The outrage du jour is President Obama's neglecting to personally attend (or send a high level cabinet official to) the massive rallies held yesterday throughout France to demonstrate national unity in the face of these brutal terrorist attacks.
Politico decries "Obama's French Kiss-Off":
Barack Obama’s French kiss-off
The president's decision to skip the Paris march raises eyebrows.
Whose eyebrows were raised, exactly? Oh,
these guys:
I wonder what was on Obama's schedule that was more important to the president than showing radical Islam we mean business?
The National Journal also fretted about Obama's "Obama's Optics Problem." Sportscaster Mike Lupica says the Administration "Betrayed our Values."
CNN, ABC and Bloomberg have all piled on, but the most vocal scolds have been the Republicans. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both weighed in accusing the Administration of failure to stand with the French people:
Our President should have been there, because we must never hesitate to stand with our allies. We should never hesitate to speak the truth. In Paris or anywhere else in the world.
Interestingly, no one (least of all Ted Cruz) has suggested that Obama make an appearance in Nigeria. Or Pakistan, or Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Egypt, or India. Or anywhere else where terror attacks occur on a fairly frequent basis, many involving more than 17 deaths. However horrific the Paris attacks were, they were
not unusual.
As for the brouhaha over Obama's "non-presence," it appears the Administration now is acknowledging it should have sent someone beyond our Ambassador to more "visibly" represent the U.S. at the rally. But the Republicans' sudden "respect" for the French people should be recognized for the crass political opportunism it is. These are the same Republicans and their media blowhards who jumped on the Franco-bashing bandwagon, ready to isolate France with economic sanctions and lambaste them with ridicule just a few short years ago. Supposed "liberal voices" such as Thomas Friedman (who petulantly argued that France should be kicked out of the UN Security Council) were hardly immune, but the real purveyor of anti-French sentiment during the past decade was the Republican Party.
Who could possibly forget "Freedom Fries?" That was what the pro-war cheerleaders at Fox News dreamed up to "punish" France for being smart enough not to wade into the quagmire/fiasco/clusterfuck we all remember fondly as the Iraq War. Because the best thing the American right could possibly come up to do to the French with was to call them names and not buy their cheese.
Here's the brave Fox News, drumming up anti-French sentiment in 2003 with this clever headline: "Americans Just Say 'Non' to French Products":
Jokes about France are plentiful lately, but many Americans aren't laughing at the European country's resistance to using force with Iraq -- and are fighting back by closing their wallets.
Apparently the Chickenhawks at Fox assumed the very idea of Americans courageously "closing their wallets" was enough to strike terror into the heart of any nation. But the
piece de resistance was yet to come:
Neal Rowland, who owns Cubbie's restaurant in Beaufort, N.C., said he decided to put stickers that say "Freedom" over the word "French" on all his menus after he watched France back away from support for war in Iraq.
"Since the French are backing down, French fries and French everything needs to be banned," he told Foxnews.com in a telephone interview. "Fry sales have really gone up. People who eat them now say, 'Freedom never tasted so good.'"
Nevermind the minor point that without the French
there wouldn't be any United States! To American conservatives, they'll always be spineless, snivelling traitors for failing to join us in Bush's lie-based war:
When France Inter radio's correspondent in Washington, Laurence Simon, started to explain her government's position to Fox News (owned by Murdoch) she was interrupted by the presenter. "With friends like you, who needs enemies," she was told as she was taken off air.
The
conservative print media was no less contemptuous of France around the time of the Iraq War:
The front page of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post yesterday shows the graves of Normandy with the headline: "They died for France but France has forgotten."
A "Pugnacious" couch warrior named Steve Dunleavy weighed in:
"Where are the French now, as Americans prepare to put their soldiers on the line to fight today's Hitler, Saddam Hussein?" asks the pugnacious columnist Steve Dunleavy. "Talking appeasement. Wimping out. How can they have forgotten?" A cartoon in the same paper shows an ostrich with its head in the sand below the words: "The national bird of France."
And, of course:
"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" - a phrase coined by Bart Simpson but made acceptable in official diplomatic channels around the globe by Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for the rightwing weekly National Review (according to Goldberg)-
Chickenhawk
extraordinaire George Will got in his smarmy little dig:
In the Washington Post, George Will opined that the "oily" foreign affairs minister, Dominique de Villepin, had launched France into "an exercise for which France has often refined its savoir-faire since 1870, which is to say retreat - this time into incoherence".
Another coward with a Nazi-sounding name chimed in with his 2 cents:
The Wall Street Journal editor, Max Boot, argues: "France has been in decline since, oh, about 1815, and it isn't happy about it." What particularly galls the Gauls is that their rightful place in the world has been usurped by the gauche Americans."
Here's the
Republican Majority whip, egging on anti-French sentiment to fellow Republicans at a political convention:
"Of course, we're faced with lots of policy challenges, responding to our opponents all around the world -- the French ...," Blunt, the House majority whip, said before being interrupted by laughter at a Missouri Republican convention.
That was just a warmup.
"Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known, it's never been tried," Blunt quipped, drawing guffaws and applause.
The congressman from Missouri's Ozarks kept rolling.
"Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day -- the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once.'"
Blunt then attributed this line to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion."
Anti-French rhetoric is
still a party pleaser to wingnut Republicans:
Conservative radio talk-show host Mark Levin lashed out at establishment Republicans at the National Rifle Association's annual convention on Friday, charging them with acting like a "bunch of French Republicans" while the Democrats usurp American freedoms.
John Cornyn even warned of the
dire French threat to our borders:
“You gotta stop the flow of people coming across and my friends and your friends Edd who have places in South Texas tell me, as a matter a fact a guy told me last night, he said we’ve got people coming across our place speaking Chinese, French and basically all of the languages in the world, coming through and across our southern border,” Cornyn said during an interview on KSEV.
So it's all rather comical that the right wing and corporate media are now falling all over themselves to pay their respects and "show solidarity" with a country they could only find time to vilify and mock during the past ten years. Which proves that if you want to get on the good side of Republicans, your best bet is to make yourself the victims of a terror attack.
Oh, and for God's sake, please be white.