sacre bleu cheese!

By Todd Stadler · Thursday, March 13, 2003 3:05am

Clearly lacking anything better to do, two Congressmen decided that the word "French" should no longer appear in the House cafeterias because, well, France didn't do what we wanted and stuff.

So say hello to "freedom fries" (n?e french fries) and bon voyage to french toast (not that french toast is all that French, apparently, but why let facts get in the way of our chauvinism?).

Of course, this gauche renaming has its precedent in World War I, when Americans singlehandedly won the war and stuck it to the Gerrys by denying them any linguistic claim on our tasty vittles, turning hamburgers into Salisbury steak, and sauerkraut into liberty cabbage.

(And what an American reaction that is ? not to bother actually changing one's ways to make a point, but rather to keep eating the cuisine of one's foe and simply change the name. Oh, the resolve! It's enough to make me wonder how we as a country managed to live through the years after the Revolutionary War without inventing a whole new language.)

But then, and this apparently bears repeating, France isn't our enemy like Germany was in World War I.

Oh sure, they may lack the esprit de corps we expect from an ally, and their laissez-faire attitude towards Iraq clearly isn't tenable.

One could even say that their declaring a veto on a second Iraq resolution a fait accompli before it had been fully debated was a diplomatic faux pas.

Or maybe one could try to shoehorn as many words borrowed from the French as possible into an article about an attempt to cleanse ourselves of French influence, thereby making an awkward critique vis-?-vis the lack of savior faire in making France to be a b?te noire. Touch?.

You know what, forget all that. I took Spanish in high school. And I know the French can be haughty little buggers. So let's have our liberty fries and liberty toast.

But if we're going to do it, let's do it the American way ? over the top! Accordingly, I expect the following changes to ensue shortly:

• "French vanilla" changed to "vanilla of justice"
• "French cut green beans" changed to "one nation, under God, indivisible green beans"
• "French dressing" changed to "dressing where my fathers died, dressing of the pilgrim's pride"
• "Barbecue", owing to its French etymology, will be called by its English translation, "beard and tail", or for you southerners, "rooter to the tooter"
• "Chicken cordon bleu" changed to "chicken coalition-of-the-willing"
• All orchestras replace French horns with English horns until such time as the American horn is invented
• President Chirac to be addressed as "President Poop-head" in diplomatic circles
• France to be relabelled "Stupid-Jerk-Land" in all American textbooks

Of course, France isn't alone in opposing our actions diplomatically. Germany, Belgium, Russia, Turkey, Canada ... lots of countries are attempting to thwart us. Should we then remoniker their cuisine as well?

Of course we should. Accordingly, here are some changes I expect to see made in the coming days:

• "German pancakes" changed to "non-obstructionist popovers"
• "German measles" changed to "Friggin' German measles"
• "Chicken Kiev" changed to "Three Mile Island chicken"
• "Borscht" changed to "free-market capitalism can't be beat soup"
• Turkey taken out of all club sandwiches just like Turkey was taken out of the "pro war club"
• "Turkish delight" changed to "Turkish fear and apprehension of possible retaliatory moves"
• "Canadian bacon" changed to "Fifty-four forty or fight back bacon"
• "Belgian waffles" changed to "waffles that will not be so easily trampled by the Germans"
• And just for good measure, "swiss cheese" changed to "decidedly pro-war cheese"

Of course, we can expect some retaliation in kind from these countries.

For instance, I have heard that the French have begun calling American cheese "crap", which isn't actually a change, but it's still an affront to everything our forefathers worked for.