What I said is that both initiatives are somewhat petty, and somewhat comparable (government officials deprecating "foreign" terms). The article fails to recog

What I said is that both initiatives are somewhat petty, and somewhat comparable (government officials deprecating "foreign" terms). The article fails to recognize that both cultures have their peculiarities, and treats this trait as being peculiar to the French. I agree that when the President, vice-President, and SecDef of the U.S. hold up another country to ridicule, as President Bush and his leadership team did with regard to France ("old Europe" and all the rest), it is indeed different in many ways than a set of French broadcasting bureaucrats forbidding certain words. I'm just not sure the difference works strongly in favor of your argument that the French case is more outrageous.