Le Big Mac

The New York Times has an article on McDonald's operations in France. This part might raise some eyebrows:

But even as protesters sought to cast McDonald's as the embodiment of all that is wrong with fast food and American culture, the French never stopped eating its hamburgers. Indeed, for all the attacks on the company, McDonald's operating profit in France last year was second only to that of McDonald's in the United States.

The article concludes with an astute comment from the former head of McDonald's France:

And the French social model? "It's no longer a model," he said, "if you have three million people unemployed."

Indeed.