French Fry Diary 241: Freedom Fries

Here's the gist. America went to war in Iraq, and it was a very unpopular war. Among the many countries that opposed this, one of the most vocal was France. In response, many American citizens started calling French fries by a new name - "Freedom fries." That's all there is to it. President Bush did not mandate this, none of the major fast food companies did this, and let's face it, this was not the first time France had behaved arrogantly and we made fun of them for it.

And bottom line, no matter how much they whine about it, the French didn't create the French fry, the Belgians did. It's just a name, and it doesn't matter. Come on, there's no dog in a hot dog and nobody has a problem with that, right?

Why am I irritated by this all of a sudden? I just saw a movie called Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren. I say movie, because even though it tries very hard to look like a documentary, but it's basically an opinion piece by writer/director/producer Carl Christman. It's not about French fries, despite the title. Christman has a problem with President Bush, and made a movie to express his opinion - which is wonderful, because I am all for expressing your opinion, but for some reason he felt the need to sully the name of the favorite fried food to do it.

He's not as bad as Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, but he does only want to present his opinion, and everyone else's is stupid. Carl Christman seems to be as anti-French fries as much as he is against Bush, the war, the government, God, bumper stickers, Disney World, protest (unless he agrees with the cause), money, buying American, buying anything for that matter, etc. - it goes on and on. Just about the only thing he's not against is bitching - cuz he does a lot of that. Oh yeah, and France. He seems to like France a lot.

The other thing that bugs me about this movie (more than it not really being about French fries) is that when he does show fries, they are from McDonald's (and I'm willing to bet he's anti-Mickey D's too), but McDonald's never changed the name of their product to "Freedom Fries," so why imply that they did? Shame, shame, more research and more fries I think are in order for Mr. Christman.