Number 1: Burberry Plaid

Now that it's April, what I look forward to more than the final snow is the fading out of perhaps the most annoying fashion trend in my lifetime (which includes shoulder pads). Burberry plaid.

You've seen it but you may not know it by its official name (in which case I probably like you). The purses, the scarves, skirts, hair gadgets, everywhere this same tan, black, and red pattern. Barbie and Burberry of London teamed up to make Burberry Barbie. Even icedoutgear.com has Burberry plaid (in the form of a tracksuit). I would venture to say that being iced out and sporting Burberry is just too much coolness for any one human being to handle.

What so offends me about this trend is the specificity. One kind of plaid? Are we so unimaginative? Are we so fearful of not fitting in that we can't go out on a limb with, say, Black Watch? As it turns out, Burberry is an upscale London fashion house. So wearing Burberry plaid is more like wearing the classic Louis Vuitton "LV print" than wearing Black Watch - it's a status symbol. Whatever.

Number 2: Freedom Food

I thought it was stupid and blackly humorous when I saw on the local news that various bars and restaurants across the country were pouring out their French wine and re-christening their fries "Freedom Fries." I lifted my glass of wine and announced, "Vive le France," in a hideously bad accent, and proceeded to get drunk, as it was a Friday evening.

However, stupid doesn't begin to describe -- and it's more black than humorous -- the news that US government officials have jumped aboard the Freedom Fryolator. House cafeterias have decided to serve Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast, as a supposedly "symbolic effort" to express their displeasure with Chirac's staunch Iraq-invasion veto. Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) evidently believes this will make quite an impression on our "so-called ally, France" as he puts it. Leaving aside the obvious fact that fries are not even French, what's really infuriating about this move is that it belittles the entire American population.

Let's not be fooled into thinking that Ney or Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC, another supporter of Freedom foods) or any other politician actually believes the French will give deux merdes what we call our greasy fried potatoes. They believe that we, the American people, will think, "What a clever idea! Let's show the French that we hate them, and support the President, by removing the very name of those filthy frogs from our menus!" In real life I have not yet heard anyone express a favorable opinion toward Freedom Fries. Even the more conservative of my coworkers responded to the news with a sort of half-amused "huh?"

Yet from the pool of intelligent discourse and wit known as Internet Forums (in this case, a message board at the Corpus Christi Caller Times online Sound Off forum) comes a brilliant argument for the renaming of French food (as well as, apparently, EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!):

"DO YOU LIKE YOUR FREEDOM or would you rather be forced to live as the poor women in Iraq do? Let them keep getting away with it and that's what will happen. On another note, the French are notorious for their crazy antics and now their anti-americanism. Sadam has his money in French banks -- how about that? The French vetoed the 1st Chief UN Inspector for someone more acceptable to Sadam -- Hans Bliz [sic] -- I guess that's ok too? FREEDOM FRIES, FREEDOM TOAST -- FREEDOM VANILLA -- FREEDOM EVERYTHING!!!!!!! - Jason

[On a side note: Hans Bliz, eh? Then again, maybe we should send "Hans Bliz" to Iraq -- perhaps that will stop that crazy maniac Saddam. (For you suburban or non-rap-listening readers, a bliz is a blunt. For you squares or old folks, a blunt is a cigar filled with marijuana instead of tobacco.)]

Unfortunately, I can't defend the intelligence of the American people whole-heartedly, because while Freedom Fries remain the object of ridicule for anyone with a salt-grain of intelligence, anti-French sentiment is sweeping the nation faster than bootcut jeans. The moment when it became not only acceptable but cool to despise an entire nation must have slipped by me. We don't even hate Iraq as a whole, only Saddam and the other Bad Guys -- we like those women, children, and Kurds. But France... grrrr, France....

It's hardly surprising that Jim Saxton (R-NJ) is introducing bills that would ban the Pentagon from the Paris Air Show and also bar France from participating in the reconstruction of Iraq after the war. It's more disturbing that someone like Elaine Clement, president of the Cajun heritage advocacy group Action Cardienne in New Orleans, received a phone call recently in which she was told "basically that we needed to go back to France." Now we hate Cajuns too? (What about that shrimp in Muppets From Space -- "I'm not a shrimp. I'm a king prawn, okay?")

American citizens are whining that the French should be more grateful for the time we bailed them out, you know, when Hitler-the-First was attacking them. What kind of bourgeois gift-giving etiquette is this and how on Earth does it relate to foreign policy? So we think Chirac should say, "We totally disagree with a preemptive attack on Iraq and think it will destabilize world diplomacy... but, well, you did save our French asses back there in WWII so... ok, we're in. But then we're even!"

And why don't we hate the British? Didn't we also save their butts in WWII? Tony Blair may be backing up Bush, but British public approval of a war against Iraq has hovered around 30 percent for months. Not to mention we had to chase those guys out of here with guns back in the day. Are the French just easier to hate, with their odors and their weird movies and their unflagging celebration of cigarettes and booze? Or does this indicate that Americans think of world leaders as symbols with literal translations; i.e., Chirac = France, Blair = England. Clearly, this is simple-minded, and it logically leads to this chain of thought: Bush = America, America = good, Bush = good. We also don't hate Russia, though Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has repeatedly threatened a Russian veto of any UN resolution that condones use of force in Iraq and Prime Minister Putin has publicly come out against the war. Is this because we get a creepy sense of déjà vu when we think about hating Russia?

The town of Carrboro, North Carolina reacted to the House renaming of French fries by declaring April "French trade month," in which residents will be encouraged to buy up as many French products as possible. While such a protest is well meaning, it's basically ineffectual and in the end not so different from renaming food. Instead, I propose that Americans be a little bit rational. Let's think about this one. We hate France? One year ago, that statement would be nothing more than a joke, and it should be one now as well.

Number 3: Coffee Lid Flip-tabs That Don't Stay Pressed Back Into The Little Notch

I mean, that just really ruins my cup of coffee.