Fuming

I was busy fighting with blogger, and now I've forgotten what i wanted to talk about.
Oh, yeah.
Yet another interesting post from SuperFrenchie on Alain Bernard's supposedly boastful words before the relay race, but one can't actually find trace of them, comments on the fact that if whe was talking in english, it's bullshit, cause he doesn't speak english, and if it was in french it's probably been badly translated cause he talks slang.
More bashing, surrender jokes, arrogance claims. Now I am so tired of these, mainly cause whatever I do I'll be the French girl in another country and the Brit girl here.
So.
1) What IS it about the body odour claims, jesus christ? Every american blog i've been on that talks about france at some point has had this. I've lived here for FIFTEEN years in less than six months.
Would I have noticed? Especially since all the tourist claims make me paranoid? No, of course not.
And I add a disclaimer for a métro (subwayyy) at the Heure de Pointe (the time betwen five and seven when everyone is coming out of work and the place is so jampacked you can't breathe) cause that is just caused but such close conditions, you dumb fucks.

2)arrogance. Don't know. Maybe I'm just as arrogant as the rest. But I resent being told off because the country I love in "only acts in its own interests!".
No fucking kidding, Boy (or girl) genius. Point me to a country that doesn't. Please. I'd be delighted.
And America is the last fucking place to be able to teach anyone ANYTHING these days. Go and clean up your criminality, your war, your infant mortality rates (higher than Nairobi's in some cities) your obesity epidemic (although I'd rather not talk about that after reading TheRotund's blog) your high school dropout rate, your energy consumption, your bigotry, your invasion of privacy,and then come back to tell us off, okay?

3) Surrendering. Now this is VERY touchy subject, and bringing this up is terribly painful to the people who had to experience it. I'd first like to point out that the GOVERNMENT became Vichy, and the people had no choice in the matter. Unlike going into Iraq, n'est-ce pas. And th US government recognized Vichy. There's something to be proud of.
Then here down south people would probably bitchslap any american who turned up airing the opinion that the french liked being invaded. Especially here, where a lot of the resistants were. The mountains were great places to hide. It was the unoccupied "free zone" although under Vichy control.
After all, there was rationing so the German army ate well, French men sent off to germany to work-my, doesn't that sound like an enviable situation!
And without us, you could have stayed under English control for another couple of centuries, like the Australians. D'you want us to take the Statue of Liberty back? After all, we made it. Although I'm sure you'd rather forget that.
This surrendering stance is a terribly painful one to address, because unlike you, it is a period of history we have to study in school. We see what happened to Jean Moulin for his bravery. We have to learn about Oradour-sur-Glane and the others, not so famous.
We study poetry written by men who were shot a day later, because they wanted their country back. I can't remember the title of the poem that struck me most, this was years ago,in my first year of high school, but I'll never forget how haunting the words were, and how sudden the realization that he knew he would be shot for his deeds. He knew that these would be his last written words. And I believe this kind of bravery makes up for any collaborators.
You are in no way able to judge this. It didn't happen in your country. You were the strong ones.
You were lucky.

This is all very haphazard, but I get very incoherent when I get pissed-off.

Now of course France has its faults, I moan about them enough the rest of the time. i complain about the strikes, about my university being in tatters, about the anarcho-communists who spend their time bitching and trying to disrupt everything so nothing changes and everything gets worse, I complain about the State selling off EDF, about smoking regulations, about education, about everything under the sun when I'm in the mood.

But I'm tired of hearing the same old tired insults all the damn time, from people who have never lived here, don't speak a word of french or any other language, and think everything is owed to them because they're american.

And by the way, you are killing sooooo much goodwill from French kids who want to love America but only see you insulting us all the time.
Way to go.