please stop bashing France

"Pierre-Henri Baras" wrote:

Evidence of what??? French bashing??? Are you kidding me???

Monday february 10th 2003 National Post article. Want me to give extracts of
it?

Yes. National Post? Never heard of it. Oh, wait - that's a *Canadian*
paper... despite rumors to the contrary, Canada is not a part of the
United States.

Sunday feb 9th. Thomas Friedman article in the NY Times.

Thomas Friedman is an op-ed writer.

A summary:

"ABSTRACT - Thomas L Friedman Op-Ed column on his wish that France
could be voted off UN Security Council and replaced by India, world's
biggest democracy and one that has not grown 'silly' trying to
differentiate itself from America; finds French position on Iraq utterly
incoherent and warns that only way to force Saddam Hussein into
compliance without war is for whole world to line up against his
misbehavior (M)"

Sounds good. Why *is* France a permanent member of the Security
Council? It's not like they're important or anything.

the previous week in the NY Times Geoffrey Nunberg wrote a "French bashing
dictionnary".

Actually, not. "A Lexicon of Francophobia, From Emerson to Fox TV." It
sums up a few phrases in use by some editorialists and the like, but
it's hardly a "dictionary," and spends more time on the French-English
disputes of the last 600 years or so.

George Will's articles in the Washington Post.

Editorials. Once again, not "front page articles."

Feb 6th Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox asking people to email the French Embasy
with insults.

Considering the French actions about that time, that's a fairly mild
response.

Feb 10th the Wall Street Journal called Jacques Chirac a "bald Joan of Arc
travestite" and a pygme.

Yet another editorial. And not too far off the mark, if you actually
read the piece.

So these editorial comments by folks count a "front page news" to you?

If so, you need to go back and read some of the editorials and editorial
cartoons in Le Monde, including all of the "bloof for oil" bits.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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