For example Brigitte Bardot (sex symbol of 45 years ago) has been fined for exercising her inalienable right to free speech:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5181642/

The Paris court sentenced Bardot, 69, for remarks in her book “A Scream in the Silence,” an outspoken attack on gays, immigrants and the jobless that shocked France last year.

In the book, she laments the “Islamization of France” and the “underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam.”

And it’s not just free speech they don’t like, it’s economic freedom as well:

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18005/article_detail.asp

Back in May 1944, Hubert Beuve-Méry, the future founder and editor of Le Monde, the most influential journal in France today, was able to write that “The Americans constitute a real danger for France…. They cling to a veritable cult of the idea of liberty [and] don’t feel the need to liberate themselves from the servitudes that their capitalism entails.” The fact that an important Frenchman was able to argue this even while France was occupied by the Nazis, with the possibility of American liberation being their only hope for a different future, indicates the depth of both the hatred for economic liberty and the anti-American obsession in France.

For me this puts a new light on the French opposition to U.S. activities.