112 Gripes About the French
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112 Gripes About the French
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Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#2The actual text: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads...
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#3The actual document in pdf format seems to be here: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads...
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#4The actual text: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads...
That text is as important now as it was then. And it can easily be used everyone, with slight adaptions, by replacing France and the US with other nations.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#5Interesting.
I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and everything.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#6I've never heard of this. I'm reading the original right now -- it's amazing.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#7Interesting. I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and everything.
I had plenty of gripes about my brother when I was growing up. Those gripes were trivial but real and talking about them is far healthier than not.
I miss him terribly now.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#8I'm guessing such a book exists in south korea at the moment? I've heard that there's a lot of tension between the US army and the locals. One soldier even raped some local girl back in 2011.
The problem is that people in the army are not the most educated people, and thus they're not the best ambassadors when abroad.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#9> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth, and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful.
Well. I mean...
Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather refreshing way.
"The French don't bathe."
The French don't bathe often enough. They can't. They don't have real soap. (...) The Germans took the soap.Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#10This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time).
I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us.
> We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came to Europe because we in America were threatened by a hostile, aggressive and very dangerous power.
> In this war, France fell in June of 1940, We didn't invade Europe until June of 1944. We didn't even think of "saving the French" through military action until after Peary Harbor -- after the Germans declared war on us
I can't stop reading, this is so interesting, this is really a lesson on racism and discrimination. I'm curious about who wrote this.
> It was inevitable that some Frenchmen would rub some Americans the wrong ray=. City people often rub country folk the wrong «ay the same goes for a Pittsburgher in New Orleans or Texan on Fifth Avenue. We Americans believe in the value of differences -- if basic political beliefs and goals rest on a common foundation. "Unless you bear with the faults of a friend you betray your own."
another one:
> You don't have to love the French. You don't have to hate them either. You might try to understand them, The more important point is not to let your feeling blin d you to the fact that they were and are our allies. They were in 1917, too. The most important question any people can ask itself is this: "Who fights with us? Who fights against us ?"
This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe?
> Yes, we quarrel with the French. The members of a family argue pretty freely inside the home ; We quarrel with our allies, We don't quarrel with our enemies -- we fight them.
I like how this one is phrased so that it sounds like France gave more money. I also really thought that France gave the statue to the US entirely.
> In France, 180 French cities, forty general councils, and thousands of anonymous Frenchmen contributed a quarter of a million dollars (not francs) towards the statue, (The United States raised $280,000.)
that's how much a cocktail was back then:
> A. G.I., comes out of a night club in the States and says, "A buck and half for a Scotch and soda".
that one can apply to the homeless crisis in the US:
> Some of the French are scroungers. Hungry people lose their pride. An empty stomach does not worry about losing face.
France sounded like a muslim country back then:
> Most French girls before the war had far less freedom than our girls back home. A great many were not permitted to go out without a chaperone. France is dominantly Catholic in religion and in morals. The immoral Frenchwomen are, of course, the easiest women for us to meet. That's why we meet so many of them.
this one is hilarious:
> This always startles Americans - at first . Kissing on both cheeks is the traditional French greeting between old friends. For their love making, the French prefer privacy, if available, just as we do.
It's interesting how the second part goes into "germans are so much nicer than french people".
PS: holy shit I can copy/paste from an old picture of a book O_o