of the world's most populous Muslim nation. That might be thought to equip with him a certain useful insight into one of the most difficult problems America faces, namely the hostility of many Muslims.

A change in the weather

The comparison illuminates a reality that, like so much in American politics, is obscured by euphemism and evasive language. When Americans tell pollsters and reporters, as many of them do, that they are not sure that Obama is the man to trust with national security, there are many ways of parsing that opinion.

"National security" is often a synonym for "defence", which in turn is a euphemism for "military". Obviously, if national security is seen as essentially a matter of maintaining America's military strength, then McCain - a war hero, a bomber-pilot, the son and grandson of admirals, educated at the US naval academy and a member of the armed-forces committee of the Senate - ticks all the boxes.

If national security is seen in those terms, as it certainly is by many of those who doubt Obama's fitness to be commander-in-chief, he has little to show for himself in his curriculum vitae. A Kenyan father and an Indonesian stepfather, an American mother who devoted her life to helping people in the developing world, an autobiography that reveals deep insights into how the United States looks from outside: these are not bankable assets in political terms. For many, they are debits.

True, Obama has been a member of the Senate foreign-relations committee since he came to Washington in late 2004. It is revealing that McCain's (admittedly longer) service on the armed-services committee is thought to count as relevant experience, but Obama's time on foreign relations is not usually thought worthy of mention by journalists assessing his fitness to be president.

Obama calls for change, and there could be no greater sign of change in American political instincts than a victory for him in November. Yet increasingly the feeling is that he is not just preaching change. He may also have detected a change that has already taken place.

If you listen carefully to what he is saying, he is not repeating the standard liberal package offered by a Walter ("Fritz") Mondale or a John Kerry. He is advocating policies that are in the interests of the United States as well as of the rest of the world. In his Berlin speech, he called for policies that did not insult and upset the rest of the world, but that would be good for America too.

He has not wavered in his opposition to the Iraq war, but - faced with the (probably exaggerated) relief in Washington that George W Bush's "surge" has been successful - he has continued to call for American withdrawal, in the name, not of leftwing principle, but of Iraqi democracy.

He has resolutely supported the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. He has also started to insist that the European members of Nato, especially Germany, should put their soldiers where their mouth is. He has walked through the fire in the middle east without being fatally burned.

Middle America may not yet be ready for the experiment. But it does look as if, in a single week's intercontinental barnstorming, Obama may at least have deprived McCain of the argument that his opponent does not understand the world beyond the oceans.