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More France pro and con: of brie and baths

I couldn't get out my camera fast enough to snap this hand-lettered sign in the back of a pickup in Austin:

Oppose France: bathe often!

Meanwhile on the pro-French side is this t-shirt:

So is anyone printing shirts yet with references to other popular cultural exports from France? (Shirt via Excitement Machine. If you're just tuning in, see also the anti-French fry movement.)

Oh, lord -- there's no such thing as a bit of innocent humor in the current political situation. Now it seems that the Bush administration is warning Mexico about anti-Hispanic backlash in this country if Mexico continues to oppose war. And they're citing the anti-French "phenomena" as a precedent. Of course they're "warning" not "threatening" (nudge nudge wink wink). As though they're not aware that the jingoistic impulse which manifests as a tongue-in-cheek cheese boycott against a white European country couldn't easily express itself in the form of hate crime when it's directed against a poor brown-skinned neighbor already the object of ethnic tension.

Is the "if you're not for us, you're against us" doctrine about to reverse a decade and a half of slowly improving US-Mexico relations? And is ostensibly Hispanic-friendly Bush now tacitly enlisting the aid of Mexican-bashing hoodlums and Mexico-bashing pols in the border states to strike a little fear in the Mexican leadership?

(Thanks to Phil Burton for the pointer.)

Why am I not surprised that this administration is eager and willing to bully another country to bend to our will. Maybe because they've been doing it all along.

Also... I read "slap me with brie" and my brain thinks "Someone, somewhere in the world, has that as their sexual fetish."

Things msy not always be as they seem in the U.S.-Mexico relationship. An article in today's Statesman (okay, not an unimpeachable source, but I assume they picked the story up from some other more reputable news operation as they do with any article that covers a person, place or thing beyond the city limits of, say, Pflugerville) details the ways in which the U.S. under Johnson "threatened" Mexico for its relationship with Cuba at the same time Mexico was working with the U.S. to keep an eye on the commies. The PRI had to keep up the pretense of anti-Americanism for the peasants back home despite the fact that its leading bureaucrats were shopping at Nieman Marcus every weekend. If we are bullying other countries into supporting us on Iraq, we sure aren't doing a very good job. In fact, as "Doonesbury" suggests, we are actually trying to bribe up a coalition of the willing. I don't blame Mexico for not wanting to jump into Iraq but I do think Fox et al. could have scored some big time political points in the U.S. by helping out with Taliban clean-up operations in Afghanistan. (Unclear what Mexican public opinion would have had to say on the subject, but I imagine there was a number of Mexican nationals killed in the 9/11 attacks.) I for one would have welcomed the assistance and I suppose our troops would have to. Some of those Mexicans are tough SOBs.

Let's make a list of items to be redesignated: french horns, french kisses, the "french disease" and "plague," french knot, french rolls, french roast coffee, the french knot, french bread, the french arch, french chalk, the french doughnut, the french fold, french folio, french bulldog, naturally "french letters," the french heel,

the french horn (an ill wind that no one blows good), french ice cream, the french roof, sole, seam, hem, and square, the french system and telephone, and worst of all, french toast and window. Let's rename them all to "liberty": liberty toast, roast, roof, disease, kiss.

You're a prophet, Prentice: this.

Next our congressional leaders will be offering to rename certain traditionally French items in honor of other countries, if only they will support us. The undecideds on the Security Council will get first dibs, of course--which means that we could all soon be eating Guinea fries, suffering through our children's efforts to learn the Angolan horn, and engaging in prolonged bouts of Cameroonian kissing with our loved ones.

Freedom fries are in the House http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/5372640.htm
(pointed out by http://www.ofrenda.org/starmama and of course I thought of you)

France................

The no jock chirac approach


Neils
03/14,2003

You're not anti war
You're just pro wuss


Neils
7:04 pm
03/07/2004

How to discuss the illegal immigrant invasion

Because
It's not like anything
Needs to get done or changed

Except maybe the way we talk about it
Maybe if we just used more sensitive terms
It wouldn't make the hyphenated-Americans
And their supporters squirm

Maybe if you could just give it a tweek
Another adjustment here and there
Maybe leave out some water for them
You wouldn't sound so unfair

Culturalism over nationalism
Where'd you get a phrase like that
Shouldn't sympathetic emotion
Always overcome logic reason and facts

How much is spent on hospital costs
How much is spent on enforcement costs
Is that all you're concerned about
Is the loss loss loss

Think about how it makes you feel
Like you're a superior caring being
Who is capable of such fashionable passion
For those who from poverty are fleeing

Forget Mexico becoming more just
And improving conditions down there
And that way they wouldn't have to leave
To find even minimal care

Because that's their country's business
They are their own Sovereign Nation
Just learn to be extra careful
How you converse about the situation

And maybe you'll learn to adjust
To the new and different way
Just change the way you think
Just change what words you say

And presto everything is hunky dory
Everything becomes dandy and fine
Things are a lot less trouble for a
Delusional rather live in denial mind

You'll see
Go with the flow
Opposed means oppressor
In case you didn't know

****
****

There have you got it
Do you understand it yet
Think of it like never ending guilt
Compromising to accomidate regret

There have you got it
Do you understand it yet
Just keep making those installment
Payments....On a never ending debt

Neils
11:14 pm
06/13/2003
*
transcribed this time
11:19 pm
9/24/2004