Re: [A-List] US news media: France

["Mr President" <Mr_Presiden_t@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael

Thank you for the infomative look at the American media and its drive to war
come hell or high water.... These are typical tactics of a frustrated group
trying to undermine the reason and logic of clear thinking non waring
nations....

Keep up the great work...

Mr President..
http://AtWar.shim.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>
To: <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 8:31 AM
Subject: [A-List] US news media: France


> Wimps, weasels and monkeys - the US media view of 'perfidious France'
>
> Dissenters in Europe become the first victims - of a war of words
>
> Gary Younge in New York and Jon Henley in Paris
> Tuesday February 11, 2003
> The Guardian
>
> 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.
>