firstsgtmike
07-24-03, 02:14 AM
Let's Not Pardon the French
Thursday, July 24, 2003
By Julia Gorin
Fox News
As many sound and revealing theories as have been proposed over the past year to explain France's confounding geopolitical behavior, they've all missed something fundamental.
The country's less than Western, less than ally-like stances would have seemed less baffling if we hadn't started from a wrong premise: Namely, that France is a member of the civilized world.
Savages naturally gravitate toward savages. And they facilitate savagery everywhere while impeding nations that seek to minimize it.
How else to explain France's defiant feting and support of brutal leadership, as in Zimbabwe and Iraq -- even helping Iraqi officials escape to Cuba, according to a Geostrategy-Direct intelligence brief? Whatever economic benefits there may have been to France in its oil, arms and nuclear dealings with the Hussein government, they were secondary to the kinship France apparently felt for its bloodthirsty system.
Why else would an old couple get beat up for protesting the Saddam Hussein posters and Iraqi flags that were a staple of French anti-war rallies, where young Jews were clobbered with iron bars? How else to explain French sympathy for the more barbaric of the two Semitic cousins, not to mention for Islamic rebels everywhere, most recently in the Ivory Coast? Sympathy that has been enabling acts of violence against the civilly more constructive cousin -- so numerous as to leave the rest of Europe struggling to keep pace. Fittingly, France -- where it is unsafe for a Jew to wear a skullcap -- has been the European nation of choice for Muslim immigration, now six million strong there, and for Jewish emigration.
Indeed, there should be no mystery surrounding France's inability to forgive America for rescuing it from the Gestapo more than half a century ago. Today France is gleeful about its friendship with Germany, recently celebrating 40 years of German-French postwar reconciliation. Franco-German reunification has taken the form of standing together on everything from the Iraq war to forcing economy-crippling policies on current and future EU members.
France has a natural affinity for any and all of the globe's uncivilized elements. The more primitive, the better to define one's own deviancy down -- a deviancy that once prompted Mark Twain to observe, "In certain public indecencies the difference between a dog & a Frenchman is not perceptible." Which would explain why dogs are allowed in restaurants in France.
But then how does one account for all the charming, elegant French culture -- the art, the wine, the cheese, the language, the pastries -- those qualities that have made France what to the world appears to be a bulwark of civilization? My uncle, an Israeli composer, answered that question when he invited my husband and me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I answered: "We're low-class. We don't go to museums."
He replied: "We're also low-class. That's why we go to museums."
Connoisseurship is indeed a brilliant cloak for depravity: Don a lofty external disguise to mask a degraded internal character. Let's recall that the most dehumanizing event in modern history, the Holocaust -- with its massacres and incinerations -- was set to classical music and fine dining. Similarly, anything the French do is considered artful, including inventing the guillotine, which turned "beheading into an art form," as an ad for a guillotine-style cigar cutter read in a Sky Mall catalogue.
The guillotine inventors, meanwhile, perpetually pride themselves in having abolished the "barbaric" death penalty. Kill their killers they won't, but handing over 10,000 citizens for the gas chambers was never an issue.
The French even managed to innovate in animal cruelty. The popular dish Foie Grois is liver from a goose that has been mechanically force-fed to make its liver work overtime and become soft and fatty. Last April, a top Paris restaurant celebrated its one-millionth 8-week-old duckling to be strangled and cooked in cognac and its own blood, then served with a souvenir numbered tag. Its owner reportedly remarked, "If for the chef each dish is a work of art, for me, it's ... the return of a happy moment. ... There is nothing more serious than pleasure."
Of all the contemporary diplomats, dignitaries and official ministers of the world, it was dashing French Foreign Affairs Minister Dominique de Villepin who refused to answer the question of whom he would rather see win the war -- America or Iraq -- but who published an 800-page book of poetry. This poet calls Hamas a vital player in any Middle East peace process.
Always on the opposing side of civilization and on the cutting edge of degenerateness, the French are pioneers in decadence. What was the first place child rapist Roman Polanski thought to go where he could thrive in exile? France, of course, where art redeems all. And who better to land the gig promoting France and French products than Polanski's kindred spirit here, Woody Allen? Such men have called America "puritanical." Which must be the French understanding of the word "moral."
Whenever the American conscience wrestles with the introduction into our society of some risqué new practice, procedure or product -- such as lowering the legal age of consent, installing condom machines in schools, approving RU-486 and dispensing it in schools -- proponents always reason, "The French have been doing it for years!"
Yet in Paris, where they speak in soft tones and posture demurely, they bristle when the gregarious, high-decibel American approaches with a question, and pretend they don't understand English.
During his stay in Paris, journalist Andrew Baker (search) witnessed a cyclist stop to beat an octogenarian pedestrian unconscious after the latter threw a baguette at his head for cutting him off. According to Baker's 2000 New York Press article about his experience, the event was typical of a Paris day.
Now we know why in America, when someone accidentally uses a four-letter word in the presence of a child, he or she hastily adds, "Pardon my French."
