What other developed country would turn a pipe-smoking, mustachioed, leftover hippie sheep farmer obsessed with fighting globalisation into a national hero? When Jose Bove went on trial in July for vandalising a McDonald's restaurant, 50,000 people poured into the small central French town of Millau to defend "the Asterix of Larzac". He has appealed a three-month prison sentence.
The notoriety of Mr Bove, who has spent his entire adult life fighting the military, capitalism and US imperialism, is part of l'exception francaise - a distinctly French propensity for never doing anything the way everyone else does it.
This year was not a bad one for l'exception francaise. There was France's European Cup victory on July 2nd - proof that the 1998 World Cup winning streak hasn't died out. The following month, the star player of les bleus, Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants and a Muslim, was voted the most popular man in France. President Jacques Chirac came 22nd in the same IFOP-Journal du Dimanche annual poll, while Prime Minister Lionel Jospin came 44th.
French editorialists crowed about the "model of integration" and "symbol of multicultural France" represented by Zidane. Meanwhile, thousands of illegal immigrants continued to be housed in dirty, crowded detention centres that were last month denounced as a disgrace by a parliamentary commission of inquiry.
For French exceptionalism is usually two-edged. Fuel protests by fishermen, then lorry-drivers and farmers, enraged other Europeans who were blocked at French ports in late August and early September. When the French minister for European affairs, Pierre Moscovici, was asked what he would do to ensure European rules on freedom of movement were respected in the future, he replied gloatingly that the protests had spread to other EU countries. The important thing was not the law but that France started a trend and others followed.
Paris expressed even greater satisfaction at the end of November, when only a week after criticising "precipitous" French actions in the fight against BSE, the European Commission adopted the same measures. "Mad cow: Europe follows France", announced Le Figaro's banner headline. Le Monde singled out Irishman David Byrne, EU commissioner for health and consumer affairs, who "10 days ago criticised the French decision to ban meat and bonemeal and today rallies to it". It was not the first time that France had gone it alone, Le Monde noted, and not the first time "that she is criticised by the Commission and by her partners, and that her policies . . . are shown to be justified".
The French environment minister, Dominique Voynet, had the dubious privilege of leading the crusade at the climate change summit at The Hague - and taking the flak from Britain's deputy prime minister, John Prescott, when it ended in failure. Ms Voynet has often irritated French special interest groups, but the entire country closed ranks around her, convinced she was right to stand up to US destruction of the environment. A little anti-Americanism helps any French cause gain momentum.
In October, former French justice minister Robert Badinter, speaker of the National Assembly Raymond Forni and president of the European parliament Nicole Fontaine launched a campaign entitled "Together against the death penalty in the US". Earlier, the French EU presidency also appealed to Washington to end executions.
Execrable labour relations are one negative aspect of l'exception francaise. In July, 153 workers in a textile plant on the Franco-Belgian border protested against the closure of their factory by dumping 5,600 litres of sulphuric acid into a tributary of the Meuse and threatening to blow up their town. The then employment minister, Martine Aubry, said their "distress" had to be "taken into account". Far from being punished, the workers received sweetheart deals, and workers at three other sites around France took similar action.
Prof Charles Wyplosz, a Frenchman who teaches economics in Geneva, defines "indiscipline, instinctive rejection of the principles of the market economy and international arrogance" as particularly French traits. France's "international arrogance", he wrote in Liberation , "comes from our conviction of the exception francaise , this idea that, for mysterious reasons, we are better than others and have special rights". As a result, Wyplosz concluded, other countries are suspicious of France, even when she is being reasonable.