The smoking bans have barely been enacted in France and already several journalists this side of the Atlantic have wallowed in tired old stereotypes about the French “surrendering”. Our first example is Canada’s Times Colonist. Peter O’Neil and Megan Ainscow of CanWest News Service ran the following headline: “French surrender to smoking ban”. The worst offender however is Jon Bauer, Herald Writer in Everett Washington for the “Buzz Blog”. Bauer wrote a short blurb on the Heraldnet.com Website, resorting to the usual grab bag of French stereotypes.
“French surrender again: This time it’s their cigarettes. (…) Some French purists, especially those with pencil-thin mustaches and berets, complain that the ban will kill the atmosphere of the French cafe. Maybe so, but they’ll always have Jerry Lewis.”
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Please be polite and informative
Marc St Aubin du Cormier
The guy at Herald.net is so ensconsed in his prejudice that he doesn’t fail to mention… you name it, Jerry Lewis!
Someone ‘s got to tell him the war is over. At least with the US (until next time probably…)
“French surrender again:”
They are really obsessed with that shit.
It’s as if every time the US came up in a conservation we mentioned that americans used to lynch black people. That’s crazy.
The French surrendered in 1940 against the Germans like everyone else who fought the Germans in 1940.
Like the US would have surrendered if they hadn’t been protected by a freaking ocean and like Britiain if they hadn’t been protected by the Channel.
France was fighting wars and winning them, hence why France is the biggest western european country, hundreds of years before the US was created.
They should shut their fat mouths and stop spitting on the tombs of our forefathers lest they be reminded of their own humiliating defeat in Vietnam and soon Iraq.
Germany surrendered twice by the way. In WWI in WWII. Funny they never mention that that at the end of the war France was seated at the victor’s tables after much suffering and bloodshed, the likes of which americans can only envision in their worst nightmares.