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February 23, 2003

Welcome, New York Times readers
: If you happen by here thanks to a link in today's story about Google acquisition of Pyra/Blogger, my earlier posts on the topic are here and here. (And I repeat my standing caveats: I have no inside knowledge of Google's plans and this is just a personal site.)
: And Washington Post readers coming from Howard Kurtz' mention of posts on American Candidate, you can find them here and here.
: And to those looking for parodies of Tom Ridge's deservedly parodied Ready.gov site try try here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
: Update: More gallows humor here.
manual cubase

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French jokes
: It's wrong, so wrong. But I'll confess: I went searching for jokes about the French -- timely fodder that they are -- and I found plenty. (Now don't give me any hell about this or you'll only prove the the French and those who love them are humorless. I'm just hunting down the zeitgeist, folks. And I'm finding a surprising lot of it relating to the French.)
I found some classy bon mots from a snippet of a novel at Open Brackets by Gail Armstrong (who lives in France). Our protagonist at a novelty marketing company finds America in a jingoistic fervor and so he makes a killing with timely bumper stickers [some sure to show up on CafePress any minute] including:

1. Free the cheese!
2. All we are saying is give war a chance.
3. Typical: 85% of French people say Belgians invented fries.
4. I’d rather be bombing fascists!
6. Hey celebrities: just shut up and say the lines.
7. Bomb now, talk later.
8. Pass the buck, not the euro!
12. Let’s take the UN out of undecided.
13. My granddaddy saved their sorry asses in WWII. What 1/2 U done lately?
14. Sorry Saddam, you’re not putting my daughter in a veil.
15. Just say non!
17. Jesus said love thy neighbour; he didn’t say nothing about evil dictators overseas.
18. Better dead than French.
19. Peaceniks are weapons of mass destruction.

OK, not all of them are at the expense of the French, but they are funny.
I kept looking for French jokes and found lots more, none quite so, well, subtle.
There were jokes from British comic Ned Sherrin, which the Times of London reports were cut from a BBC radio show just this weekend. One of them:

“What do you call a Frenchman advancing on Baghdad?”
“A salesman”

And I found more here and here and here and here and here and here; a sampling:

"With all due respect I think President Bush is handling this situation all wrong What Bush should do is send someone the French really respect, like Jerry Lewis." —Jay Lenomanual cubase

Q. What's the difference between 1943 and 2003?
A. This time around, the Vichy government is telling the German puppets what to do.manual cubase

"The last time the French asked for 'more proof' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." -- David Lettermanmanual cubase

What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against Disney World and Big Mac's than the Nazis? manual cubase

Q. Why are the French so afraid of war?
A. You would be too if you never won one in your history.manual cubase

Q. Why don't they have fireworks at Euro Disney?
A. Because every time they shoot them off, the French try to surrender.manual cubase

"Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known. It's never been tried." -- Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.manual cubase

"Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day -- the description was: 'Never shot. Dropped once.'" -- Bluntmanual cubase

Q: Why are there so many tree-lined boulevards in France?
A: Germans like to march in the shade.
[That's an old joke. Now it has a new code:]
Q: Then why are the French chopping down the trees now?
A: The Arabs like to march in the sun.manual cubase

Q. Why did the French celebrate their World Cup Championship in 2000 so wildly?
A. It was their first time they won anything without the help of the U.S.manual cubase

A man asks his friend, "What's the most common French expression"? His friend scratches his head, shrugs his shoulders, and replies, "I give up!"manual cubase

Have you heard about the French kamikaze pilot? He's on his 23rd Mission!manual cubase

Q: What would the French call a nuclear explosion in Paris?
A: Proof that more inspectors are needed.

Yes, this is wrong, so very, very wrong.. But it's funny. And even if you don't think it's funny, you have to admit it's a measure of the buzz in America...manual cubase

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More European v. American humor
: Media Digest, a German weblog, quotes the monolog of Harald Schmidt, the German David Letterman (they act alike, they talk alike, at times they even walk alike, they're clones, identical clones...).

A U.S. congressman said, "If America didn't exist, Germany would be just a Soviet republic."
And Schmidt replies: "If Europeans didn't exist, Americans today would all be Indians."

manual cubase

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Frogs, snails, and sissies
: The Aardvark, a Viennese weblog, points to a story in the Frankfurther Rundschau about anti-French sentiment rising in America like the creeks in my neighborhood after our latest storm. He translates:

Local newspapers are even worse [than the Murdoch press]: Gordon Dillow wrote in the Orange County Register: "I hate the French. I really hate the French." The Orlando Sentinel writes: "If the Eiffel Tower had been destroyed on 11 September, France's new Vichy government would currently be searching for someone to surrender to." Only the talk radio stations surpass this. In front of a Las Vegas radio station a 14-ton truck squashed a framed picture of Chirac, a French flag, cups of French yoghurt, French bread, wine, vodka and Perrier, all to the cheers of a large audience. Irate callers ask if France even remembers what the USA did for them in World War II: "Who are they anyway? Cheese-eating rats?"

The story points out that mainstream media is also pissing on France, quoting the New York Times twice.
And then it makes fun of a Florida restaurant for renaming French fries -- even though the story is quick to point out that fries came from Belgium -- "freedom fries."
Under all this is a German awareness that they may not be far behind. The story reminds its readers that in World War II, we renamed sauerkraut "liberty cabbage." And it says that France is providing a windscreen for Germany against American retaliatory hostility.
Why are the Germans getting an easier time of it? Simple: The French make better punchlines. Americans don't like snobs (though we are more snobbish than we care to admit) and Americans consider the French snobs: an amusing but generally irrelevant nation, the appropriate butt of National Lampoon jokes in the best of times. Add to that vestigal WWII disapproval. Add to that French determination to weaken our position and thus the world's position of strength v. Saddam. Add to that Chirac acting like a self-important boob even to his fellow Europeans. And it's open hunting season for frog jokes.
Supersize my order of freedom fries, please.manual cubase

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