Francofile

"Faux" News

My faithful readers know that one of the purposes of this blog is to keep tabs on France-bashing in its subtle and not-so-subtle forms. The last post was a mild critique of a probably well-meaning British journalist who I felt had glossed over some of the nuances of French culture in a story about the mood in France during this year’s Tour de France.

This post is in response to an entirely different beast--a mean-spirited ("bigoted" is also an applicable word) Fox News broadcast that came out as London was chosen over Paris for the 2012 Olympics. John Gibson, a commentator with oddly yellow hair and a swooping comb-over, criticized the committee for not picking Paris. His rationale?

"It would have been a three-week period where we wouldn't have had to worry about terrorism. First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm. Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris. So it would have been a treat, actually, to watch the French dealing with the problem of their own homegrown Islamist terrorists living in France already." (Full transcript available on Miquelon.org site.)

Under the brittle surface of this hateful screed, there is emptiness. The man has nothing to say. The diatribe is devoid of facts, humor, focus, or insight. It consists of pure invective. It equates French Muslims with terrorists and French non-Muslims with terrorist appeasers. He justifies his France-bashing by implying that France is a terrorism-sponsoring state. His assertions are shoddily cobbled together. The tirade culminates in the callous statement "They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?"

For anyone who thought that virulent French-bashing in the mass media had subsided, be aware that it is still stepping lively at "Faux" News.

Lazy and Rude (And I Don't Mean the Waiters)

A few days ago Reuters wire carried a story about three waiters fired from the New York restaurant "21." They filed a $5 million lawsuit claiming they were fired because they're French. Two claim they were falsely accused of drinking wine on the job. One was accused of making an obscene gesture at a chef. Television commentator Tucker Carlson used the story as a spring-board for a dialog. (A transcript of this segment of the program is available on the Miquelon.org web site.)

I don't know about the merits of the lawsuit, but Carlson had his brain set on auto pilot, stringing together cliché upon stereotype upon cliché. The dialog included such insightful statements as "it's the restaurant's fault. You hire French waiters—and you should—you know you're going to get people who drink on the job and who make obscene gestures habitually." And this gem of wisdom: "They should have known. The idea that you hire French waiters with the expectation that they will stay sober, be polite, and work hard is silly from the very beginning." He belabored the idea that the waiters had probably been pained by having to serve hamburgers (albeit $30 ones) to Americans.

The exchange with his guest was a best unoriginal. Worse, it sounded insincere. Intuition tells me Carlson really knows better, but that he continues to cash in on this sophomoric vein of humor, based on dismissing other cultures due to their "otherness." I would not be at all surprised if Carlson enjoyed a meal at a French dining establishment on a regular basis, or if he vacationed in France. Carlson’s lines give off a whiff of pandering. Maybe it takes a lot of pandering to be able to afford that fine French dining, eh, Tucker? Saving up for a country hideaway in the Lubéron?

Nah!--Tucker's not THAT cool.

Arrested Development

In the world of cyber France-bashing, authors hiding behind cartoonish names, hyperbolic statements, and a shaky command of grammar practice a new genre of fiction, a reverse heroic epic in which "little lying, cowardly, collaborating, garlic-eating, never-bathing, nose-picking French bastards" periodically stop eating "maggot-infested cheese" long enough to effetely and ineffectually lay siege to the unyielding ramparts of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Current posts on the website "F***France.com include references to France as "Froggystan," the "diseased whore of Europe" and the "whore of Islam." One featured article states "At its annual meeting, the International Olympic Committee has decided to add French-Bashing to its roster of medal sports in both the Summer and Winter Games. Sports writers are predicting French-Bashing to be the biggest spectator sport of all time, with the potential of billions of dollars in TV revenues and hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsement contracts for world-class bashers."  A breathless admirer of this form of humor uses the literary device called "metaphor into reality,"adding: "It would be even better if the french-bashing (sic) could be done with clubs. People would pay good money to see frogs clubbed." Rhetorical genius or plain stupidity? We report, you decide.

Fine. In some circles of the easily-amused, this displaced fear and anger might well pass for humor. Does the depiction of France's history in the cowardly epic mode, played and replayed on this web site, fit the definition of hate speech? The latter is defined as "speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against someone based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability." This may in fact qualify as hate speech, but even so, should anyone care?

A French person with healthy self-esteem, sometimes conflated on F***France.com with the stereotype of the implacably treacherous Arab and/or the venal and insatiable female, is often perceived by a swaggering, but not-so-self-confident Anglo-Saxon type as the cultural "Other," a figure of rarefied exoticism at best, and unbridled moral depravity at worst. The popular image of France is often portrayed as one or the other of these two extremes.

The Internet has made the marketplace of ideas bigger than ever, but censorship and denunciations only stoke the fires of irrational wingnuttery.   So let them  chide the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" at will.   By berating the France-bashers on web sites and in the press, one gives currency to the idea that these ideas are valid enough to warrant being considered and discussed by serious people in a serious forum.  Better to let the expression of these ideas flame out into oblivion, allowing more powerful ones (and humor that is funny) to beat them out in the marketplace of ideas. Francophiles can lament that France (along with feminists and liberals) has become a scapegoat of choice for some angry white Anglo-Saxon men (and their surrogates) with a tenuous hold on the power that had come to appear as a historical entitlement.  To attempt to silence the France-scapegoaters would be not only un-American but "un-French." Okay, gotta run.  The aroma of a ripe--but not yet maggot-infested--Camembert is beckoning.

France-Bashing: A Cottage Industry

An undercurrent of anti-French sentiment has been present in the US ever since I can remember, but it has never been as virulent as it has become since the US invasion of Iraq.  A quick romp though F***France.com reveals (often ungrammatical) references to "Froggystan,"  France, the "diseased whore of the world,"  and the French as "enemies of Western Civilization."   

"News Hounds" states that:

"Any frequent Fox News watcher knows that Fox systematically and patiently paints negative pictures of certain people and certain groups, most notably anyone who doesn't agree with those now in power. Eventually, all Fox has to do is mention the name of the person or group and the regular Fox viewer "gets the message."

( . . . )Fox's picture of France is infamous. Fox viewers believe France is a wimpy, whiny country full of sissy crybabies who sit around drinking lattes as the little finger on the hand holding their coffee cup sticks up in the air."

If one goes to France, one meets English-speaking, apparently conservative business and professional people, either working or on vacation, who do not seem at all unhappy to be there.  In fact, they usually seem rather pleased, if not positively delighted to partake of the French lifestyle.  They do not seem to have followed O'Reilly's stern exhortations to boycott France. The carefully-constructed rhetorical edifice from which these pseudo-journalists and commentators make their living bears no resemblance to observable reality. 

Another curious aspect of today's France-bashing is the way that the image of France as a nation is feminized.  It's sad that to some, the best way to insult a person or nation is to focus on their so-called feminine traits.  But when those in power are trying desperately to consolidate power at all costs (i.e. the Taliban, the neo-cons in the US), women's (and gay) rights are often the first to go.  The unhealthy fixation on an imagined out-of-control sexuality gives license to step in and re-assert patriarchal authority.  By equating the French to sissies and whores, extremist conservatives have put in place a justification for the need to, as Condoleeza Rice bluntly put it, "punish France."