February 21, 2003
America in the Days of George the Silly Now we are hearing a lot of rabid talk about how Americans should boycott all things French. This would mean things like Champagne, Burgundy, Chablis, Bourdeaux, Brie, Cognac, foie gras, Laetitia Casta, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Zola, Balzac, Gauguin, Renoir, Cezanne, Debussey, Ravel, Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean Lafite, Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Cajun music, Cajun cuisine, French pastries, croissants, french fries, Evian water, and hundreds of thousands of other wonderful things. This shows just how crazy Americans -- some Americans -- are getting.
I'm all for making sacrifices for one's country. That's fine, but let's not get into self-flagellation. That is ridiculous.
And all this talk I'm hearing about how "they owe us their freedom; they would be a colony of Germany if it weren't for us," because of World War II, is some of the most absurd logic I've ever heard.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and that mob never even fought for their country when they had the chance in the Vietnam era. They are certainly not worthy of credit for winning World War II. There are very few Americans alive who can be given any credit for helping the French in World War II. And the ones I've talked to more often than not are firmly against this war.
There would have been no United States in the 1940s if there had been no France in the 1770s to help the rag-tag colonists beat off the British army. All that stuff is dopey talk. It's selective logic in the extreme.
In the 1940s, the US was fighting against fascism, against aggression, pre-emptive war, and the nonsensical pretexts for war of Adolf Hitler. This time all that is turned around.
All those arguments against the French fall apart when you consider that the Germans are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them against US aggression. So let's just drop all that crap and get real. Let's come back to the 21st century.
And for those of us who oppose the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Cheney plan for World Domination, buy French! (And German, and Russian, and Chinese.)