America's rightwing now likes France??!

[JaneyVee]

The French have been the butt of every conservative joke ever told for as long as I can remember. From Dennis Miller, to Larry the Cable Guy, to FOX News, to the drunk moron in your local pub, etc. The rightwing has spent their entire life calling France's men feminine and their women hairy. They call them "cowards" every chance they get, "traitors", "wimps", say "they smell like cheese", and mock their accent, etc. It always seems like when rightwingers claim to "stand" with someone i.e. Israel, now France, what they really mean is "I stand with you in hating an enemy scapegoat". It seems like hate is the only thing that gives the rightwing a sense of comradery with others, not common good or love or tolerance or understanding. Even when the other side doesn't return the same mutual feelings of hate i.e. France, Israel. It always boils down to rallying around enemy scapegoats for them.

[SomethingFishy]

1. Yeah I seem to remember something about "Freedom Fries"

and pouring French Wine down the sewer when the French decided to sit out the disaster in Iraq.

[COLGATE4]

2. Remember "Surrender Monkeys"???? nt

[JaneyVee]

3. Ok I'm going to have to google that one. brb.

[The Shredder]

4. "Cheese eating surrender monkeys"...

is one RW reply about France...

[COLGATE4]

8. I believe the full quote was

"Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys".

[bemildred]

5. The right-authoritarians affections are very fickle you know.

It all depends on whether you fit the agenda for today or not.

It's essentially a narcissistic view of the world so of course it doesn't work very well.

And then there are the Good Cop, Bad Cop strategies, which are also very popular all over really, and can lead to the same appearance of incoherence.

And when your object is winning through intimidation, you savage whomever is annoying you today, you have no stable relations with anybody, they all become disposable, outsiders, prey.

And then incoherence can be a strategy in itself, the crazy guy strategy, in which one pretends to be crazy in order to intimidate, and also in other cases because it thwarts communication.

But yeah, they are being dumb asses.

[Marr]

6. They hated New York, too-- until the attack on it made an easy excuse for a war.

[Orsino]

7. The wingnut mind is easily distracted by shiny objects.

As long as those shiny objects can be used to deflect criticism of their ideas.

[Populist_Prole]

9. I've actually noticed this beginning a few years ago

My father and his group of friends are all very right wing chickenhawk types, and bashing France was always a pastime of theirs.

With Le Pen being more prominent over the years they no longer bash France and actually speak well of it, though they don't quite put them on a pedestal the way they do Israel.

[Wounded Bear]

10. France is our ally...

France has always been our ally.