A familiar sight in European airports is a certain American, he usually
wears a floral shirt that is long overdue for a wash, he has a camera
hanging around his neck, he is always red and perspiring profusely, he
almost always has a wife called Martha who sits at least 200 ft away
from him, and he holds very loud conversations with her, with no regard
to the other passengers who have the misfortune to be seated between
them.

The conversations, while different, are similar, depending on the
airport that they are in.
They usually start off complaining about the inefficiency of whatever -
followed by -
Goddam warm English beer, bunch of French fags, No wonder the
Germans lost the friggin war, damn Italians (except he says eyetallianns
similar to eyerackies and eyeranians), bunch of Greek assholes,
Friggin Turks - what do they know, Egyptians bunch of robbing *******s
etc. etc. etc.

And you know what? most of the people who meet this asshole think that
that is what Americans are like. They dont even realize that there are
another 300 Americans in the airport that they are not even aware of
because they are behaving like reasonable human beings The ones that are
actually representative of your Nation! (The really bright ones are even
disguised as Canadians but thats another thread

So I suggest to you,that never having even been to France, but sitting
there passing judgement from Iowa, that you are only seeing the French
equivelant of the asshole with the wife called Martha.
Unless of course, in Iowa they are made to wear signs pointing out their
Frenchness. Otherwise, unless they attract your attention in some way,
how would you even know that they were French?

And I can tell you that at one time, I also thought that most Americans
were like this character - because that was all that I ever saw.

Now - many of my best friends are Americans, and many of them are French,
and I personally have always considered discrimination against
Americans, French, Egyptians, Tibetan, whatever - to be racism. And I
know that the strict dictionary definition of this is not so - for
racism you need to be anti black, anti white, anti whatever - and you
jumped up - technically correctly, stating that I called you a racist
and that you weren't. If I were being technically correct of course, I
would have called you a bigot. Speaking for myself I think I would
prefer to be called a racist than a bigot.
But is either description correct - or maybe - just maybe - sitting
there in your hotel lobby in Iowa - you only ever meet the French
equivelant of the American with the wife called Martha - and that is
what you based you opinion on.

Is that possible?

Tony

In article aTE8e.23567$8Z6.2699@attbi_s21,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

You speak with the wisdom of a cosmopolitan traveler. I suspect that
Mr. Honeck has never stepped foot in France or anywhere else in
Europe, else how can his provincial attitude be explained?

I own and operate a hotel in a city that is home to a world-class
university, with 35,000 under- and post-graduate students, and 15,000
faculty members and staff.

As such, I am fortunate to interact with people from all over the world on a
daily basis.

As you can see, I needn't fly to France, as the world comes to me.

:-)




--

Tony Roberts
PP-ASEL
VFR OTT
Night
Cessna 172H C-GICE