¶ … large number of political socialization agents for an individual, including the media, the family, and school environments. As a child I can remember one particular example that involved all of these in helping me to form a political impression. What was most vivid to me as a child, however, was the impression of complete absurdity and unreality -- although I imagine that most people who still recall the events I am thinking about would probably agree with this assessment in 2015. In order to recall this political event from 2003-2004, however, it is only necessary to remember two words: "Freedom Fries." Anyone who recalls these two words will probably recall the episode that I am describing, but I would like to attempt to recount how these political impressions struck me as a small child. I know how I first recalled the term. It was in 2003 and French Fries were being served in the elementary school cafeteria. I was waiting in line and said to a friend, "I'll eat your French Fries if you don't want them" or something similar. And a boy ahead of us in line said, "Don't call them that." I said "Why not?" And he said "You're supposed to call them Freedom Fries?" My friend and I just laughed like he was crazy and he said, angrily, "I'm serious. You just haven't heard about it yet."

When I got home from school I asked my parents if it was true that we were not supposed to call French Fries "French Fries" anymore. My parents apparently did know what I was talking about, and they explained that America wanted to invade a country called Iraq, and America wanted other countries to be allies and take part in the invasion. One of the countries that was asked to join the invasion was France, but France said they did not think the invasion was a good idea. For that reason, some people in America thought that the French were cowardly, and that we should stop using the word "French" in words like French Fries or French Toast. I remember very clearly also something that I thought during this conversation with my parents, which was that I had heard the idea of kissing with your tongue -- which was still a very taboo subject in elementary school -- referred to as "French Kissing" and I remember in my child mind I thought "Are we supposed to call that Freedom Kissing now? I can't ask my parents because I don't want them to know that I know what French Kissing is." These strange feelings of embarrassment accompanied my overall sense that something really strange was happening. An elementary school student may not know much about American history yet, but I do remember thinking about having learned that the French were America's allies during the American Revolution, and I had learned about the Statue of Liberty for a school project. This...

If there was another country in my imagination that resembled America in terms of their ideas of political freedom, it was France. Now suddenly France was supposed to be a country that "hated our freedoms"? I put this last phrase in quotation marks because it is a phrase that was in circulation around this same time -- in 2003 and 2004 -- as a way of describing Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. America's enemies, particularly those who were Muslim, were motivated because they "hated our freedoms." But the French didn't "hate our freedoms" did they? They just did not think that invading Iraq was a good idea.
I remember the issue of "Freedom Fries" puzzled me because I did not want to refer to French Fries that way. I thought it was ridiculous and I know I asked my parents "do we have to call them that?" and they said no, we could still call them French Fries. I believe my parents pointed out that McDonald's and Burger King were not calling them Freedom Fries: the menu still said "French Fries" at McDonald's. I do think that my parents explained that the name had been changed on the menu in the cafeterias on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., which apparently was the actual event that started this brief strange moment in America's political socialization environment. They were familiar with the news story, but they also explained that the people who were doing this watched another news channel from the one that my parents watched. I am pretty sure this was my first exposure to the idea of the Fox News Channel, and to the idea that what is broadcast on Fox News can sometimes be wildly different from what is broadcast on CNN or MSNBC or the nightly news. I remember getting the distinct impression from my parents' explanation that the boy in the cafeteria who said "Freedom Fries" had parents who watched a different news channel. This was somewhat shocking to me because I still believed that the news was the news -- it was a list of facts that happened every day -- and I didn't really know what the difference was when you picked a channel. But this made a good explanation for me of what happened in the cafeteria. The boy who said "Freedom Fries" had parents who watched the wrong television network, and they got the wrong facts. They thought France was somehow an enemy of America -- whereas if they had learned as much about the Statue of Liberty as I had learned, they would know that France was actually in favor of freedom and an American ally. They just didn't think we should invade Iraq, and I think I began to notice that there were a large number of Americans who did not think we should invade Iraq either. My parents, however, did not have strong opinions about the war --…