Comments on: Time Magazine Publishes Anti-French Slur

By: Voices without Votes » The United States of France

Voices without Votes » The United States of France — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:35:37 +0000

[...] [Miquelon disagrees.] [...]

By: Laouach

Laouach — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 10:10:24 +0000

I am very surprised: “frog” as such is no longer a problem, we should not have tolerated it many, many years ago! My concern is that nobody reacts to the sentence which is really offending in my reading: “Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.”

Mr Saporito by himself is so clever as to abracadabra the words, illusionists of all countries, of course! No, the problem I wish to emphasize is that if Mr Saporito feels that he can use such a word, which in all cases is insulting, whatever be the second and third meaning, he knows that he has what we call a “marge de manoeuvre” as the US patriots, i.e. a few tens of million people will lol (laugh out loudly) for a few tens of lost French men who will protest (and they even may not!). This is pure demagogy. We should stand up and avoid the same mistake as with tolerating “frog” with the word ”despise”: insulting is never acceptable, even for and all the more for brilliant minds.
By the way, I did not realize that the article to which I refer does not appear:
http://www.laouach.com/blog/ecrire/poster.php?post_id=10

You wil see better what I mean.

Amicalement,

Laouach

By: calFrench

calFrench — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:24:40 +0000

@Barney. According to WP, the meaning of “frog” changed over time. If I am offended by something whose meaning changes, as we say in french, “we are not out of the auberge”. I really beleive that the one being really insulted when it comes to reducing one person to its origin, is the one that says it.
If your last argument against someone you’re talking to is: “You can’t be right, your’re a frog (or whatever other slur word)” it really means that either your point is very weak, or you haven’t had any argument at all.

And if you’re talking in a friendly way with someone calling me “Frog”, there is really no reason feeling offended.

So to me, in both case, I do not find it offending at all.
But I may of course be overoptimistic ;-)

By: Barney hasn't keft the building

Barney hasn't keft the building — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:45:38 +0000

“BTW, I’m french, and I do not find any thing offending in being called Frog.”

You should.
While I agree that this particular article was done in an ironic kind of way (everyone got that by the way , no need to insult our intellectual skills) the term “frog” is usually meant to offend.
As is the term “wop” for Italian-Americans or he term “kraut” for german people and many others. These terms all belong to the lexical field of ethnic slurs and xenophobia.

See wikipedia’s list of ethnic slurs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethic_slurs

By: Barney hasn't left the building

Barney hasn't left the building — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:43:00 +0000

“BTW, I’m french, and I do not find any thing offending in being called Frog.”

See wikipedia’s list of ethnic slurs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethic_slurs

By: calFrench

calFrench — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:08:13 +0000

I’ve read this article and I found it brilliant.
It’s very subtle, very ironic and it’s a strong critic of the us system rather that the french one.
Irony at its best.
It needs some knowledge and some intellectual skills to go over the first level of reading, and I think some of the offended readers her did not find the seconde level of reading that was mandatory to fully understand the hidden message.

BTW, I’m french, and I do not find any thing offending in being called Frog.

By: Laouach

Laouach — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:58:16 +0000

Mr. Saporito has exagerated too much once too often, considering the state of affairs in the USA. Although the website is usually dedicated to timeless philosophy, a refreshing post claiming a “Droit de réponse aux américains” to these declarations appears in the blog (French and English version), with the sub-title: “You dreamed you were the flagship of the free world, you are only its Titanic“.
The general idea might be that the former bashers are in such a mess that their arrogance, always misplaced, is now grotesque. We are in a good position to sound the counter-attack. With one proviso: we shall never indulge into the same foul manners, not our style! We must be as usual, much more educated and controled in the surface -we must accept the risk that they do not understand that they are bashed - and hard but fair in the substance.

I am delighted to invite you to a visit and if you feel like it, please, invite your friends.

“Attaquem, attaquem”, Foch, 1917.

With king regards to all of those who have been on watch at the outpost for a long time, reinforcement is coming.

Laouach

By: Gérard Morvan

Gérard Morvan — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:27:58 +0000

Maybe, but I don’t think the English would have steeped so low as to call a woman’s “time of the month” “the French”. (Makes us wonder what Paul Revere meant when he did his famous ride).

By: Barney hasn't left the building

Barney hasn't left the building — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:30:15 +0000

Frankly, I doubt we would have come up with rossbif if they hadn’t called us frogs to begin with.

By: Frederic

Frederic — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:46:52 +0000

Hello Marc,

I am always on your side. This time I must say that this article is quite good and if the journalist uses the word “frog” it’s to enhance the sarcasm. This piece could have been written for Stephen Colbert and Mr. Saporito went far with the comparison but as far as I can tell the article touches on all the sensitive subjects and make very valid comparisons. The only one missing is about what we call “SECURITE SOCIALE” or socialized medecine (when you want to scare people off)…the French have it and the American are far from having it. I am more upset when I watch a debate with Sarah Palin talking about Democrats wanting to “wave the white flag of surrender in Iraq” because I know she is just “that” far from calling Joe Biden a French and that is really insulting because she takes in all the lies and the racism and glorifies herself and her supporters as true patriots fighting those Frenchified liberals. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of “frog” just like we call the Brits “Rosbif”…I can live with that.

By: André Wernesson

André Wernesson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:14:43 +0000

http://mercuriusaulicus.blogspot.com/

A project for another francophile/anti-french bashing blog of mine. It will deal with various subjects, (mainly History) but French-bashing will have an important part.

Cheers,

By: Nathalie

Nathalie — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:58:03 +0000

I found the article deeply offensive. The slur stands out because it has a direct analog in Chink/Nigger/Kike and the like, but really: the whole article is pieced together from the scum of U.S. French-bashing. I might recognize in it a caricature of France (although with this many distortions and misapprehensions, even that was hard to do) — but I know that many Americans will find it “truthful”. The editors of Time magazine should be ashamed to have published it.

By: poilu

poilu — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:04:18 +0000

Barney #25 – Perhaps the bigot doesn’t know, but when 10 French soldiers were killed recently in a Taliban ambush in A-stan, that was 10 less people speaking French in the world. He must be very happy.

By: Barney hasn't left the building

Barney hasn't left the building — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:57:58 +0000

Off topic but I stumbled onto a pretty weird but nonetheless virulent anti-French blog

Apparently, the guy is such a hateful bigot (the tone of his blog leaves no doubts as to his true intentions) that he created a blog for the sole purpose of gloating at the supposed decline of the French language worlwide.
And he’s pretty dedicated too since his site seems to be updated pretty regurarly.

Featured on this site are such riveting topics as: “the decline of French in Vanuatu”

Another bigot to add to a a long list…

By: Jean-Paul

Jean-Paul — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:08:41 +0000

I have read these articles, but I don’t think it is anti-French. It is of course superficial (like anything published by this magazine), and even unaccurate (in my view) but the use of the word “frog” is partially a QUOTATION. The author quotes in fact the common language as used by the mainstream American ans doesn’t assume it completely.