Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Editor's Culture Watch: Why Can't The French Do Anything Right?

Washington, D.C. -

THE LATEST FAILURE

Investigators combing the wreckage of an Air France A340 Airbus jet at Toronto's Pearson International Airport had found the plane's "black boxes," officials said today. The so-called black boxes were handed to Canadian transportation officials, they said. The recorders can give investigators vital clues into what caused the Air France A340 jet's crash. Airport official Steve Shaw said in a news conference that the flight data recorders were found, but he declined to say whether they were damaged.

The aircraft skidded off the runway yesterday at Toronto airport, but all 297 passengers and 12 crew escaped largely unscathed from the blazing jet. Passengers leaped down escape chutes and ran for their lives as fire raced through the jet which ended up in a ravine after overshooting the runway by 200 metres.

Bad weather was "certainly partly to blame", said Don Enns, senior investigator for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, "but the main blame must be assigned - as usual - to the French. Not only can they not fly an aircraft properly, they can't even succeed in crashing the plane. Every last passenger survived - what kind of crash is that? Aside from the obvious, of course - it's a French crash."

The French have a historical legacy of being absolute and total failures, and the total failure to properly fly or crash Flight 358 comes as no surprise.

FOUNDED IN FAILURE

The origins of the modern French excuse for a sovereign nation can be traced directly back to the audacious and gratuitous reign of King Louis XIV. His palace at Versailles, where nearly every single piece of furniture and architecture is covered in gold, surely runs afoul of at least four of the seven deadly sins.

Eventually, the French subjects desired some wealth for themselves. The price of bread, which with cheap wine constitutes the entire French diet to the modern era, had risen above that of cake, leading to a moderate revolt. Queen Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, famously quipped, "Let them eat cake," which made her very unpopular once she and her husband entirely lost control of their country.

On the night of June 20, 1791, the royal family fled the Tuileries. However, the next day the overconfident king had the imprudence to show himself, revealing that French idiocy must be genetic. Recognised and arrested at Varennes late on June 21st, he returned to Paris under guard. The Assembly provisionally suspended the king. He and the very unpopular Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard. It is not believed that they were offered the cheaper-than-bread cake while in captivity.

France, in the rapid descent into political anarchy, unbelievably declared war on Austria (April 20, 1792), and the notorious Prussian army joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later.

On the night of August 10, 1792, insurgents, supported by a new revolutionary Paris Commune, assailed the Tuileries. The king and queen ended up prisoners and a rump session of the Legislative Assembly suspended the monarchy. King Louis was seen as conspiring with the enemies of France when the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation if the monarchy was not reinstated. January 17, 1793 saw King Louis condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a weak majority in Convention. The January 21 execution led to more wars with other European countries, which didn't appear to surprise anyone but the French. Louis' Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, would follow him to the guillotine on 16 October.

When war went badly, prices rose and the sans-culottes (poor labourers and radical Jacobins) rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions, although no one was really sure what it was they were revolting against. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary coup, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government.

The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror (1793–1794). At least 1200 people met their deaths under the guillotine — or otherwise — after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. The slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thoughts or activities (or, as in the case of Jacques Hébert, revolutionary zeal exceeding that of those in power) could place one under suspicion, and the trials did not proceed over-scrupulously.

In 1794 Robespierre had ultra-radicals and moderate Jacobins executed; in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly because he killed everyone who supported him. On July 27, 1794, the French people who managed to literally keep their heads throughout the Reign of Terror revolted against the excesses of the Robespierre's idea of governance in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction. It resulted in moderate Convention members deposing and executing Robespierre and several other leading members of the Committee of Public Safety. The Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on 17 August 1795; a plebiscite ratified it in September; and it took effect on September 26, 1795.

So basically, what the French had achieved was a political cycle that involved killing whoever was currently ruling and replacing them with someone else to kill in the future to keep everyone guessing.

Napoleon, on November 9, 1799, finally staged the coup which installed the Consulate; this effectively led to his dictatorship and eventually (in 1804) to his proclamation as emperor, which brought to a close the specifically republican phase of the French Revolution, as he was much more difficult to kill than the cake-eating monarchy or delusional Robespierre.

As history would have it, however, Napoleon's reign was short-lived, and France degenerated into some semblance of a republic again.

AS FRENCH AS THE EIFFEL TOWER

What would the Family Feud Survey say if we asked, "What is Uniquely French?" At least 40% would say the Eiffel Tower. The history of the Eiffel Tower is almost as impressive as the French inability to govern themselves without killing each other.

This tower, named for its designer Gustave Eiffel, was a landmark of the world's fair held in Paris in 1889. It was a large, impsoing structure and, at the time, was the tallest building in the world. The Eiffel Tower became a symbol of Paris and was regarded as an impressive example of modern engineering. People could see it from far away, and fair visitors could ride elevators inside the tower to emerge on a viewing platform and see a spectacular aerial view of the fair grounds and the city.

The Eiffel Tower, when it was built, was seen as a monstrosity. Parisians hated the concept and tower, and believed it was an eyesore. Once it began to impress everyone else in the world, however, they came around to the idea that they should be proud of it, since they really didn't have much else going for them.

ROLLING OVER LIKE A TRUCK-STOP WHORE

Nearly as impressive as their inability to govern themselves is the French inability to pose any resistance whatsoever to foreign invaders without Napoleon.

Much like the ill-fated Revolutionary pre-Napoleonic wars, France believed it would be a good idea to declare war on Nazi Germany in 1939 after the Germans sacked Poland. Within days of the German western offensive in 1940, Germany had invaded France, and the French collectively rolled over like a truck-stop whore and became "Vichy France."

The remainder of what was considered "France," i.e. not a puppet Nazi government, had to relocate to London, England.

Among the most notable achievements of the French during World War II were antisemetic laws that would even make Hitler ashamed. In 1942, however, the Germans still found it necessary to take away even the illusion of political autonomy from the French and simply ruled them outright.

Eventually, we in America got sick of the European theatre nonsense and stepped in, liberating the ever-ungrateful French, who promptly began judging us as inferior once we returned to our 'dinky little island' home.

CURRENT FAUX PAS

The French still have their knack for inappropriate behavior today.

After poo-pooing the War on Terror, the French government has finally, after years of terrorist attacks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Egypt, begun to expel radical Muslim clerics and preachers from France. What they fail to realize is that in the eyes of the world, those hairy pedophiles who make marvelous perfume but are somehow unable to operate a shower more than once a month are not worth blowing up for any purpose. If we didn't have to worry about some place to relocate them, we would've turned the French homeland into a parking lot for Germany after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Recently, French President Jaques Chirac, the epitome of French foot-in-mouth-ness, publicly criticized British quisine with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, going so far as to insist that a nation with food "that bad" simply could not be trusted.

France subsequently lost their bid for the 2012 Olympics, which serves them right.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE FRENCH PROBLEM?

There remains the question of what to do about the "French Problem."

First and foremost, we simply cannot let them fly airplanes in United States airspace.

We may just have to ignore them and hope they go away. In the words of Marie Antoinette, we could simply forget they exist and "let them eat cake," but we'd probably have to make it for them, provide instructions for its consumption, and provide U.N. supervisors to keep them from hurting themselves in the process.


--- Salem Watchen, Chief Editor of Salem's Lot
Washington, D.C.
August 3, 2005

posted by Salem Watchen @ 8/03/2005 08:09:00 PM   21 Screamed "Wait! I'm Not Dead Yet!"