BRUSH-OFF.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 12-APR-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

A year ago, when the French President, Jacques Chirac, declared that France would veto a United Nations resolution in favor of war against Iraq, "whatever the circumstances," he probably did not consider the potential collateral damage it might do to French bachelors overseas.

But this circumstance was of grave concern to many Manhattan-based French businessmen. And so, on March 18, 2003--the day before the United States started bombing Iraq--Pierre Battu, a textile importer with the compact proportions and purposeful intensity of a Jack Russell terrier, decided to act in self-defense. He threw a cocktail party for French expatriates and the Americans who liked them. Fifty people turned up, mostly men; the...

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