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| French-bashing |
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credit
miquelon.org |
French-bashing favorite themes (this section is under construction)
| Theme |
Typical
French jokes |
- The
French always surrender, they are cowards, ....
|
- Buy a French rifle on e-bay
: never used, dropped once.
- The last time the French asked
for "more proof", it came marching into Paris under
a German flag (David Letterman)
- "For some reason, France
and chicken match together" (a commercial campaign by Subway
in 2004 about a new chicken sandwich)
- "French surrender again
: this time, it's their cigarettes...": Herald, Everett
WA (Jan.2008)
- Read my editorial about "surrender
jokes" and American
racism.
- More to come
|
- The
French are ungrateful, we saved them several times, ....
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- I
don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us
get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get
the Germans out of France (Jay Leno)
- Read about gratefulness
- More to come
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- Buy a Frenchman for what he's
worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth
- More to come
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- They put on perfume rather
than taking a bath (read
a letter about it)
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Some French-bashers
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| Jay Leno is an endless joker about the French
surrendering, smelly, etc.... According to miquelon.org he illustrated
in March 2008 "he is an insensitive patronizing buffoon"
when he asked actor Ryan Philippe about his first role as a gay
teen on daytime TV :"Can you give me your 'gayest look?'".
There is no difference between openly mocking sexual orientation,
racism and anti-French jokes. |
Bill O'Reilly does not like
France and the French. That is his absolute right. He loves to
express it on Fox News at any occasion. |
Richard Chesnoff
hates everything in France
and particularly the French. See examples.
Why did he choose to buy a house and retire in this hateful country? |
| DID
YOU KNOW THAT....? Many French-bashers live
in France and enjoy it ! For me, this is amazing. If you hate
a country and its inhabitants, how can you happily be among them
every day ? The classical (racist) joke is "it's a nice
country : too bad there are so many French people around".
What these French-bashers like in the country is not only the
climate but things that are somehow related to the French (the
way of life, the culture, etc...) but they hate to admit it !
For me, this is a shere example of racism or colonialism : you
enjoy the landscape, the food, etc... but people are just objects.
When you are invited to spend a week-end with friends in their
cabin on Lake Tahoe, do you say :"I loved their cabin :
too bad they were there"? Among many, the list of French-bashers
living in France includes Richard Chesnoff, Richard Perle, etc... |
..and a few examples...
- "Well,
there's nothing
funnier to me than the French. The
French Resistance is probably the biggest mythical joke that
ever existed. There were four guys in the French Resistance.
They couldn't hand over the Jewish people fast enough. Oh, please,
don't tell me about the French. The French have all sorts of
secret deals with Saddam and everybody else for two cents a liter.
It's an easy target."
- James Douglas Muir Leno, Interview with Nikki Finke, LA Weekly.
- Former Governor of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, and candidate to the Republican presidential
nomination of 2008, had the unfortunate luck of having his strategy
leaked to the Boston Globe in February 2007. How does
Mitt Romney plan to discredit Hillary Clinton? By - I kid you
not - making her sound French. Mind you, Republicans had some
measured success with making Kerry "look French" during
the last election. So why not capitalize on Anti-French sentiment for the 2008 bid?
- "The French are a smallish, monkey-looking
bunch and not dressed any
better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you
can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but
why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large
glasses of whiskey I don't know." --- P.J. O'Rourke (1989).
Note " smallish ", " monkey-looking "
and " little " cups of coffee as opposed to "large
" glasses of whiskey (" big " size for a virile
drink and " inside " which seems to be more manly than
"outside " which is " stylish " and presumably
effeminate).
|
- Gripes about the French in WWII : Gis' complaints
about the French were so numerous that in 1945 the Information
and Education Division of the U.S. Occupation Forces published
a booklet summarizing, and responding to " 112 Gripes about
the French ". (read
them). One is tempted to say " Only 112 ? ".
The list is an honest and compelling one. Some of the gripes
are petty ; all are deeply felt. The Gis list cannot be underestimated.
If still today, American tourists are surprised when the French
are " nice ", or " helpful " or " not
dirty ", it' s because since World War II and before, the
image of France and the French was largely formed by the unhappy
GI. His beefs on the French returned home with him and were passed
them on until they became part of giant Urban Legend whose flames
were fanned by Francophobes like Bill O'Reilly.
- What is the worst anti-French
site ? I propose I
hate France ! It is filled with hate, prejudices, racism
and contains everything you can imagine and more. It is vulgar
and not funny but I assume that its author is vulgar and not
funny at all. Americans often say that the French are anti-American
but I have never seen anything like that in France, by far....
- However : many criticisms of
the French are well-deserved : read my page about irksome
France !
- More to come...
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| DID
YOU KNOW THAT....? Among his (many) anti-French statements, Thomas
Friedman wrote "(In Europe) Poland is to France what Advil
is to pain in the neck." (IHT, Dec.29, 2003). He also said
"If France was a stock, I'd sell it". What people who
don't read French don't know is that every year there is a plethora
of new books by French people deploring the decline of France,
criticizing French politicians, analyzing and scrutinizing their
country and their countrymen in the most critical way. In truth,
the French don't need foreigners to bash the French. They're
quite good at doing it themselves.... |
The US press and French-bashing
|
France and the French, as seen by the
U.S. press : zero, except for
clichés (fashion,
food, strikes) or sensational happenings. Conversely, whether
you read about the USA as a superpower, an economic giant, or
a place where everyone's running amok with guns, you READ about
the U.S.A. every single day ! Among the most familiar themes
in the US press:
- A recurrent theme : the past glory of
France and the shameful Vichy
regime (but France has had many ups
and downs in its history!)
- The French think only of their
own interest (this is very funny : try to apply it to another
country...)
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| DID YOU KNOW THAT....? The first appearance
of the phrase "cheese eating surrender monkeys"
to refer to the French seems to have been in the New York Times
Book Review (Ted Widmer, "The Wayward Media", March
16, 2003), because the French government did not support the
(very intelligent...) war on Iraq. How elegant and classy.... |
Sources on French-bashing
|
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Harriet Welty Rochefort
writes articles and books about France and the French. Order her books :
- "French Toast, An American in Paris Celebrates
The Maddening Mysteries of the French",
St.Martin's Press, New York, 1999
- "French Fried, The Culinary Capers of An American
in Paris", St.Martin's Press,
New York, 2001
More on Harriet's books (excerpts, upcoming
events, testimonials, etc..)
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