Xenophobia

I like Anthony Bourdain. He has a new show here. I've seen two episodes and unfortunately, he's batting a .500. The show about Iceland sucked.

The show about France Monday last was great. His main thesis is that the French way of life may not be better but it was different and it could be appreciated. From the new shows site:

The most important thing to do the instant you arrive in Paris is stop, find some place inviting and slip comfortably into the Parisian pace of life.

I've never been to France. The Divine Mrs. M was there in her later teens (yes, I'm jealous). She is emphatic that I would love it and it's way of life. I'm suspicious. Admittedly, I haven't traveled like she has. The height of my cultural exposure was the miniature golf on family vacations to Myrtle Beach perhaps the ugliest and tackiest place I've been to besides the Canadian side of Niagra Falls.

Watching the show the French was of life did seem charming - long meandering breakfasts at cafes, wine-laden lunches, late night dinners, everyone leisurely strolling and enjoying the moment - until I realized that well it looks like the way of life of an unemployed person or a guy on welfare.

I noted this to The Divine Mrs. M. who didn't seem to pleased and this this week, I read this article. And I was right! They are either unemployed/underemployed or on welfare. And just like people in those circumstances, they don't really seem happy.

Sorry Tony, but my suspicions of the French are still intact. The French don't seem like a nice bunch of people. I love immigrants and have met a few and the only ones that I couldn't stand (ok, there were only two) were frogs. So, in the words of John J. Miller, let's remember what they are really about.

Time and again in the last two centuries, France has refused to come to grips with its diminished status as a country whose greatest general was a foreigner, whose greatest warrior was a teenage girl, and whose last great military victory came on the plains of Wagram in1809.

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