Several days ago, in my morning msn perusal before opening my email inbox, I noted an article. I'll link it, but to sum up, it was about how french vacationers are considered the absolute worst in the world. In their defense, Expedia Marketing Director Timothee de Roux claimed that, since France has such diverse countryside and is so lovely, it's inhabitants aren't in the habit of travelling, and are unaware of necessary etiquette. I was more amused by the article than anything else, and moved on, noting it mentally as just another typical msn filler story. You know, along with the "who's hotter?" stories and the "10 tips for a great summer!" (wear sunblock, eat outside often... etc) kind of stories. Useless nonsense that's there more to give you a short chuckle than to inform you of anything. I must say though, I've seen several of these reports on msn. (I like the travel section)
here, here and here.
look! Three articles about the French being arrogant and tight fisted! Does this mean MSN is an anti-french company? Are they... prejudiced against the french? Miquelon might think so.
The very next day, on Bastille Day, this fellow was hard at work arguing with "french-haters". Aaaand that included me. Here are our tweets as follows:
beornica: According to msn yesterday, the French are the worst vacationers, worse even than americans. Turns out they're arrogant. Who'd have thunk?
miquelon: @beornica Happy you found a shoddy study to support your prejudice?
beornica: @miquelon ha! now there's an odd new bias. I can see it now: "you're NOT allowed to date that Jean Michel! He's one of THOSE PEOPLE."."
miquelon: More French Bashing on twitter: @kmore @GenXer @cphilley @ryantate @jamesconlee @ghart1098 @oge_mek @beornica @LordLindley
(look! I'm a french basher! I was like "whaaaaaa?")
and THEN TODAY, he STILL couldn't drop it! I felt like when you step in gum and it just wont. come. off.
miquelon@beornica @johnnysummerton Great Article About Stereotypes: http://bit.ly/19hIDy & A site about French Bashing: http://www.miquelon.org/
is that passive aggressive or what?? So I responded in form, as passive-aggressively as I could bear:
beornica:@miquelon okay, thanks for the reference. I found a great article for you, too! http://personalethics.suite...
(that's an article I found about taking offense to things too easily, and how very often our being that way is worse than what we took offense to. Something I wish I could share with lotttts of people I've known who get their panties in a bunch all too easily.) And the immediate response...
miquelon@beornica Thanks for the article, no personal offence, working on behalf of my community which was the scapegoat of the Bush Cheney Admin
No personal offense! Does this mean he'll lay off? Probably not, but hopefully. However, I STILL am reeling over this whole thing. Seriously, you should check out this guy's tweets. French prejudice? Give me a break. I'd like to know what this community is he works so diligently for. Is it like... the french panthers? I did read some articles he cited on twitter, which claim Bastille Day as being used by other nationalities as a French Hatred day of sorts. The whole thing is Twilight Zone.
I'd like to submit his entire site and all those tweets of his to this site.
