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French bashing Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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International
Tuesday February 18, 12:08 PM
Evil Iraq? Now, Bashing France Is A La Mode
By Matthew Rose
WHO SAYS JINGOISTIC journalism is passe? Rupert Murdoch's media empire is leading a charge against the enemy.
No, not Iraq. France.
First, News Corp.'s New York Post labeled France and Germany "the Axis of Weasel." Then, dispatches from the beaches of Normandy by Post agent provocateur Steve Dunleavy accused France of cowardice for opposing U.S. war plans. "Vive les wimps," he wrote in a column that ran a photo of him holding a toy weasel and a copy of the Post.
News Corp.'s London Sun sent a man in a chicken suit to deliver white feathers of surrender to the French Embassy. Next to a photo of "le poulet du soleil" (the sun chicken), the paper ran a fake picture of Saddam Hussein before the Eiffel Tower with 10 French jokes. (The piece de resistance: How did the French advertise surplus World War II rifles? Answer: Never fired, only dropped once.)
As war edges closer to fait accompli and as the French ramp up their opposition, bashing the home of the Enlightenment has become an industry among some in the U.S. and British media. Jonah Goldberg, a National Review Online editor at large and syndicated columnist, made his career writing editorials poking fun at the French, using a phrase popularized by "The Simpsons" TV show -- "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." These days, he complains, "I'm a market leader, and now it's a free-for-all."
Columnist George Will recently called French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin "oleaginous." New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested replacing France on the United Nations Security Council with India. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal last month asked "Can the French read" as it took the nation to task for what it called failure to back a U.N. resolution on Iraq that France had approved earlier.
Some missives resemble William Randolph Hearst's tactics during his circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst's New York Journal fed anti-Spain fervor after the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 with such slogans as "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!"
Fighting their own circulation battles, News Corp.'s tabloids have become France's bete noire. Col Allan, the Post's editor in chief, says his paper has taken its stand because it feels the French are trying to bolster "a position of influence that frankly no longer exists," and because they are being disloyal. "We know how to spell the word ally," says Mr. Allan, an Australian. A News Corp. spokesman, asked about the reports on France in all its outlets, says "the coverage speaks for itself."
Attacking the French may be one of the last acceptable forms of political incorrectness. "It would be difficult to say the same things about Mexico," says Gordon Dillow, an Orange County Register columnist who once started a piece, "I hate the French. I really hate the French."
Bob Simon, the "60 Minutes" and "60 Minutes II" correspondent, proposed doing a French-bashing piece several years ago but never found the right characters to tell the story, he says. Now he wishes he had the piece to run. "The only people you can get away being nasty to are the WASPs and the French," says Mr. Simon, whose wife is French.
It's not entirely clear if the French really get such talk. Le Monde translated "Axis of Weasel" as "Axe des faux jetons," which put back into English means "axis of devious characters," or "axis of the two-faced." "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" also lost some of its punch in Le Monde's translation as "primates capitulards et toujours en quete de fromages," or in English: "primates who capitulate and who are always in search of cheese."
"Obviously, French-bashing is a trend that helps sell some newspapers to some people," says a French diplomat in Washington. "We regret it, but we don't overreact."
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Emily Nelson contributed to this article.
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