Wimps, weasels and monkeys - the US media view of 'perfidious France'

Guardian ^ | 2/11/03 | Gary Younge in New York and Jon Henley in Paris

[kattracks]

The "petulant prima donna of realpolitik" is leading the "axis of weasels", in "a chorus of cowards". It is an unholy alliance of "wimps" and ingrates which includes one country that is little more than a "mini-me minion", another that is in league with Cuba and Libya, with a bunch of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" at the helm.

Welcome to Europe, as viewed through the eyes of American commentators and newspapers yesterday, as Euro-bashing, and particularly anti-French sentiment, reached new heights. In a barrage of insults and invective which ranged from the basest tabloid rants to the loftiest columnists on the most respected newspapers, European-led resistance to America's war plans in Iraq was portrayed not as a diplomatic position to be negotiated as a genetic weakness in the European mindset which makes them reluctant to fight wars and incapable of winning them.

The front page of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post yesterday shows the graves of Normandy with the headline: "They died for France but France has forgotten." "Where are the French now, as Americans prepare to put their soldiers on the line to fight today's Hitler, Saddam Hussein?" asks the pugnacious columnist Steve Dunleavy. "Talking appeasement. Wimping out. How can they have forgotten?" A cartoon in the same paper shows an ostrich with its head in the sand below the words: "The national bird of France."

If such language is proving a headache for the diplomats, then spare a thought for the French translators, who have struggled for words to convey the full force of the venom. "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - a phrase coined by Bart Simpson but made acceptable in official diplomatic channels around the globe by Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for the rightwing weekly National Review (according to Goldberg) - was finally rendered: " Primates capitulards et toujours en quête de fromages ". And the New York Post's "axis of weasel" lost much of its venom when translated as a limp " axe de faux jetons " (literally, "axis of devious characters").

American wrath has been reserved for those nations which oppose their leadership, particularly following the decision to oppose shifting Nato resources to Turkey. "Three countries - France, Germany and their mini-me minion, Belgium - have moved from opposition to US policy toward Iraq into formal, and consequential obstructionism," argued the Wall Street Journal in an editorial yesterday. "If there is a war [the Turks] will face the danger of direct attack that is not feared in the chocolate shops of Brussels." The front page of the National Review blares "Putsch" with a sub-headline: "How to defeat the Franco-German power grab."

While the jibes may be puerile, the possibility that the Bush administration and commercial outlets might follow them up with punitive measures has struck some as pernicious. An ad, due to come out soon, shows three German-made cars, including an Audi and a BMW, driving towards the camera with a voice saying: "Do you really want to buy a German car?"

If there has been any European country that has attracted more contempt than others, it is France. In the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Hitchens described Jacques Chirac as "a positive monster of conceit _ the abject procurer for Saddam ... the rat that tried to roar". In the Washington Post, George Will opined that the "oily" foreign affairs minister, Dominique de Villepin, had launched France into "an exercise for which France has often refined its savoir-faire since 1870, which is to say retreat - this time into incoherence".

And in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman argued that France should be removed from the security council and be replaced with India: "India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly." The Wall Street Journal editor, Max Boot, argues: "France has been in decline since, oh, about 1815, and it isn't happy about it." What particularly galls the Gauls is that their rightful place in the world has been usurped by the gauche Americans."

At its ugliest, the transatlantic bile is becoming increasingly personal. When France Inter radio's correspondent in Washington, Laurence Simon, started to explain her government's position to Fox News (owned by Murdoch) she was interrupted by the presenter. "With friends like you, who needs enemies," she was told as she was taken off air.

[nutmeg]

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[coloradan]

We saved them in WW I and WW II, and took over for them in Indochina. If war should spill into their borders this time I sincerely hope not one drop of American blood is shed in their name.

[nutmeg]

..."Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - a phrase coined by Bart Simpson...

Wasn't this phrase coined by Groundskeeper Willie?

[tjg]

Q. How do you know when France is at war?

A. Everybody in Paris is walking around with their hands up in the air.

[piasa]

Make that : "l'hache de ermines"

[BushMeister]

Can someone show that picture of the French guy crying along with the CESM (cheese-eating surrender monkey) flag?

[crusher999]

I posted this in a previous article about "French Intellectuals" (an oxymoron methinks). With seething disdain for these A-holes...I repost my thoughts.

