The Long Tail of Bigotry: Don Martin and France in Afghanistan
Editorials - Twitter this! April 4th, 2008
Canadian columnist resorts to Anti-French slurs
We at Miquelon.org, are not interested in editorializing France’s position vis à vis NATO, nor Nicolas Sarkozy’s new commitment to Afghanistan. Political experts and well-versed columnists often discuss the merits of those foreign policy choices at length. However, when a columnist, likely under the pressure of a deadline, resorts to parroting stale clichés and pop culture references borrowed from the likes of Jonah Goldberg, it’s time once again to take a stand.
If current French Bashing (2003-2007) was originally based on the trickle-down model of hatred, the long tail best describes the permanent – yet low frequency usage of offensive language by such mini me’s as Don Martin of the Calgary Herald (and Craig Ferguson for that matter …).
Being Goldberg’s Canadian laggard might be Martin’s pathetic raison d’être, and defending hate speech might be his pet project on occasion, but the fact no one at the National Post sees anything offensive in this abject caricature of French and European history is worrisome:
“After six years of lollygagging around Kabul — shopping for carpets along Chicken Street, munching fresh lamb kebabs and generally wearing the cheese-eating surrender monkey uniform like a legion of honour — French troops reluctantly will step into the line of Taliban fire later this year.“
Reducing the horrors suffered by France during World War II to a catch phrase once uttered by a yellow cartoon character might have given Goldberg the necessary pop-culture edge to break away from the pack in 2003, but in Martin’s column, it’s past the due date.
Source: National Post
Contact: dmartin@nationalpost.com – Please be polite and informative.
Merci à P.L.
Note: In statistics, the long tail is a feature of the new distribution of online markets and human behaviour. Prominently featured in articles about Web 2.0, the concept might just as well apply to the politics of bigotry and parrot-like punditry.
Comments on this website are the responsibility of their authors and are subject to the Blog Comment Rules.
Add Miquelon.org to my del.icio.us
April 19th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Ooops, “Long winters in Calgary probably HAVE frozen his brain.”
April 19th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
The guy has a face only his mother can love… look at it — he resembles a baby pig.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Now now, no personal attacks. Come on, none of us are George Clooney either…
April 20th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Aw, c’mon! French bashing ain’t some kind of personal attack?
April 21st, 2008 at 12:16 pm
“Now now, no personal attacks. Come on, none of us are George Clooney either…”
Thank God we’re not.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/letters/story.html?id=956a7620-6246-4d8f-8844-2036d5e4e220
Pulling their weight
Don Martin’s statement that French troops will reluctantly step into the line of Taliban fire after six years of lollygagging around Kabul wearing “cheese-eating surrender monkey uniforms like a legion-of-honour” completely disregards France’s commitment in Afghanistan. It is disrespectful to the 1,500 French troops present in Afghanistan since day one, who have contributed in protecting the Afghan institutions and securing the area of Kabul, and to the 14 French soldiers lost in this country.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to send 700 additional troops in the east, near the Pakistan boarder, which is as dangerous as the south. There are three strategic regions in Afghanistan and France is in all of them: Kabul, threatened by increasing Taliban infiltration; the south, where the French air force has six fighter planes in Kandahar assisting Canadian troops on the ground; and the east, where most of the French operational mentoring and liaison teams are already posted. French instructors embedded in Afghan battalions are not in classrooms: they are fighting alongside the Afghan soldiers. There are no caveats for the French troops or any deadline imposed by our parliament.
Daniel Jouanneau,
Ottawa
Daniel Jouanneau is France’s ambassador to Canada.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
It’s fair to say that 99.9% percent of French people do not really care about what the Americans may think of us.
It is very easy to lie to the American people: Most of them are unable to understand any language apart from English, and they have no source of information apart US and UK’s ones. Given the 1000 years old rivalry (and friendship too…) between UK and France, it is difficult to say that their official point of view is completely fair. The Americans should remember that their former Kingdom lies just 20 miles away from France, took about 25% of its language into theirs, and an important part of its genetic pool.
Anyway, this bashing might have a deeper motive: Maybe some kind of fear to realize that after having been nearly destroyed twice in the XX-th century, France is still living, with its industry, its language, its culture, and still do not plan to be a satellite country of USA.
Despite that, Americans are welcome in France, and we generally consider us as friends of USA and UK – whatever the way their Government intoxicate them.
If you want to have a more accurate idea of what France really is, just ask to the millions of British people going to France what they saw.