[ Previous entry: "More bad news..." ] [Main Index] [ Next entry: "I would like to thank the following people..." ]
|
03/10/2004 Entry: "Not playing nice with the neighbors"
Sometimes it just startles me how Patriocentric some people are. I mean, I love the US of A and all, but I do realize that there are other countries out there with their own problems, agendas, and sense of pride. A long time ago, I used to know a girl named Anne. Anne was a common story from kids in this area: American citizen growing up overseas. Whether their parents were military, with the State Department, or the hushed "other," people like Anne came back to the States as a teen, not really fitting in anywhere. Too American to be European, too European to be American. Anne told me something once about France. "The French don't hate you because you're an American," she said from experience, "they just hate rude people who come to their country, complain, and try and draw attention to themselves while practically damning a Parisian for not speaking fluent English." She, like many of the kids I grew up with, "understood France." Maybe not like a true francophile, but at least she could go to France, behave herself, and make lots of friends. My mother was the same way. She left a trail of friends all over Europe while she and my father lived there. Including Paris. Knowing this made me a whiz at the International Help Desk years ago. Bush embarrasses me. When I go back to Sweden, I'll never hear the end of it.
|
The Peanut Gallery responds with: 1 Comment
|
B-b-b-but, France is supposed to be the dwelling place of all things DoublePlusUnGood! I mean, don't they watch movies we don't understand, and drink wine and stuff? But seriously, watching folks in the US foam at the mouth over France while the J. Robert Oppenheimer of Pakistan was peddling nuclear secrets left and right would be amusing if it wasn't a sign that the War on Terror is being waged solely by propaganda and not by efforts that might actually keep the mad bombers of the world acting out their plans, as folks in downtown Madrid now realize. Read up on what the ISI (Pakistan's inteligence agency) has been doing for the past 15 years, it'll curl your hair. If they were actually cooperating with the US we would have had Bin Laden 2 years ago. What gets me about the whole "France Sucks!" meme is the anti-intellectual subtext to it. Listen to a Fox News Culture Warrior on a tear about all things Francophonic, and it seems to be less about France and more about a mythical land where effete people who read and think about a situation, and heavily subsidize icky cultural stuff. 'cause sitting and thinking bad. I mean, those French people don't like EuroDisney! That means they're a bunch of meanies that hate Mickey Mouse!!! No mention at all of the fact that Roland Barthes, a philosopher that developed the concept of semiotics, got his early ideas of the subject from watching professional wrestling... Posted by Malle Babbe @ 03/12/2004 09:12 AM EST |
