PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. -- Call it French resistance. A number of Americans are not happy with France's refusal to back the U.S. policy on Iraq and there is a noticeable anti-French backlash in South Florida.

In Palm Beach County one restaurant owner dumped his French wine in the street in protest (pictured, right).

Across town, Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson, 75, said he would seek to block a subsidiary of the French company Vivendi Environmental from getting a $25 million government contract to build a sludge treatment plant.

"France's attitude toward the United States is deplorable. I don't want to have any French companies earning dollars from American interests," Aaronson said. "We've left thousands of our men and women over in France, underground ... It's quite possible that if we didn't send our troops there, the French people would all be speaking German."

Aaronson also said he will stop showing French films at the film festival he founded.

French cafe owner Olivier Corre (pictured, below left) says people need to remain open-minded.

"Even if there's friction with France, you know, you don't have to stop buying French wine. I mean even when I was living in France, you know, it happened in the past that there was some friction with America. I never stopped buying American products because of that," Corre said.

There are believed to be as many as 30,000 French citizens who live in South Florida. Most of them live in Coral Gables and other parts of Miami-Dade County.

In Beaufort, N.C., one restaurant owner took french fries off his menu and replaced them with "freedom fries," to reflect his displeasure with France's opposition to the war.

A Las Vegas radio station on Tuesday used an armored vehicle to crush photographs of French President Jacques Chirac, photocopies of the French flag, a Paris travel guide, bottles of wine and a loaf of French bread.

Natalie Loiseau, spokeswoman for the French Embassy in Washington, said the barbs go beyond the dispute over Iraq.

"There is kind of a tradition of French bashing here," she said Wednesday. "There is a kind of rivalry. It has lasted for years, and for centuries, really."

Mark Twain joked in a 1879 journal that "There is nothing lower than the human race except the French."

It's not usually something the French take too seriously.

Even this week, Loiseau said the embassy hadn't received any complaints from French citizens living in the United States about harassment or abuse at the hands of Americans.

And what rivalry exists, she said, is clearly mutual. The French have long lambasted American cultural influence in Europe, decrying everything from American fast food, to the longer U.S. work week, to the pushy attitude of American tourists.

"There is also a tradition of American-bashing in France, yes," Loiseau said. "If you read the press on either side of the Atlantic, you would think we were ready to go to war with each other. Obviously, that is not the case. We are still good friends."

Still, the sniping seems to have taken a turn for the worse.

A Gallup poll in early February found a nearly 20-point drop in the percentage of Americans who think favorably of France. About 59 percent of Americans view France favorably, while 33 percent have an unfavorable view, Gallup said.

Strangely, another American ally resistant to war, Germany, doesn't seem to have inspired the same level of disdain. Some 71 percent of Americans thought favorably of Germany, while only 21 percent viewed it unfavorably.

"It's a little different," explained state Rep. Stephen Barrar, of Upper Chinchester, who asked the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board last week to bar sales of French wine.

The United States has long viewed itself as Europe's great protector, he said, first from fascism in the 1940s, then from communism during the Cold War.

"For 60 years, America has protected France," Barrar said. "And we're tired of their anti-American attitude."