At least in the United States I've always heard the conventional wisdom that French people are rude. And this was way before the Iraq war. Now, this opinion is being backed up more globally.

LONDON (AFP) - The French have been voted the world's most unfriendly nation by a landslide in a new British poll published. They were also voted the most boring and most ungenerous... A decisive 46 percent of the 6,000 people surveyed by travellers' website Where Are You Now (WAYN) said the French were the most unfriendly nation people on the planet... WAYN's French founder, Jerome Touze, told the papers he had been stunned by the thumping condemnation of his compatriots and sought to blame it on Gallic love-struck sulking. "I had no idea that the French would emerge as such an unfriendly country," he said... To add insult to injury, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph put the boot in on Saturday by saying in an editorial that the French stank. "The French may like to think that Chanel No 5 is their scent but we all know that garlic and stale Gitanes are much more representative."

This article has some more information about what the poll's respondents think about Germany, England, United States, Spain, and Italy.