French-Bashing Rolls Off France's Back

Reuters ^ | 2/10/03 | Tom Heneghan

[Mr. Mojo]

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the easy-going prime minister who rarely speaks about foreign policy, shot back last Friday at President Bush's "the game is over" statement by saying: "It's not a game, it's not over."

Wrong on both counts. Saddam is indeed playing a game, and it IS over. ....Speaking of over, how does irrelevance taste, Frogs?

[Lost Highway]

But the United States, which declared its independence in 1776 with a similarly universal view of human rights, has long since overtaken France on the world stage.

Say's it all, does'nt it?

[piasa]

"Bush crystallizes all that we hate in America," Pascal Bruckner, a usually pro-American essayist, wrote last year. .

Well, considering that ya'all just LOVED Clinton, I reckon that's we'll take that as a good sign.

[piasa]

....Speaking of over, how does irrelevance taste, Frogs?

Tastes like chicken. :oD

[stlrocket]

I love this cartoon:

[xzins]

If all this was meant to bully France into changing its mind, it's not working.

This isn't new and just for this Iraqi situation.

America has viewed France as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" for generations.

They are.

[kattracks]

Hey, if letting another country walk right in and take over didn't bother them, a little thing like being called a surrender monkey wouldn't either.

[xJones]

America has viewed France as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" for generations.

Not to mention that they are so ugly, one of their national heroes is a bell-ringing hunchback. :)

[MarkM]

The French revolution was a failed revolution. They said it was for liberty and the ended up with a military dictator ,Napoleon. The US had a revolution and ended up with the constitution and an ELECTED president, George Washington.

[N. Theknow]

Bashing the French does not beat them down

What? You expected them to get....fighting mad?

Fighting mad to a Frenchman is when he drops his rifle on his foot while putting his arms up.

[AdA$tra]

"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys,"

I guess this disproves the notion that the truth hurts.

[KC_Conspirator]

Its no surprise that the French owned Reuters (which will not call terrorists, "terrorists") is publishing article after article proclaiming how much the French and Germans hate America. They do however, fail to mention how unjhpopular those two countries are becoming for supporting a dictator.

[Billthedrill]

Americans suffered from a Francophobia as bad as the anti-Americanism that's politically correct in France.

What has changed, I think, is that in several countries the social class that came to fruition protesting the Vietnam war has come to formal power in government, and its adherents have come to regard the arch anti-Americanism rhetoric that is nearly ubiquitous in campuses and the media as normal. Certainly the Clinton administration was full of such people, similar in ideological bent to Fischer, Shroeder, and Chirac.

The lesson that is being learned the hard way at this point is the one that marginalized the Clinton followers - that everyone in the little world of intellectual pretense and social conformity that is the left feels one way about an issue or set of issues does not mean that such a stance will go unchallenged, and it is being challenged vigorously in a way that is unthinkable on campus. Hence the shock when vicious rhetoric that has become commonplace is answered by equally vicious rhetoric that is not - what it will take for the left to cope with this new environment is some serious soul-searching of which it hasn't recently been capable, that, or a precipitous loss of power and re-marginalization. The U.S. elections of 5 November 2002 should have warned of a significant social countercurrent in this regard, but was dismissed with the left's customary conspiratorial labeling or the assertion that it was restricted to the U.S. I do not think that is the case.

[wimpycat]

It's the diplomatic equivalent of water rolling off a duck's back. Bashing the French Americans does not beat them down -- au contraire, it only makes them more convinced they must be right.

"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys," "the rat that roared," "the petulant prima donna of realpolitik" War mongering unilateralist cowboys -- the epithets flung at France the U.S. by the U.S. French and British media can easily make a reader forget they're talking about America's oldest ally their saviors from Nazi Germany and the USSR.

If all this was meant to bully France the U.S. into changing its mind, it's not working.

There...switch a few things around and it reads just as accurately.

[KarlInOhio]

Francophobia

The irrational fear of the French? No, I don't think so.

What would be the suffix for "rational contempt"?

[TomSmedley]

"cheese eating surrender monkeys"

Give credit where credit is due -- this phrase was created by the brilliants folks who gave us "The Simpsons."

[Paraclete]

Is there something implicit in using the term "francophobia" to characterize American views, but the French view is "anti-American."

I, for one don't "fear" the French. However, they are an annoyance. France is just another fly on the horse's ass of world politics.

[rbmillerjr]

"...I...don't "fear" the French..."

Neither does Cub Scout Pack 21.

[americanbychoice]

I need a lesson in anatomy, someone help me pls?
If you don't have a Spine, do you still have a back ?