The French hate accents in general, as the only "correct" accent is Parisian: everything else is ridiculed or condescended to.
Having lived in Paris for several years in the 90s, I learned very quickly to lose any trace of anything even vaguely foreign in my voice. To this day, when a French tourist comes to the bar I work in, I perform my neat parlor trick of speaking near-perfect French (it's been nearly 18 years now since I've come back), much to their astonishment.
Contrary to the cliché that "all French people speak English but won't", my experience is that very few middle/working class folk actually do, and when they try, it's retched sounding and with no verbal comprehension skills whatsoever. Unlike much of the rest of the continent, France remains strangely uni-lingual.
Of course, as Americans are notoriously bad at learning languages and feel little compunction to change, their bitterness toward the French for engaging in the identical practice strikes me as just a bit disingenuous
