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A page I follow on Facebook, who uploads historical photos, uploaded a photo of a French WW1 batallion holding a war-torn French flag in 1917, the men looking absolutely scarred. In the comment section below, the top-rated comment was someone who wrote " Where's the French flag? I don't see that white flag anywhere. "
| Yeah | 7 | |
| No | 14 |
Yeah, I'd have an extremely hard time imagining that a German would say that.
It was an American politician who said (something like) "the French, they're always there when they need you"
It was Homer Simpson (cartoon American) who called the French (something along the lines of) "cheese eating surrender monkeys"
And let's not forget how your previous president referred to most African nations - 'shitholes'.
So it's not just us Brits.
Cheers.
No other nationalities does it in casual conversation to that level. Maybe thats just my experience but when I hear the accent I know something like "why does your country not have universial healthcare" is coming. Followed by "do you not care about school shootings"
Yeah, any joke about a country that was attacked and suffered nearly two million civilian and military deaths is always hilarious. I'm sure lots of Americans would laugh their heads off at jokes about how 9/11 happened to the most militarily powerful nation in the world with the most expensive and all-pervasive intelligence organisations in the world. Pearl Harbor also has unmined comedic potential.
The "French surrender monkey" meme goes back to French opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that was pushed by Bush (well, Rumsfield and Cheney, actually) and Blair. The French thought the evidence was shaky and bringing Saddam Hussein's regime down would increase instability in the region. Care to remind me who was proved right in the end?
Those with some historical knowledge may also remember the French pulling out of Vietnam when they realised they couldn't win that war. How did that work out?
Weirdguy mentions how the "joke" might have been posted by a Brit. I wouldn't be surprised; there are quite a few nationalistic arseholes in this country who believe being born British makes them superior to everyone else, especially those on the other side of the English Channel and the Irish sea. There are also a lot of really stupid people in Britain who know virtually nothing about the history of their country and the wars it has fought in. For example, they don't know that while 750,000 British soldiers died in WWI, nearly twice that many French soldiers were killed and that was a higher proportion of the national population.
I don’t know if it’s “too far” but it probably tells you a lot about the person saying it. As is usually the case with people who think it’s cool to be edgy and different, they probably say much worse stuff when they can get away with it.
It's not really my kinda joke, I don't find it funny, or offensive. It's really more of a boorish thing to say than anything else.