I apologise for this overly long post. It really is more of a thought stream, I was actually quite taken aback as to why French bashing would offend me more than America bashing and has to rationalise it in some way. I should rewrite it but I'm too lazy, so I won't be offended if nobody reads it.
You're right, there certainly is a lot of American bashing on European forums and I hate that, too. Mostly because it's so mindless. That said, I certainly think most Americans are dumb as shit, but obviously that also goes for most Europeans, ie people in general, really. What bothers me however is that people don't seem to think about what they're saying when they're bashing whatever. It's all just repeated again and again, using the time tried formula of "if I say it often enough it becomes true". So instead of any of the (IMHO) very valid criticism of America*, you just get cliches without any substance.
* America in that context typically means the American government, incidently, this is really a very poor shorthand.
Nevertheless, French bashing irritates me even more. Because in the case of America bashing, people at least
think they have a sensible argument in mind, even if it's nonsense, while in the case of French bashing there is no such pretension. It's just offending* a group of people for the sake of being funny, just that it's really not funny and never really was.
*I'm not sure if French folks are offended by it incidently, maybe they don't care anymore. I probably would, even though I try hard to overcome feelings of patriotism, which I find yucky.