Americans alone is disliking the French? Think again

[RB TexLa]

"So you dislike us? Well, we dislike us even more! Take that!"

French outpace Americans in French-bashing: poll


The French dislike themselves even more than the Americans dislike them, according to an opinion poll published on Friday.

The survey of six nations, carried out for the International Herald Tribune daily and France 24 TV station, said 44 percent of French people thought badly of themselves against 38 percent of U.S. respondents who had a negative view of the French.


I really found this quite silly.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070427/ts_nm/france_dislike_dc_1

[Redstone]

1. Nobody seems to like the French, but they don't seem to mind. They just go on being French,

and anyone who doesn't like it can manger la merde et mourir as far as they're concerned.

Which is an attitude I wholly support. Who is anyone else to tell them how they should act?

Redstone

[Benhurst]

8. Nobody seems to like the French; but thanks to Bush,

everybody hates the Americans.

[Redstone]

11. And with damn good reason. Sigh...

Redstone

[Ganja Ninja]

2. I remember reading a poll a few years ago taken in Europe.

Asking which european country they disliked the most. The French were the most disliked and I think the Italians came in second. But if you're looking for a country that hates the French more than us look no further than England.

[trumad]

4. Now--- If the poll was based on food... well....

Kippers or Escargot?

[Ganja Ninja]

20. I'll take pizza. n/t

[marmar]

3. Extremely silly.....I am an American who loves France and, yes, the French....

I've been to Paris five times, and have had nothing but good experiences. From the guy who saw us looking lost on the streets of the Marais and ran across the street to help us find the restaurant 404 (and this was during the height of US-France tensions and "freedom fries" silliness in the spring of 2003), to the Paris police who brought out coffee and croissants after my passport was stolen.
Vive le France, je t'aime.

[RB TexLa]

5. The point is they are more likely to call them freedome fries, having a more negative opinion of

themselves than we do.

[devilgrrl]

10. So?

:eyes:

[RB TexLa]

12. I just thought it was a silly poll. Asking them if they like or dislike themselves.

As well as their response, classic French.

[WinkyDink]

15. Well,they're much more likely to call them "frites", Just not "Belgian". :)

[WinkyDink]

14. LIKEWISE. Decades ago, first day in Paris= flat tire, rental car. Two young men offered to change it

for us.
Once, a taxi driver said, "Follow me", as we were lost, and he led us to our destination---gratis.
Another, as we were baffled at the Bastille, an elderly man came over to offer us help/directions.

I love France, its incredibly diverse scenery, its culture (and by that I mean "Alain Delon" ;) ); its FOOD and WINE; simply everything.

I'd like to have seen what Americans would've done if Fascists had tried to take over.

Oh, wait...........

[wavesofeuphoria]

21. Yes .. visiting France .. and Europe in general ..

is great. The people were very friendly and nice and generally so very helpful.

I went last fall .. fearing really a lot of antagonism from Europeans and French in particular regarding the US policies and the war. The bag I was toting with me had a button on it that said "Bush Sucks" .. and I also took along about a dozen more of them with me. So many people smiled at me .. started conversations .. and there was a general sense they understood not all Americans .. not many even .. supported the administration. I gave away or exchanged all those buttons in my journeys.

Reminded me that people need to connect more .. rather than letting governments and the media do all the yapping.

Can't agree with you more, marmar! :)

[AspenRose]

27. I'm surprised that button didn't get confiscated by the TSA!

!

[Checkstub]

6. I have my doubts.

Have you ever seen Americans on the Continent?

[Lost4words]

7. So many people hate the french that have never been there!

I have and I loved it and have much respect for the French People, They do many things better than the USA does IMHO.

[mwb970]

25. I found the French to be OK when I was there.

I wonder if at least some of the "rudeness" some people encounter there is actually a normal reaction to their own clueless behavior.

I'm not much of a traveler, but I did take one trip to Dublin, Paris, and Madrid. We got lost once in Paris and the people we asked for help were very nice. The waiters there seemed accommodating. There was one rude guy who barged in front of us in a train-station line, but that could happen anywhere.

I must say, though, that the people in Dublin were SO friendly that it was almost unnerving. Just to give one small example, we asked a clerk on the fifth floor of a department store how to get to a certain restaurant, and she took us down the elevator, out the front door and halfway down the block so she could point out exactly where it was. We had several experiences like that in a short visit.

