This Season's French Cultural Chic is Heading Far Right on the Fashion Runway

                                                  The French Are Fried



There’s a budding boycott in the US of France and French products. Led by
the ABC talk show, The Savage Nation, consumers are encouraged to turn
their backs on anything French, including Descartes, Flaubert, and Mauriac.
The show adds there is additional reason to burn Mauriac’s books because he
writes about priests. By this logic it’s only a matter of time before the
deconstructionist, sensuous French Church comes under the same scrutiny as
the US Catholic hierarchy.

The reason for this outrage against France is that the country appears to
have slipped back sixty years into its intellectual and cultural
anti-Semitism, encouraged by their Nazi liberators and landlords. French
President Jacques  Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin are falling over
themselves, in consort with the bloated European Union, to embrace the
“aesthetic of suicide bombers” and condemn the “genocide” at the hands of
the Israelis, an implicit comparison to the Holocaust.

Thus Chirac and company have given a green light to Arab militants who have
bombed synagogues in France. Recently a French youth soccer team was
attacked by Arab thugs. A Jewish shopkeeper was shot and killed near
Toulouse. Anti-Semitism with a French accent is being exported to the rest
of Europe like a bottle of contaminated wine. The region is becoming drunk
on its own unsavory history and few voices are being raised in protest.

The first Savage recommendation is to boycott French fries, even though
most of the potatoes come from Idaho. Radio Host Savage recognizes this as
more symbolic that real but it will get the word “French” into the media.
Anyway,  the French really don’t like fast food, though they consume it in
great quantities and are becoming as obese as Americans. Even so, the
French have a fetish for firebombing fast food restaurants to make a
symbolic point that there is still some militancy in France, even though
they lost the last two world wars and are ignored in military circles.
Indeed, even the French Foreign Legion has petitioned for a name change
because France is letting its philosophical fascination with the Islamic
metaphor influence its politics. The Legion, to the chagrin of the French
military, has petitioned to become part of the US Marine Corps because the
“Marines are the best fighting force in the world and they  are completely
lacking in Gaelic traits such as arrogance, envy, and hubris.”

A second recommendation is to rid the language of French words such as “bon
jour, d’accord,  cul-de-sac, and wee wee.” It will be a little more
difficult convincing Americans to forego French wines, especially champagne
and a good Bordeaux. A way around this dilemma is to have Germany reoccupy
the important wine-producing areas of France so Americans, in effect would
be buying German products--and Germany would finally get some good wines.
This would not be a very difficult task as France would be likely sleeping
as it was when the Nazis rolled over the Maginot line in World War II. If
that is not acceptable, a weekend boatload of British tourists or better
still, soccer louts, could likely do the job, with a few pints to spare.

A third recommendation is to abolish by Executive Order French Kissing in
all public places in the US (This includes air carriers and ships under the
US flag). This effort would be less difficult than it seems as most
Americans have always thought this something of an import that serves
little purpose except spreading disease between willing cavities. Thus the
characterization of the activity as the “French disease.”

The list is long. French arch would have to go and Americans would have to
walk under something less ornate.  Forget the short-sheeted French bed,
except if you’re in prison or in the military.  Designers should pass on
French “sunshine” beige for Fall fashion colors. Retirees will have to give
up French bowling, which is really Portuguese bowling anyway. No more
French toast. Burn the French bread. And kill the French cuffs.

French intellectuals have this fantasy that thinking is really doing. That
is the reason Bernard-Henri Levy went to Afghanistan. He says he brings
“words that carry the weight of deeds, texts that are also acts.” No word
on whether Levy is bringing the Islamic thugs to heel with quotes from
Spinoza.

In some respects Levy is right. The anti-Semitic words from the lips of
Chirac and Jospin have legitimized attacks on Jews across France and
Europe. Saying is really doing.

But France is not doing any good. By folding the homicide bombers into the
season’s cultural chic, the country’s leadership has demonstrated that in
the realm of morality, not much has changed in sixty years.

Scratch a Frenchman ...... but you cannot apply a French dressing.

That is also on the boycott list.