Whether it’s Women’s Soccer, DSK, Tennis, Bastille Day or a sponsored hash-tag – the web remains rife with anti-French prejudice and sentiment.
- Brian Moylan of Gawker.com thinks he can do better than Cracked.com with his weak list of “10 things we should send back to France”. We’re guessing Ryan Tate(1) was too busy.
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@LukeRussert (2) tweeted: Also in the midst of depressing #debt talks, go #USA women’s soccer! I don’t like losing to #France in anything. #FreedomFries
- Still over at twitter, a sponsored hash-tag (#wheninfrance) unleashed a flood of French Bashing
- Women’s Soccer provided plenty of fodder for the press and twitter
- After gargantuan win, U.S. can’t expect a French surrender
- Twitter was rife with surrender jokes over Women’s Soccer
- Some took offense at our replies: (1) (2) (3) (4)
- In other news: Les Bêtes Fromages by Llewellyn Hinkes – “After all, this is the selfsame empire that slaughtered its way through most of Europe under Napoleon and used its trans-national power to colonize Haiti, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Chad, Algiers, Tahiti, Polynesia, Togo, Madagascar, Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Congo, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, French Guiana, Morocco, Quebec, Eastern Canada, the American Midwest, and Louisiana.“
Meanwhile, part the French Consular Network (Miami – San Francisco – Nouvelle Orléans) is promoting the work of a group called “The French Will Never Forget“.
(1) Ryan Tate @ Gawker : “But [Angelina Jolie’s] lazy, arrogant French doctors will make her wait in agony for three more days so they can celebrate cutting off rich people’s heads like communists and probably also so they can fornicate with their unbathed mistresses, get drunk and fantasize about terrorism.”
(2) Luke Russert is a television and radio personality who has followed in the footsteps of his father, the late Tim Russert)
Some comments are simply stupid, some are rather ignorant bashing. Nothing more than the norm, except, Luke Russert should know better – a whole lot better.
I will point out that some of the above comments occured on the same day as 5 French soldiers died in Afganistan.
I will mention a rant on the soccer match at MSNBC:
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/07/15/lessons-learned-from-the-us-women%E2%80%99s-soccer-team/
Thanks for that Fred. It’s quite accurate, there is no country they love to beat more than France. Twitter is just a flood of anti-French garbage tonight.
Have any of you ever heard of the group called The French Will Never Forget ? Their tagline is “We cannot, do not, and will not ever forget the ultimate sacrifice American heroes made during the two World Wars to liberate France” – They are being promoted by the French Consular network of late. I vaguely remember the D-Day beach picture, other than that I never heard of them till they started showing up in Consulate news feeds.
The is a point where if a satire is sufficiently good and if one’s stupidity is sufficiently deep both become indistinguishable. I don’t know which one Mr. Moylan used, but it’s well beyond that point.
Concerning Gawker’s err, well, state of the art exemple of journalism of it’s kind, it seems that the comment are rather negatives towards the “journalist” rather than France itself, save for a few usuals loonies… I may be nevertheless a bit too optimistic about that, though. Concerning twitter : well it is too depressing to right now for me to comment, and anyway those people will follow any trend instead of thinking by themselves. I mean if tomorrow, all the anglosphere media, stars, even Murdoch and it’s crumbling empire, start to sing France’s praises, you could be certain that the tweet would be far sweeter for us. So tweeter isn’t relevant except for what is hic and nunc, no real deepness, and that’s all. The last article is rather interessant : it loathes France but at the same time it is mingled with in-depth and bizarre sense of envy even, one might say, admiration. This guy berates France for being an oppressive country, yet he can’t help but defend the fact that we were ruthlessly agressive and powerful, in the past. In fact this isn’t really surprising : if there is anything on Earth that Americans loves and respect, it is force and power. Have you ever considered how the conservatives, even the most right wing francophobic and anti government, are thrilled about the Old Régime (particularly Louis XIV), when they have notions about History of course ? This, for me, a smashing paradox.
There is a problem with this article. Thailand was never French.
Well that’s right, Jean-Paul ! This is a major problem with any french bashers is that very few have their facts rights, and their use of some pseudo french expressions, or what they think as french expressions, is making them a laughing stock for the french who fails to feel seriously insulted, even if that remain their main goal. But I do not think this invalidate what I’ve said earlier.
Turns out Japan beat the USA in women’s soccer. I guess the Japanese press will be rife with American Surrender jokes? NOT.
dans un autre exemple de francophobie massive
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/07/18/97001-20110718FILWWW00254-service-en-anglais-air-canada-condamne.php
La situation au Canada est très différent du French-Bashing auquel nous sommes confrontés dans le cadre de Miquelon.org. Dans ce cas c’est un rejet de l’activisme linguistique judiciaire d’un individu qui a financièrement profité de la situation. Je connais ce genre de personne pour les avoir fréquentés dans la communauté Francophone canadienne. Certains sont animés par une volonté inébranlable et sont persuadés que le pays qui se dit officiellement bilingue devrait l’être à tous les niveaux. Il y a en face de ceux-ci des francophobes aux paroles violentes qui représentent le dernier soubresaut des mouvances orangistes, protestantes et anti-Françaises des siècles passés.
Is this bashing, or is it commentary? You decide:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/vp/43838779#43838779
Well it’s historical fact weaved into a story and the points about the French police, the historical denial of France’s role (Pompidou et son ‘voile’), Vichy’s popularity vs. De Gaulle’s role before the last two years of the war are all accurate. However the last point about wanting to save the city of Paris from destruction in exchange for deporting Jews is utter bullshit. The two historical facts are not linked in the least. It’s not French Bashing with we deal with historical facts. It’s French Bashing when the facts are subsequently presented as uniquely French.
Hello my little French friends! I think you are getting a bit to wound up about the “10 things we should send back to France” article. It’s fairly harmless stuff really and is written in a fairly tongue-in-cheek style.
Poking fun at mopeds, bayonets, etc. is hardly virulent anti-French propaganda. I think this type of humour is very anglo-saxon and not really understood by the French.
At least there were no comments about the French military!
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