Is French-bashing making a come back?

Judging by these two books recently published:

- "The French Betrayal of America" by Kenneth R. Timmerman (Crown Forum, 2004)

- "Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France" by John J. Miller and Mark Molesky (Doubleday, 2004),

you may easily conclude that it is and that this is actually déjà-vu Francophobia (Remember the 'freedom fries' which did not last long and did catch on with people). But if you look into it more carefully you realize that it just a return of classic anti-Gallic rhetoric by the American Conservative right minority.... and minor it is!
The prestigious journal Foreign Affairs said about “Our Oldest Enemy”

That a book as shoddy and biased as this one should be published by a reputable press is eminently regrettable.

Even in Conservative circles, it is seen as way over the top, as the American Conservative review pointed out:

What Miller/ Molesky have done is furnish maximum negative spin and place most blame on the French.
(../..)
They omit details that don’t fit a Francophobic version.
(…/…)
They divide the world into friends and foes. A friend is not “difficult to control.” Since French governments, with broad public support, pursue an independent foreign policy, France is our foe. This book evaluates as “fawning” the admiration of American realists like Kissinger and Nixon for Charles de Gaulle, whose proud and independent France they considered generally an asset in the Cold War. An idealist foreign policy sounds superficially more “moral” than the calculation of national interest, but it leads easily to self-righteous crusading.

The authors’ venomous reaction to France is just ideological. Miller, Molesky & Timmerman all work for The National Review, the epitome of ‘neocon magazines’ with a clear agenda. Timmerman’s book is basically about Chirac’s ties to Saddam Hussein, claiming that Saddam’s genocide campaign against the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq occured to make their region "safe" for French oil engineers.Miller is also connected to The Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank with among other members Richard Perle who has shaped ‘neocon’ policy in the last 10 years.
Those attacks constitute French bashing because they are more than mere reasonable criticism as they border racism under some intellectual veneer. The arguments are so grossly one-sided and exaggerated though that they are self-defeating and it is easy for anyone who knows a tiny bit of history to debunk their cheap attempt. These attacks on France should really be treated as mere stupidity not even worth these lines. The main reason to write about such trashy books is to put them into perspective and remind ourselves that they should not be regarded as significant of a general sentiment in the U.S.. Anti-French rhetoric just happens to sell well with morons or cynical spin-doctors who think they can benefit from it.

Indeed it is better to laugh it off in the end (here's a good exemple..) for only humor can save us from depair...

As for the rest of anti-French rhetoric you may hear on the radio or in some newspaper, remember that whilebashing the French and knocking the Dixie Chicks, mega-media conglomerates like Clear Channel [with 1,200 station and some 100 million listeners across all 50 states ] and Rupert Murdoch’s empire [Murdoch, a pragmatic neocon believer owns 175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London as well as the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations] continue doing business big-time in evil France. So who's the traitor then?