Happy Bastille Day

Today is Bastille Day in beautiful incomparable France. This day is to the French what July 4 is to Americans and July 1 is to the Canadians, eh.

Bastille (băstēl') [O.Fr.,=fortress], fortress and state prison in Paris, located, until its demolition (started in 1789), near the site of the present Place de la Bastille. It was begun c.1369 by Hugh Aubriot, provost of the merchants [mayor] of Paris under King Charles V. Arbitrary and secret imprisonment by lettre de cachet gave rise to stories of horror, but actually the Bastille was generally used for persons of influence, and its regime for most political prisoners was mild. As a symbol of absolutism the Bastille was hated. It had strategic importance, for its guns commanded one of the gates of Paris. On July 14, 1789, a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in the hope of capturing ammunition. The governor was killed; the seven inmates, none of them political prisoners, were freed. The storming of the Bastille marks the beginning of the French Revolution, and July 14—Bastille Day—became the national holiday of France.

Because Bastille Day is a celebration of the storming of a prison and the release of its prisoners, I wonder when in the near-future American history we can expect to start celebrating Guantanamo Bay Day - the day that people stormed the torture chambers at Gitmo and released the prisoners there whose only crime was being born Arabic.

In 2003, not long after the childish Repugnican former majority in the Congress went off on its Freedom Fries campaign I wrote to the French Ambassador to the United States. In my email to the Ambassador I said that I was speaking on behalf of the few people remaining in the United States who still retained a semblance of intelligence and that I wanted to apologize to the French for the childish behavior of my government.

In my letter I told the Ambassador that Americans are quick to forget history. Were it not for the French and their blockade of the mouth of Chesapeake Bay at the end of the Revolutionary War, Americans would be driving on the left side of the road and George Bush would have been Tony Blair's lap dog instead of the other way around.

I also said to the Ambassador that were it not for the French and the French Resistence in the Second World War there would be hundreds of thousands of Americans buried in France today rather than just tens of thousands. I asked the French through their Ambassador, to forgive us our childish behavior.

About a month later I received an email from the Ambassador. He thanked me for my thoughtful letter and ended his saying "Like a headache, Mr Bush, too, shall pass."

Not soon enough though!

Because of the Freedom Fries incident if there is a choice between a bottle of Evian water and any other brand I take the Evian. If there is a choice between a French wine and any other wine I take the French wine. In fact I have a burning desire to go back to Paris just to hang out again for a few days. Just because.

Vive le France.