Bastille Day
As early as 1789, the year of the storming of the Bastille, preliminary designs for a national festival were underway. These designs were intended to strengthen the country's national identity through the celebration of the events of 14 July 1789. One of the first designs was proposed by Clément Gonchon, a French textile worker, who presented his design for a festival celebrating the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille to the French city administration and the public on 9 December 1789. There were other proposals and unofficial celebrations of 14 July 1789, but the official festival sponsored by the National Assembly was called the Fête de la Fédération.
Freedom fries
In the March 15, 2003 episode of "Saturday Night Live", Tina Fey reported this on the satirical "Weekend Update": "In a related story, in France, American cheese is now referred to as 'idiot cheese'." The 2006 documentary "Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren" directed by Carl Christman took a comedic viewpoint on American consumerism and patriotism. In the episode "Stan Knows Best" of "American Dad!", after being asked how his French toast is, the main character Stan remarks: "Smelly and ungrateful! But this American toast is delicious." In the comic strip "Doonesbury", the characters Mark Slackmeyer and Zonker Harris criticized the name change in French. Slackmeyer said that, translated, the U.S. liberated France in World War II; and that many French newspaper headlines after 9/11 were "We are all American". At the end, he states that the anti-French were "jingoistic, self-regarding conquer-monkeys!" The French American indie band Freedom Fry chose their name based on the Freedom Fries phenomenon. In 2005, Robert Plant and his band Strange Sensation released the album "Mighty ReArranger", which contains the track '"Freedom Fries", an anti-war song whose lyrics contains the words "Freedom fries and burns and scars, the liberator goes too far".