[Zywiec]

9. I used to work with a French company

and traveled all over Europe with a French engineer. We would ask people all over what they thought of the French, and more often than not, they had a very bad impression. My French friend was amazed and would constantly say that American culture was shit compared to France's.

Even after all that, I would visit and travel through France any chance I could get. It's a beautiful country and most people seem friendly enough.

Don't judge a country or it's people by it's politics. We are a perfect example of that.

Cheers.

[Matsubara]

13. I wasn't aware that Americans didn't like the French.

I remember about 4 years ago, Bill O'Lielly tried to stage a boycott of French products, but it failed miserably because Billow's demographic have never bought any product from France, ever. (Now if he had called for a boycott of chinese-made novelties like "Big Mouth Billy Bass" and "The Dancin' Saguaro/Rose/Santa" He probably could have put a dent in that market)

But I digress. It was found that in the year of Bill's boycott against France, sales of Fench products in the US actually ROSE.

Anyway, real Americans don't hate France or watch Bill O'Reilly.

Real Americans consider it a civic duty to actually sit down and read up on issues before voting on them,

AND to actually have some understanding of the historical context of present-day events,

(so that they don't make preposterous claims like when Bill insisted that US troops murdered Nazi POWs at Malmedy when it was the other way around)

not just parrot some paid shill, latter-day Father Coughlin.


(in case you're unfamiliar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

Charles Edward Coughlin (October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979) was a Canadian-born Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. This radio program included praises of Hitler and Mussolini<1> and was "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture."<2> His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious with his slogan of "Social Justice" against the New Deal.

[RB TexLa]

16. The post was about the silliness of it (in case your unfamiliar with the post you just red)

[Matsubara]

18. I know. Just taking the opportunity to make my point.

Sorry to let the air out of your balloon. It is a cute OP.

[Solly Mack]

17. I've always liked France and the French

and fully appreciate how the French voted about themselves.

It's like the pyramid at the Louvre or the multi lights on the Eiffel Tower..it is both an eyesore and beautiful - it's both national honor and it's ugly underbelly...if that makes sense

the French have a saying - nothing (no one) can be truly beautiful that can't be truly ugly as well

I can love me and still not always like me

[meegbear]

19. But nobody can riot like the French ...

there was an AP photo in the Boston Globe in the late 90's showing a closeup shot of a man in complete riot gear and a pastry chef in his face screaming at the officer, finger jabbing the man. Now that's something you wouldn't see here

I wish I clipped that pic.

[BurtWorm]

22. I like the French people.

I love French culture. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

:patriot: <==insert French tricouleur

[DuaneBidoux]

23. I have lots of French family (my wife is French). We have discussed retiring there lately.

She has lived in US 25 years and we have property we will inherit over there but my wife says she doesn't know if she could stand her own country anymore.

The biggest thing that bothers her about her own country is how people are treated when asking for service. It tends to be the case that when you ask for help (for example in a store) the store employee responds as if you are bothering them (which American' tend to interpret, perhaps correctly, as rudeness). She says Americans are much more friendly and helpful, and I would agree.

But there are many great things about France that still make us love the country (few of which have to do with the temperament of the people). Awesome food, wine, etc. A great cultural life. A work ethos (or lack of it) that makes it such that people still have great vacations and time off for their own stuff (every week in May is a three day weekend, most people either get the entire month of August or of September off).

Other things we like include the absence of the prudishness about the body and sex that one finds here. A much lower crime rate in general because guns are simply not available (And even though one can see blatant acts of sex on regular television the incidence of teen pregnancy is much much lower than the US). Also great is free health care which I am convinced is not only better than American health care but much more efficient (in general French people live both longer and more healthy than Americans).

And, in general, average people are much more educated than average people here. Most average French would have been able to tell you much in advance the strategic reasons why Iraq was an extremely bad idea and probably would not work (coming from their experience in the creation of the modern Middle East and how it had gone so poorly for them when they screwed around there).

[DuaneBidoux]

24. Want to add something about work habits. When they do work they work much harder...

than Americans (which probably explains why they are more productive for each worker (as opposed to the country as a whole) than American workers.

You NEVER see French people drinking coffee in their office while they work, or stand around the water cooler talking "for a minute or two" or frequently they won't even go to the RR without an official break. They keep their noses down on the desk and they just work.

[slampoet]

26. "Jews are self-lothing, thus OK to hate" say the Nazi Party.

See how it starts?