| Philippe Roger, who teaches at the École des Hautes Études
It's probably a chain, like those Kumon Math Centers. The French all send their kids to special schools where they learn haughty attitudes. We should have known. |
Posted on 02/16/2003 4:32:38 PM PST by MadIvan
Think how you would feel if on a couple of occasions, you were about to get beat up by the schoolyard bully, and the quarterback of the football team rescues you. After a couple of times, you may begin to feel quite "impotent"--and may grow to resent your "hero" for rescuing you. You might become like France--an ungrateful, self-loathing, jealous, angry little twerp. That's how I always viewed France as acting like.
And that is why you are irrelevant...
Michealangelo, da Vinci, Reubens, Rembrandt, Botticelli, etc. WERE NOT FRENCH!
The French just happened to grab those paintings when they had lots of cash.
Yes, I know there were some great French painters, but they didn't corner the market on artistic expression.
If I were a pygmy I'd sue for slander. One can respect pygmies.
On the other hand, fellatio in the Oval Office is tres chic, so . . . je ne sais quoi!
Well of course. For France, a country that has produced just about every decadent thing that ails society, good and evil are categories that make them feel "ill at ease." The French have no redeeming value. They are a deadweight that America and Great Britian have had to lug around for too long.
I would love to see this country withdraw from any organization (UN/NATO/WTO)that allows France to remain a member. I think we are going to find out that France has been an actual ally of Saddam Hussein. If so, France should be placed on the list of countries that support terrorism. It would not bother me one bit to bomb Paris.
Barbara Walters did a piece on Saddam's son Uday on 20/20 Friday night. Again the links to France from Iraq were very interesting:
A double of Uday who wore the same French suits and aftershave as his boss to fool potential attackers.
In Paris a former French official told 20/20 of an equally bizarre, more recent account allegedly involving Odai and a delegation of French college students in 2000.
Two of the students, a man and a woman, told French authorities that Odai invited them to a party in their honor at a Baghdad hotel. But when they got to Odai's room, they say three of his bodyguards forced them at gunpoint to have sex with each other while being taped on video.
According to Alexis Debat, who was a desk officer at the French Ministry of Defense at the time, the French government concluded there was little they could do about it. "I mean, after all, this is Saddam Hussein's son," said Debat, who is now a consultant for ABCNEWS.
Full story: 20/20 Profile of Uday Hussein
What the heck are the French doing sending exchange students to Iraq?!
And then the NATO decision that I loved today:
NATO broke a monthlong impasse Sunday over preparations in case of war in Iraq, reaffirming alliance solidarity while supporting U.N. efforts for a peaceful solution.
"Alliance solidarity has prevailed," NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said. "We have been able collectively to overcome the impasse."
After France was shut out of the room, two other holdouts Germany and Belgium dropped their objections to starting the planning for Turkey's defense immediately, NATO officials said.
link: NATO Breaks Month-Long Impasse on Iraq
Way to go Mr. Robertson! May the rest of the world follow your lead and shut out the French. I feel the time has come to call an enemy an enemy. France is in my opinion an enemy and a backer of world terrorism.
If only we cared.
"There was an incredible outpouring after 9/11, the like of which I have never seen among French people," she says. "But the Bush administration never took advantage of it… I've been struck by their total inability to do anything about anti-Americanism, to the point where I wonder whether they really want to."
Yup, we never took advantage of it. Meanwhile it was not too long after this 'incredible outpouring' the the Frogs made a best seller out of a book where the author claimed the Pentagon was never hit by a plane and the terrorist attacks were carried out by right wingers within our government.
Not to mention an Iraqi leader waging a JIHAD against America!
So far, I haven't heard the French say anything to lessen my bad opinion of them. They need to just shut up.
| Philippe Roger, who teaches at the École des Hautes Études
It's probably a chain, like those Kumon Math Centers. The French all send their kids to special schools where they learn haughty attitudes. We should have known. |
...Ever since, the French have seen the US as a potential Utopia, he says, and have reacted to its failure to conform with their desires with an exasperation that has often shaded into something like hatred...
The information about our failuresis conveyed to the French elite and general population through the tightly focused lens of the American Elite--a Class who despises Americans even more than the French do---and for the same reason. Our failure to conform to their utopian projections and, worse, the failure to hate ourselves as much as their conscience dictates we should.
The role of American political and cultural elites in training the French to dislike us properly cannot be overestimated. The most obvious example is their view of our race relations. The French pride themsleves on their nuanced approach to complex problems but when it come to American racism, their view is stricty black-and-white, broad brush cartoons.
Common Americans have no control over most of their institutions and therfore cannot speak to the world in their own voices. That is not the fault of the French.
The fault, dear Americans, is not in the frogs but in ourselves that we are misunderstood---to paraphrase some Limey scribbler....
It's good training for becoming snotty waiters!
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École... that's a "school," right? So they actually have a school for haughty attitudes? Am I reading that right? My French is limited, but that sure is what it looks like to me.