Fascinating article via Ambient Irony, Hating America, about how Europe views the US through the lens of caricature. It's really long, and there are a million passages I could quote, but this made me chuckle:
Though fewer than 14% of Frenchmen have visited America, “most have strong views” of it; indeed, “Europeans who have not been in the U.S. . . . have the strongest opinions” about it, and malice toward America is inversely proportional to the amount of time individuals have actually spent there.
Conversely, I loved France and everything French until I actually lived there.
(And if you see the text as a mess of question marks, follow Pixy Misa's advice for changing the encoding.)
(P.S. I finally had enough time to sit down and read Pixy's post on Thought too.)
Posted by Sarah at August 4, 2004 01:12 PMBingo!
I loved France until I went there. They were smelly, rude, bastards.
One Frenchman spoke English to Brit, but suddenly couldn't conjure up an English word when we Americans were speaking with him.
I put a pretty heavy American-hick accent on my broken French just to piss him off for that.
Bone jur, mohn sig nor. Pahr lez vuuz Eng laze?
Posted by: DarthVOB at August 5, 2004 06:01 AM