Let’s face it folks….the last time the French had any significance on the world stage, battleships were made from wood, and the muzzle loaded musket was the “latest technology”.

But let’s not judge our Brie-eating/wine-drinking scrawny pi$$-ant brothers and sisters too harshly…..

Well, alright…lets do.

(And by the way…did you know that brie is known as the “queen of cheeses”….which says to me that the frogs are so completely prissified, that they don’t have the stones to make the “KING of ANYTHING”)

The French are a nation of Cliff & Cliffette Claven’s.

Little meaningless people, who know damn well that they are entirely without importance, but like Cliff, will condescendingly take us aside and point out the error of our ways, all the while proving beyond a shadow of a doubt just how trivial they really are.

Well, if I lived in a country where I could throw a rock in any direction and hit an American Cemetery (11 in all) where over 60,000 U.S. “Liberators” have been laid to their final rest, who died bailing my sorry (albeit petite) a$$ out of, not one, but two World Wars, then I would be just as desperate to prove (to myself, if nobody else) my relevance.

So, keep on yakin’ Pierre…

Whew, that felt good!

Au Revior

[RonDog]

From http://www.adg.blogspot.com/2003_02_01_adg_archive.html:

Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey Flag: Little Tiny Lies

[Kip Lange]

I'd say their more like a bunch of Dianes convinced of their own self-importance rather than Cliff. I actually liked Cliff. ;-) Remember, Cliff's rhetoric was always stupid, but he didn't summarily snottily judge people the way Diane did.

A nation of Dianes. ;-)

[Kip Lange]

argh..."they're"...sorry :p

[Kip Lange]

...then again, Diane showered regularly, and I'm guessing she shaved her pits.

[SFConservative]

[xm177e2]

Yes, and there's audio of it on the web, if you can find it... "Bonjoouurrrrrrrr, ye cheese-eatin' surrender monkies!"

[Kip Lange]

French to Blair:

"How you English say: I one more time, mac, unclog my nose in your direction, sons of a window-dresser! So, you think you could out-clever us French folk with your silly knees-bent running about advancing behaviour? I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second-handed electric donkey-bottom biters!"

We've been taking this kind of abuse from *them* for years. It's high time they got a taste of their own medicine.

[crusher999]

When your right your right.

"Diane's"

Yep, it fits and I like it.

[Burkeman1]

It would have been nice if not one drop was spent in WWI, WWII (at least the Europeon theater), and Viet Nam. Gratitude is a dog's disease. And the Europeons ain't dogs. No nation has permanent friends or permanent enemies. It only has permanent interests. That France's interests may not coincide with ours should not surprise anyone. We look like adolescents with all this French bashing. I admire them. They act in their interests. We seem to act on "philosophies" and "theories" that have done nothing for this nation but pay for the defense of Europe and certain Asian countries for 50 years that long ago didn't need our protection. How did it come to pass that our "interests" became every spect of the globe? May I suggest they are not? May I suggest that the US has been used as a sucker for a Century - especially by Europe and France? Don't blame the French- elements in this country were more than willing to let us be the sucker. But now that we want the French and Europe in general to go along with our plans to dominate the middle East we get angry that they don't support us? Why should they? Because we foolishly allowed ourselves to be used for years as the shield of Western Europe while they built up their costly welfare socialist states? Doesn't work that way. We have only ourselves to blame for being morons. That they don't support us now should only surprise the naive.

[Fenris6]

France's honor died in the trenches of WWI.

The Czechs should warn the Turks on the danger of having France as an ally -- French diplomats yawning with fatigue as they betrayed the only other European power capable of stopping the Nazi's.

I say we cut them loose from NATO.

[Kip Lange]

But now that we want the French and Europe in general to go along with our plans to dominate the middle East we get angry that they don't support us?

Yeah. We could always ditch our plans to "dominate the Middle East" and do what the noble French do -- pay Saddam billions for oil, which in turn goes to fund state-sponsored terrorism.

PUH-leeze! :p

P.S. All this French-bashing is *fun* :-) (frog DOES taste like chicken!)

[crusher999]

Yoh, Burkeman.

Yeah, I guess we have been pretty stupid in spending all those billions of dollars "Keeping the Peace" in Europe, and making sure that "yet another conflict" that would cost us "yet another generation" didn't kick up.