The Versailles bakery next door does great empanadas, fruit juices and Cuban coffee, which is an entirely different beast from the regular Americanfilter variety.
So it is especially enlightening to hear how he chose Ma Cocotte's furnishings, many of which are from the melting-pot period of the 1940s up to 1955, when Scandinavian and especially American influences began to filter into France.
The bad news for McCain is that the feared menace of Gustav forced him to lose a day in which he could get across his message, often without filter, to the American people.
This plays on two deep-seated worries about American popular culture: that it is hard to filter so that you just get the good bits (download Bob Dylan on to your son's iPod, and Snoop Dogg soon pops up as well) and that popular culture spawns social change.