Dear M. de Villepin

What you'd better ask Père Noel for is a Franco-African Martin Luther King who speaks fluent hip-hop and gives good SMS. Be nice if he had a girlfriend/wife who was similarly equipped and had a sassy public image, but I realize you can't have everything. Not that I'd have a clue where to start with this, but my fellow Americans seem to think this is a jihad thing instead of a civil-rights thing.

Your (I hope) future neighbor,

Ed Ward