This French criticism you are making allusion to does not surprise me that much and it pinpoints this striking difference one may find between American and French culture whose origin is to be found in their respective religious and historical backgrounds, as Max Weber taught us.
French persistently keep on a love/hate relationship with the notions of money and profit and so the visible expression of this inhibition inescapably applies to the United States and to its set of values as well.

For the record, I reside on the French soil at this time and I can tell you that, in this country, the mere fact to get a significant amount of cash—say, up to Euro 200 (about $285), which represents a lot for most French—out of your pocket in a public place such as a supermarket will inescapably stir everyone around you with reactions ranging from embarrassment to envy—coldness and adversity in most instances.

Regardless who is president and which political party holds the majority the French ruling elite and other actors involved in public opinion-making consistently bred and are still breeding this idea that money = guilt. This message is permanently suggested in media and news, films and other forms of popular entertainment, early at school, and even in commercials and other add and advertising; all this to an overwhelming extent, but informally, always.

As certain French thinkers and journalists say it then and now the French society is “schizophrenic.� Meaning, it must cope on the one hand with an official narrative whose tenets are based upon the conventional wisdom of most occidental countries such as pursuit of happiness and well-being and consumerism; and on the other hand with an unknown unofficial and unidentified, but ubiquitous, voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time which teaches them that those values and expectations are simply sinful.

This Gallic culture of double-think and double-talk has been easily visible in the French diplomatic approach and has been best exemplified by the unexplainable French attitude—promises and pro-U.S. policy, then sudden disengagement and denial, then overt anti-U.S. stance—during the vote of armed intervention in Iraq at the UNO Security Council in 2002.
The coming on the political stage of the pro-U.S. and right-leaning French president who is openly preaching individual freedom, pursuit of happiness and consumerism is matched at this time, however, by a promotion within the French borders of opposite values.
To say, this set of values which French just began to “learn aboutâ€? during the two or three last decades encompasses anti-Americanism and respect for Che Guevara, anti-capitalism and harsh criticism toward the notion of personal profit and money, collectivism and an extreme and over hyped form of green activism and other “save-the-planet” slogans used as a providential pretext to urge the French population to stop consuming and to “rediscoverâ€? the “authenticâ€? and “healthier” values of growing and eating vegetables, privileging bicycle and public means of transportation over cars and motorbikes, practicing gardening, jogging and any other outdoor forms of leisure inasmuch as it involves the notion of nature. It dosn’t escape to many that those a priori unselfish recommendations share all in common to entail little expenses.
All these perfectly visible but informal messages are accompanied by a tight, though unofficial, governmental control upon French private economy that steadily extended to small business during the two last decades. As in early 2006 The Economist reported that about 70% of the French media are less or more directly controlled by the ministry of defense; a last fact that makes the French government directly accountable for the nature and tone of voice of the news and opinion published by the French mainstream media.

In the light of the aforesaid it should come to no surprise to read those comments and to re-discover this usual critical French perception of the U.S. strategy and initiatives in Iraq; didn’t it happen under the presidency of a would-be pro-U.S. president.

We may understand and acknowledge that Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy cannot get France back on its feet and changes mentality and negative priori of 63 millions of French within a few months or even within a few years, and we should consider this dificulty so as to leave to him the required lapse of time to make the demonstration of its sincerity. But should he be as sincere and honest as he pretends to be, then Mr. Sarkozy still faces the challenge to convince us that the French ruling elite, which still systematically and unanimously condemns and penalizes—and even punishes, as I know it from personal experience—any form of sympathy toward the United States at the level of its domestic policy, has mistakenly let a pro-U.S. person reach the top of the ladder.