Thursday, July 24, 2003
By Julia Gorin
Fox News
As many sound and revealing theories as have been proposed over the past year to explain France's confounding geopolitical behavior, they've all missed something fundamental.
The country's less than Western, less than ally-like stances would have seemed less baffling if we hadn't started from a wrong premise: Namely, that France is a member of the civilized world.
Savages naturally gravitate toward savages. And they facilitate savagery everywhere while impeding nations that seek to minimize it.
How else to explain France's defiant feting and support of brutal leadership, as in Zimbabwe and Iraq -- even helping Iraqi officials escape to Cuba, according to a Geostrategy-Direct intelligence brief? Whatever economic benefits there may have been to France in its oil, arms and nuclear dealings with the Hussein government, they were secondary to the kinship France apparently felt for its bloodthirsty system.
Why else would an old couple get beat up for protesting the Saddam Hussein posters and Iraqi flags that were a staple of French anti-war rallies, where young Jews were clobbered with iron bars? How else to explain French sympathy for the more barbaric of the two Semitic cousins, not to mention for Islamic rebels everywhere, most recently in the Ivory Coast? Sympathy that has been enabling acts of violence against the civilly more constructive cousin -- so numerous as to leave the rest of Europe struggling to keep pace. Fittingly, France -- where it is unsafe for a Jew to wear a skullcap -- has been the European nation of choice for Muslim immigration, now six million strong there, and for Jewish emigration.
Indeed, there should be no mystery surrounding France's inability to forgive America for rescuing it from the Gestapo more than half a century ago. Today France is gleeful about its friendship with Germany, recently celebrating 40 years of German-French postwar reconciliation. Franco-German reunification has taken the form of standing together on everything from the Iraq war to forcing economy-crippling policies on current and future EU members.
France has a natural affinity for any and all of the globe's uncivilized elements. The more primitive, the better to define one's own deviancy down -- a deviancy that once prompted Mark Twain to observe, "In certain public indecencies the difference between a dog & a Frenchman is not perceptible." Which would explain why dogs are allowed in restaurants in France.
But then how does one account for all the charming, elegant French culture -- the art, the wine, the cheese, the language, the pastries -- those qualities that have made France what to the world appears to be a bulwark of civilization? My uncle, an Israeli composer, answered that question when he invited my husband and me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I answered: "We're low-class. We don't go to museums."
He replied: "We're also low-class. That's why we go to museums."
Connoisseurship is indeed a brilliant cloak for depravity: Don a lofty external disguise to mask a degraded internal character. Let's recall that the most dehumanizing event in modern history, the Holocaust -- with its massacres and incinerations -- was set to classical music and fine dining. Similarly, anything the French do is considered artful, including inventing the guillotine, which turned "beheading into an art form," as an ad for a guillotine-style cigar cutter read in a Sky Mall catalogue.
The guillotine inventors, meanwhile, perpetually pride themselves in having abolished the "barbaric" death penalty. Kill their killers they won't, but handing over 10,000 citizens for the gas chambers was never an issue.
The French even managed to innovate in animal cruelty. The popular dish Foie Grois is liver from a goose that has been mechanically force-fed to make its liver work overtime and become soft and fatty. Last April, a top Paris restaurant celebrated its one-millionth 8-week-old duckling to be strangled and cooked in cognac and its own blood, then served with a souvenir numbered tag. Its owner reportedly remarked, "If for the chef each dish is a work of art, for me, it's ... the return of a happy moment. ... There is nothing more serious than pleasure."
Of all the contemporary diplomats, dignitaries and official ministers of the world, it was dashing French Foreign Affairs Minister Dominique de Villepin who refused to answer the question of whom he would rather see win the war -- America or Iraq -- but who published an 800-page book of poetry. This poet calls Hamas a vital player in any Middle East peace process.
Always on the opposing side of civilization and on the cutting edge of degenerateness, the French are pioneers in decadence. What was the first place child rapist Roman Polanski thought to go where he could thrive in exile? France, of course, where art redeems all. And who better to land the gig promoting France and French products than Polanski's kindred spirit here, Woody Allen? Such men have called America "puritanical." Which must be the French understanding of the word "moral."
Whenever the American conscience wrestles with the introduction into our society of some risqué new practice, procedure or product -- such as lowering the legal age of consent, installing condom machines in schools, approving RU-486 and dispensing it in schools -- proponents always reason, "The French have been doing it for years!"
Yet in Paris, where they speak in soft tones and posture demurely, they bristle when the gregarious, high-decibel American approaches with a question, and pretend they don't understand English.
During his stay in Paris, journalist Andrew Baker (search) witnessed a cyclist stop to beat an octogenarian pedestrian unconscious after the latter threw a baguette at his head for cutting him off. According to Baker's 2000 New York Press article about his experience, the event was typical of a Paris day.
Now we know why in America, when someone accidentally uses a four-letter word in the presence of a child, he or she hastily adds, "Pardon my French."