A report on ABC News tonight from Little Falls, Minnesota, home town of Charles Lindbergh, told of how many residents want to remove the French flag that flies in memory of Lindbergh’s landing and send it back to France.

This follows the initial renaming of french fries and french toast in the cafeteria of the House of Representatives to “freedom fries” and “freedom toast,” and subsequent calls for renaming french dressing and French’s mustard.

First off, “French” toast is not French, it is about as American as you can get; it was invented by Joseph French of Albany, NY in 1724. Same thing goes for French’s Mustard, created by George J. French in 1904.

But the plain facts aside, aren’t we going just a little bit too far with the whole anti-Gallic thing? Heck, the Russians and the Chinese have not only given us more grief over things in the past including strong opposition to the Iraq war, but also sold more arms to Iraq. Why do we turn so vehemently and so irrationally against a country that, after all, has been a staunch ally practically non-stop since the days of the revolution? Especially when so many in our own country feel exactly as the French government does?

Maybe it’s because we make so many jokes about the French surrendering easily, or because of the stereotype of French people being rude, snotty and arrogant; none of these hold much truth to them, but that colors our views anyway, and makes it easy to turn against them. Who is being the fickle ally here?

Let’s just stop with the idiocy over France and accept the fact that sometimes allies disagree. It’s not like we’ve never gone against the wishes of our own allies, after all.