Last night may have been the first time I got an exciting slice of the seething anti-Americanism that France is fabled for. And of all places, I got it from a taxi driver.
I always strike up conversations with taxi drivers here, but it rarely leads to good places. Last night's conversation went something like this:
Driver: How are you?
Me: Good! This metro strike is bad though.
Driver: You're American.
Me: Uhh, yes. Good ear. I'm from Atlanta.
Driver: Have they abolished the death penalty in Georgia?
Me: I don't know.
Driver: You all still have it in Texas and California. It's disgusting.
Me: Umm, yeah, I'm not a big fan of the death penalty.
Driver: It's horrific! In France, you're presumed innocent. In the US, you're caught, and you're guilty, and they're going to kill you. And then there's Iraq.
Me: Hmm, yeah, the Iraq thing is no good.
Driver: Millions of Iraqis have been killed. And all for oil, it's all for oil, it's disgusting.
Me: Yeah, uh, I guess my country's done a lot of things that I'm not too happy about.
Not that I really disagreed with his attitudes, but I was starting to feel uncomfortable. He was getting worked up and starting to raise his voice, he was humming manically along with Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony on the radio, he had a lisping, Mike Tyson-esque voice, and he had an axe in his passenger seat that he kept caressing. The axe is only a slight exaggeration.
At the end of the ride, I gave him a nice tip. Even globalizing war-mongers can have hearts.
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