On Sat, 3 May 2003, Bill Stewart wrote:
Not at all: this is to be expected after the three minute hate...
Oh, right, who's today's target? Are we still practicing hating Saddam, or is it Bashar al-Assad this week, or the French?
I kind of wonder whatever happened to Quaddafi? Did he learn to love Big Brother? Or did he have an accidental demide while I was not looking?
Tim and Peter have been discussing the origins of "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys" and the general hatred of the Frogs, but I've got to disagree with Tim's assertion that it's been going on for a long time. Sure, there's been some low-level dislike, and Jay Leno's always made fun of their liking for Jerry Lewis, and Parisians have a reputation for being as rude as New Yorkers, but it seemed like there was such as rush of anti-French surrender jokes and anti-French political commentary that it's more than just coincidence; it seemed like the meme was being pushed hard and fast by somebody.
The French took the opportunity presented to not only decline to join the party, but to do so in a way that demonstrated our own hypocrisy in an in-your-face manner. That meme was distraction in action ;-) -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org