Giving new meaning to the Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again (1940) note this below – and I’d guess just as Tom couldn’t really get back to Ashville, North Carolina, so these folks will be assassinated if any of them step foot in America again.  I hope these aren’t their real names.

This from l'Agence France-Presse (AFP) by way of The Tocqueville Connection -

AMERICANS IN PARIS HOLD 'INAUGURAL ANTI-BALL'

Thursday, 20 January 2005 23:30:00 GMT

PARIS, Jan 21 (AFP) - Clad in true Democrat blue and with Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy gazing from the wall, Americans in Paris who do not like the present incumbent on Thursday held their own "inaugural anti-ball."

The protest festivities were organised in a bar near the Paris Opera by OVU -- Overseas Voters Unite.

"We want to have a voice out of Paris, it's an international, cosmopolitan, cultural center, it has always been historically a place where expatriates came to express themselves," said Clara Pascal, domiciled in Paris for 15 years:

"We have to voice our dissent, there are so many issues where we feel Bush is lacking understanding, we feel we need to have a voice," she said.

Andrea Marsh handed out blue ribbons at the Xtremes Bar with American folk music playing in the background, and protested at what she said was the misplaced use of more than 40 million dollars for inaugural festivities back in Washington DC.

"Kids are dying in Iraq and there are tsunamis going on," she said.

The revellers alternately howled disapproval at television screen images of the president taking the oath of office, and shrieked approval at shots of anti-Bush demonstrators.

Said Ian Grosser, an American researcher at the French national research center CNRS who has lived in France for 39 years: "I can't stand him. It's going to get worse with everything domestically and internationally. But I'm still optimistic about the country."

Iraq was worse than Vietnam, he said: "It's immoral to go to war in Iraq." Constance Borde, president of some 2,500 registered American Democrats in France, said the Paris whoop-up was a cry of indignation:

"This is not just being bad losers," she said: "The country has been taken so far astray from the America we believe America should be that we have to react against it."

One American francophile celebrated his country of choice, recalling distastefully the wave of anti-French feeling in the US over French opposition to the invasion of Iraq:

"We need to vent our feelings about these very conservative people that live in the Midwest, who had freedom fries instead of french fries.

"Here so many of the Democrats are married to French people, or they choose to live here because they like French people.

"Nobody here is against the French."

I asked Ric from MetropoleParis of any of his members attended. 

I got this –

This must have been a function put on by the local Ghetto of Democratic Losers in Paris.  My normal source for this type of sadsack fete had her book launch in a sordid alley in the 5^th on Wednesday evening, and I think she was undercome by hotwine in plastic cups. At any rate she was no-show on Thursday.

Local search of Metropole's archives did not turn up any names from the Tocqueville piece, but they were probably the usual suspects.  Not that Café Metropole Club members could constitute any 'trend,' but it seems as if more new members are residents here.  Probably the extra shifty types who could get further than Canada.

As usual I cannot detect any overt expressions of dismay with events in Washington.  Most French are too polite to openly express their profound disgust.  On the other hand, unlike Republicans, they are probably willing to let bygones be bygones.  Besides, they have their own Sarkozian tendencies to overcome, as many did this week by walking around the cities of France with signs protesting government 'reforms.'

With events like these going on it is not always possible to pay close attention to circuses in Washington.  France-2 TV news did mention and show anti-inaugural protestors in DC, in a fit of 'fair-and-balanced' reporting.  Noted also was the mention of 'liberty' 40 times, and the absence of any indication of when this will be applied to Americans.

                          - As Friday night falls in Paris, Ric

So – an isolated phenomenon.  Everyone else was happy.  Francophiles aren’t real Americans.