The open season on Washington has even spread to the foreign diplomatic corps. Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, has said, in the words of the Financial Times, that Washington “is mostly about ‘PR’” and that he feels like a prisoner in the city. The ambassador also mocked Washington’s men and the city’s mores. He feels, in the FT’s words, that in D.C. “men wear suits three sizes too large for them, and dinners always start too early. Socializing with Washington’s politicians, journalists and ‘think-tankers’ takes more out of him than bargaining with adversaries.”

Surely this is a new kind of bold diplo-speak. But boldness among diplomats seems somehow permissible when referring to “Washington.” What would happen if the U.S. ambassador to France publicly referred to Paris as a frivolous, parochial, and self-absorbed city? It is easy to imagine Le Monde’s headline and the French government’s reaction. Instead, the full-page disdain of the French ambassador in Washington had no repercussions at all. Why would it? After all, badmouthing Washington seems to be the norm among the city’s residents; there was nothing special or newsy in Araud’s contempt.

He complains that he feels asphyxiated by the city’s rarefied atmosphere. This is surprising given that Washington is among the American cities with the most parkland as a percentage of its area, and one of the country’s top bike-friendly cities. A stroll or a bike ride in one of the magnificent parks next to his residence might help the ambassador get some air.

But maybe what the French diplomat was really complaining about was a sort of Washington-induced intellectual suffocation. That too is surprising; for that, the city offers many world-class remedies. A visit to the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, or to one of the many dozens of museums in the city can surely open one’s mind. Washington has the biggest museum complex in the world (which in 2014 was visited by three times as many people as the Louvre) and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts offers weekly opera, ballet, and music productions of international caliber. To quench any thirst he may have for ideas and debates, Arnaud could participate in one of the dozens of talks, conferences, and panel discussions held daily at the 393 think tanks that are just minutes away from his embassy (no other city in the world has this many such institutions). Or he could talk with any number of experts at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or any other of the many international organizations headquartered in the U.S. capital. In fact, Araud says that he already taps into the enormous intellectual capital of the city, often convening intellectuals and notable authors to his residence for wide-ranging discussions. Unfortunately, his salon conversations don’t seem to fulfill his needs for intellectual stimulation. But that is not because Washington is a stifling intellectual desert. To the contrary, the city has one of the world’s largest concentrations of scientists and experts in an incredibly broad range of disciplines.