French-bashing  credit miquelon.org

 French-bashing favorite themes    
 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, ....
  •  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
  •  They are conceited
  • Buy a Frenchman for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth
  • More to come
  •  They are dirty
  •  They put on perfume rather than taking a bath (read a letter about it)
  •  More to come
 Some of the messages sent to the webmaster illustrate some of the stereotypes above.
 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?

 ..and a few examples...   The US press and French-bashing
  • "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).
  • Says Franck Costigiola (Univ.of Rhode Island, Cahiers de l'IHTP N°28, 1994 ) : "...when they describe France, Americans always use words used to describe a fickle woman : emotive , hypersensitive, hysterical, frivolous, unrealistic, unrestrained, too much attracted toward food, drink, sex and love", as opposed to the masculine virtues of the Americans : "...reasonable, calm, pragmatic, efficient and wise..."
 

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:

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...

  • 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...
 

 

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....

 Sources on French-bashing    
  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....
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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

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