I'd Like My Freedom Super-Sized, Please
The Story of America's Strangest Front in the War on Terror
"There's a saying I heard growing up," said Kathryn Davis, as quoted in the Hartford Courant last week. "For those who fight for it, freedom has a flavor that those who are protected will never know."
While that may have been true in Davis' youth, in America in 2003 freedom has a very familiar flavor, to those who fight and those who are fought for alike: It is the flavor of fried potatoes.
Potatoes fried and then cut, or "frenched," into thin strips, to be exact: A culinary invention apparently dating to 18th century Belgium (although this is unclear; the only sure thing about the dish's history is that it enjoyed its first taste of lasting popularity in Britain in the second half of the 19th century) that has long been known in the United States as French fries.
Americans loved French fries; according to urban legend, the love affair dates back to World War I, when doughboys fighting the Kaiser took the hot and tasty snack home with them. The World War I connection will be important later, as we shall see.
Urban legend aside, cold fact (in the form of the Restaurants and Menus Census) states that French fries are the best-selling item in both the commercial and non-commercial food service sectors. Nearly 5 billion pounds of French fries are sold domestically every year, making them the top prepared potato product, with 32 percent of the market share.
When more than 3,000 civilians were killed in the terror attacks of September 11, no one at the time could have foreseen that a chain of events had been set in motion that would come to seriously imperil America's love affair with French fries. However, when in the wake of the quickie war in Afghanistan it became apparent that the Bush Administration was still eager for war, the pariah state of Iraq became Target One. The Bush Administration spent more than a year building up public support for a war with the country, which it eventually began on March 19, 2003.
The build to war was not easy. To begin with, there was the overwhelming evidence showing that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime had nothing to do with the horrific attacks of September 11; for another, there was the large body of world opinion, which stood against war, and this is where our favorite side dish began to run into trouble.
Prominent among the many governments opposing war in Iraq were the French; under Conservative President Jacques Chirac, France joined in a series of small alliances designed to thwart the Bush Administration's fondest desire of war in the Middle East. France blocked the United States both in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and on the Security Council of the United Nations, whose approval was needed to make the war in Iraq legal.
France was not the only government to oppose the war. Germany, Russia, Canada, and China filled out the ranks of major world powers in opposition, while Britain, Italy, Spain, and Australia supported the war (although huge majorities in all those countries opposed it; support for the war there was confined to the elite circles of government).
For whatever reason, though, the American pro-war lobby began to single out France as the leading obstructionist, perhaps because an American public raised on stereotypes of the Gauls as effete, snobbish Nazi collaborators could be easily fooled into identifying the world anti-war cause with the French government.
The first shot in the war, as always, was fired by the rabid corps of right wing publicists in America who for some reason are usually described as "pundits." A writer for William F. Buckley's National Review stole the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" from The Simpsons to describe the French (more than 2 million of whom died fighting Germany in two world wars), and the race was on.
The theory behind 2003's Francophobia was that France had "betrayed" the United States by refusing to support the war in Iraq. This was part of the Right's plan: If attention could be deflected from the specific arguments advanced by the French government, and instead an outburst of Know Nothingism could be stirred up, then fewer people in America would be asking why the country's oldest ally thought this war was such a terrible idea.
Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) then took the initiative in proposing a labeling system that would make French wine and mineral water less attractive to American consumers; he was echoed by a backbencher in the Pennsylvania state house who introduced a bill banning the sale of French wine in state-owned liquor stores.
This was an important step: If such proposals were ridiculed and ignored, the pro-war lobby would have to try another tack (German bashing, most likely). However, while some sneered particularly at the Pennsylvania legislator, the public did not. And in the confused statements of that state legislator, the germ of an idea was born.
"I don't even let my kids order French fries anymore," he said. Was he joking? Perhaps. But within days, this unhinged boast had soon taken a hideous shape in the waking reality of America: Freedom fries.
Let the word go forth that Cubbie's Restaurant in Beaufort, North Carolina, was the Lexington and Concord of America's new war. For in the second week of February, the news flashed around the world that Cubbie's had decided to rename the popular menu item: No more would diners have to associate their meals with the hated French. From now on, they could step proudly to the counter and in a voice rich with the promise of America, order a side of "freedom fries."
Neal Boortz, a right wing talk show host in Atlanta, saw the story on the wire and ran with it, urging a nationwide campaign against all things French. Yes, even the very word "French" itself (which, of course, Francophones don't use) was so hateful to freedom-loving Americans that it had to be stomped out, obliterated, removed from our daily use.
This tactic, surprisingly, has something of a pedigree in America. George Creel, the fiendish propagandist of World War I, is generally credited with campaigns to rename German foods during that conflict: Hence, sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," and hamburgers became "liberty steaks." This, when I was a lad in high school, was generally told to us as a joke and a warning: How could people have been so crazy as to think renaming food products was part of the war effort?
What started as a joke for Lefty types who paid attention soon began sprouting up in places besides Beaufort and Neal Boortz's feverish imagination. A Florida talk show host urged the renaming of French fries at the same time a Palm Beach official introduced a resolution that would make it fact.
Freedom fry renaming spread slowly, but was generally confined to the southern United States (although Pennsylvania was an early victory in the campaign), diluted by other anti-French measures such as the boycotting of wine, which often featured liquor store owners dumping Beaujolais into toilets and sewers, and the smashing of a French sports car (this really happened, in Nashville).
On March 11, however, freedom fries got their most significant lift to date when Congress, stunningly, changed all of the menus in its cafeterias to read "freedom fries" instead of the more familiar "French fries." The change was put through, without a vote, by Republican Reps. Walter Jones (North Carolina) and Bob Ney (Ohio), who is in charge of a panel that oversees House operations and thus, menus. The edict also changed the name of French toast to freedom toast, but spared French dressing and French onion soup.
This time the world paid attention. Mocking accounts of the story were run all over the planet, but these opinions had little effect on the bold guerrillas carrying freedom fries forward into the world. In quick succession, freedom fries appeared in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, California, Ohio, and Michigan.
There were even reports that Nellie's, a restaurant chain in and around Calgary, had switched to freedom fries, although a Calgary Sun story later in the month reported that the chain had switched back after complaints from customers.
No such return to sanity was reported in the United States where, now unburdened from both fear of mockery and a world without war, the freedom fry forces stepped up their attacks. Indeed, after the war in Iraq began, the Freedom Fry fight took on a pathological cast, with such reported incidents as:
- A dry cleaner's in California named French's was firebombed
- A bakery in Woonsocket, RI changed the name of its French roast coffee to freedom roast coffee
- President Bush bragged to reporters about the "spontaneous backlash" against the French
- The makers of French's Mustard issued a nervous press release insisting that "there's nothing more All-American than French's Mustard!"
- The Idaho Potato Growers Association began urging a nationwide name change to the variant "American fries": JR Simplot, the world's 3rd largest supplier of fries, announced they were considering it.
As I write this, there have been reported name changes of French fries in 15 states, and there is no reason to suppose the number won't grow higher. Appeals to reason have failed, as have both mockery and reminders of France's role in the American Revolution. With war dead piling up and the force of world opinion against the United States, the struggle has again turned pathic: A Florida congresswoman introduced a bill that would disinter the 160,000 American war dead in French and Belgian cemeteries and repatriate their remains. Freedom corpses? The measure seems absurd and has garnered no support and much condemnation in Congress, but somewhere in the ether the ghost of George Creel is cheering, wishing he had thought of it first.
4:59:30 PM 
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