Consider every realm: Finance, education, warfare, health care, international relations, all of it.

In my lifetime, has any culture in Western Civ become more debased, more corrupt, more inept than the French?

It's late in the day to pretend they could ever be funny.

"They’re always drinking out of those red cups. Communist cups."

My middle daughter tells me about the Russian girl she went to high school with. She was just thrilled to attend a party where drinks were served in the Red Solo Cups she's heard so much about. She also marked down in her memory the first high school fist fight she witnessed, and later boasted (really) about the one time she received detention.

The girl also remarked how surprised she was with how loose American high school classes were compared to those in Russia. A class-wide discussion there would be unheard of.

It's so true! European kids are obsessed with the red plastic cups Americans drink out of. Also, brown paper bags. Because they see them in the movies.

Why the Hell don't European children have access to Solo™ cups and brown paper bags?

The Magic of Europe

Megan McArdle Aug 24 2009, 2:33 PM ET

[…]

Without the pretty buildings, what would often most strike Americans is the cramped space and a succession of petty inconveniences.

"Clément is afraid of rednecks"

I suspect the fruit of a great many films and telefilms of the Macon County Line genre (broadcast on French television).

"In my lifetime, has any culture in Western Civ become more debased, more corrupt, more inept than the French?"

No.

It's a puzzle to me why people travel, and still want things to be like home. You have to be pretty naïve to imagine an entire nation is like the worst examples one reads in the news. It's called the news, not the ordinaries.

Who gives a fuck what the French think of us? Do the French care what the U.S. thinks of them?

Should we talk about their legendary craven attitudes, which asserted itself so admirably when facing Hitler? No one can surrender quite like the French, those stalwart champions of human rights. How about their exquisite snobbery? Why do so many American tourist return from France with such delectable tales of their unsurpassed rudeness and arrogance?

The French have no moral perch to pass judgment. It's like me asking Sarah Palin what she thinks of Obama. I already hold her in consummate contempt. I wouldn't even stand there long enough for her to murder the English language in her inimitable incoherent style as she attempted to string two sentences together. Even I did listen, I wouldn't even consider what she had to say. I'd just be dumbfounded at her delusional belief that anyone should give a rat's patoot.

I've had a couple of Frenchies tell me they love my car.

(I drive a muscle car)

For that alone I will always like them....somewhat.

What do the French think of Americans?

They probably think we all wear Shreddies.

I was so hoping that author was the same Carrie Dennis who is the first viola with the LA Phil, but it's just some chick in NYC in her first job. Not reporting, just typing.

A lot of people don't realize this, but France isn't really part of NATO and hasn't been for a long time. De Gualle cut off the integartion between the French military and NATO in 1966; since then France has had an "advisory" role, which amounts to no committment on France's part. They have particpated in a few NATO activities, but at arm's length, which limits their usefulness in international operations.

"Clément is afraid of rednecks..."
Ha! My husband, who refuses to admit he is of French descent, went feral pig hunting this weekend... with a pack of dogs and a bowie knife.
Most rednecks are very nice, as long as you don't start fights with them.

Crid, they have other plastic cups and other grocery bags... they just see the American ones on film and therefor think they're quaint and foreign and exotic and stuff.

So does all this mean that we can call him Clem?

> they have other plastic cups and other
> grocery bags...

I don't believe you!

European children have to drink from their little cupped hands. When they get to college, they can't get drunk and hit on the busty daughters of Fort Wayne podiatrists like normal students, because they're too busy trying to sip the beer before it gets warm or leaks through their clutched knuckles, and it dribbles down their chins onto their burlap clothes anyway.

And European children can't have normal childhoods full of reading and playtime, because everytime they walk to the store with their Moms, they have to make ten or fifteen trips to carry all the individual packages of baking soda and aerosol cheese and (unsweetened) breakfast cereal, because Europe is a primitive country and they haven't learned how to tote things yet.

Sheezus, being a European sucks.

I'm glad I'm an American.

That's 'Murican, Crid, and smile when you say that, pard!

So why should I care what the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" think of the good ol' U.S. of A.?

In my opinion, they are too busy brown-nosing the f&cking Islamic fascists, just like many of them did with the previous generation of fascists known as Nazis.

Not much good has come out of France for a long time.

Charles, not trying to quibble, but last week I read an article about the general collapse of the culture over there, and there was one very specific flow of goodness that HAS "come out of France" for quite some time now: All their bright people, the ones who might have been expected to build the France of our dreams in the decades ahead.

I'll never find the piece now, but it said that the greatest concentration of French expats is now in London, the world's new financial capital.

Patrick, have you been to France?

Ah:

The pre-eminence of French culture has evaporated, before our very eyes, within a generation. The fear that innovation might damage or detract from their weighty heritage has left it like an angry child, with its eyes closed and its hands over its ears, la-la-la-ing “Je ne regrette rien.” French civilization went from the brilliant clamor of the streets to the musty hush of the museum. Instead of creating, they have dusting.

Culture doesn’t arise out of nothing. It is the symptom, the consequence, of all national life. The French political system—and the fatly satisfied ruling class—has stifled and penalized every sort of innovation. Employing anyone is an agony, unemploying them a trauma. The state taxes and flings out streamers of red tape, and a political orthodoxy has driven the wealth and opportunity creators abroad. Where I live, in Chelsea, in London, now sounds like an arrondissement of Paris. According to the BBC, London is the sixth-biggest French city in the world.

The bureaucratic French are fearful of entrepreneurialism. They dare not take chances—they dare not risk their precious culture; their lunches; their months-long summer breaks; their endless public holidays that slop over into the weekend; their right to relax, to shrug their shoulders, to not work to the same strictures as everyone else.

That.

Related to the above: When I was in elementary school, in the late 1960s, the school insisted on all students learning French because French was going to be the "international language of diplomacy". It was believed at the time that eventually most international transactions would be done in French. We learned about the Royal Academy and its role in regulating the use of the language, but as fourth-graders we didn't appreciate the implications.

Fast forward to 1981. I'm in college, majoring in computer science, and taking French as my foreign language requirement. I'm surprised to find out that, according to our professor (who is the department head) that most engineering in France is done in English. Why? Because the Academy has stifled the evolution of the French language and won't let them invent or borrow any words to describe advanced technical concepts. In officially-approved French, there are no words or concise phrases for things like "disk drive" or "RAM" or "shift register". It's my understanding that Airbus does most of its working-level engineering in English, and then the final documentation gets re-written to French to be official. The French govenrment owns a share of Airbus so it looks the other way.

> French was going to be the "international
> language of diplomacy".

Ah!, I remember those days. It was weird, because American English was already the language of aviation and commerce and logistics and agriculture and and and....