As I’ve previously mentioned, Deborah Solomon’s harsh interviewing style makes me uncomfortable, but she got off a great line in her interview last week with French philosopher Jean Baudrillard:

BAUDRILLARD: France is a byproduct of American culture. We are all in this; we are globalized. When Jacques Chirac says, “No!” to Bush about the Iraq war, it’s a delusion. It’s to insist on the French as an exception, but there is no French exception.

SOLOMON: Hardly. France chose not to send soldiers to Iraq, which has real meaning for countless individual soldiers, for their families and for the state.

BAUDRILLARD: Ah, yes. We are “against” the war because it is not our war. But in Algeria, it was the same. America didn’t send soldiers when we fought the Algerian war. France and America are on the same side. There is only one side.

SOLOMON: Isn’t that kind of simplistic reasoning why people get so tired of French intellectuals?

Ouch.