Americans are NOT stupid
The last thing was France going against the US regarding Iraq, my peers (lefties) agreed with France, but this led to the whole 'freedom fries' thing, another sign of the right making asses of themselves.rikhyray wrote:Could someone explain why the French are so unpopular in US, as I can see from this thread ? I thought that you 2 are friends - Statue of liberty, Marquis de La Fayette and the whole support for American revolution, something gone wrong recently ?
Americans don't have a problem with the French, maybe they just have more idiosyncracies to make fun of.
And the next time an invading army decides to go jogging across France, we might be there to help... again. (sarcasm, we love our froggy friends!)
The thread title still cracks me up, Americans are definitely stupid.
Know any good Spaniard jokes?
In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
-Moz
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
-Moz
I think some time ago, like mid-70s, there were a thread of poking fun at the French in a number of comedy shows. Most of the people that create and perform in these shows are Canadian, because, as was indicated earlier, we are not really smart enough to be that funny.rikhyray wrote:Could someone explain why the French are so unpopular in US, as I can see from this thread ? I thought that you 2 are friends - Statue of liberty, Marquis de La Fayette and the whole support for American revolution, something gone wrong recently ?
These are mainly the English speaking Canadians, who don't like the French Canadians very much, but they are not allowed to dislike the French because Quebec, which has a lot of money, will shut off all of the heat to the English speaking east coast provinces of Canada (which have hardly any). They can be a hoot, too. Anyway...
These Canadians seeded the American airwaves with French-disdaining comedy skits (where they are allowed to dislike the french) and it kind of snowballed from there to a long running gag.
Mainly, we know the French are classier than us, have a more interesting culture, better wine and cheese, better cuisine, more fashion sense, longer vacations and an inexplicably deeper appreciation of Jerry Lewis while tending to find new ways to say *pfffft* and dismiss us with a vague wave, so about the only thing we can do is try to make mean jokes about them that don't make much sense about them and confuse, well, the German folks, I guess.
[edit] Historo-politically, we are sisters, they are our "older worldly sister", we are the "younger naive sister" so to some extent we have mimiced/envied them, and they get a bit of a smirk from pointing out our faults. (maybe aunt and niece? anyway, you get the idea).
UTENZIL a tool... of the muse.
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motormouth
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- Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:32 pm
gee if we're all so stupid, what who came up with the operating system you're using on your computer? who came up with youtube? Google? The Internet itself? It's predecessor, the Arpanet? Who came up with the lightbulb, the telephone, mass-produced the automobile, who harness ac/dc electrical currents, who came up eith the first nuclear reactor, uhhh where did jazz, blues, rock n roll, hip hop, house, techno music etc etc etc etc etc etc come from. Who helped save you Europeans from Hitler and then held Stalin and the communist u.s.s.r. at bay for the rest of the century.....who came up with a vaccine for smallpox and so many other medical advances....???
If it wasn't for this country, as fucked up as it has become, the world would be way more fucked than it is now.
i wonder how many interviews they cut out, narrowing it down to these people?
I've met a lot of stupid people from Europe and anywhere else in the world.....so annoying.
as if we all support Bush and the war.... give me a break.
If it wasn't for this country, as fucked up as it has become, the world would be way more fucked than it is now.
i wonder how many interviews they cut out, narrowing it down to these people?
I've met a lot of stupid people from Europe and anywhere else in the world.....so annoying.
as if we all support Bush and the war.... give me a break.
Last edited by motormouth on Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Well peeddrroo, even though I went to public schools, I feel that I got a fairly good education about geography. Never mind that the people of other countries depicted in our textbooks were very stereotypical. The fact that the textbooks were out-of-date by the time we got them doesn't entirely explain or justify IMO the impression we were given that Americans were more "advanced".peeddrroo wrote:i'd still be interested to know if you americans feel you learned enough about geography at school.
I became a Ham Radio Operator when I was in my early teens (a long time ago) and talking to people all over the world, and finding their locations on the map in my radio shack gave me a much better grasp of where various countries are located.
My best and most enlightening exposure to geography was travelling to Europe in the early 1970s. I gained a new appreciation for European culture. Watching the tele and listening to news and other broadcasts on the radio gave me a completely different point of view with respect to world affairs. I was appalled by the arrogance of some of the Americans I met while travelling. That's not to say there weren't any arrogant locals, mind you, but I was embarassed to be identified in the same category as those "Ugly Americans".
I'd love to return to Europe with my wife sometime soon. I just wish our current leaders would quit giving America such a bad image abroad. America does a lot of things to help other countries, but those get lost in the smoke of our cruise missles and smart bombs sometimes.
Finally, I'd like to recount something I saw on late-night TV not too long ago. A comedian named Jay Leno, who has a night-time variety show, did a man-on-the-street interview with some folks in Los Angeles where he asked some simple questions. The answers were embarassing. For example, he asked one woman to name the most well-known book ever printed (I think he was expecting her to say "The Bible"). She answered, "Oh My Gawd, I don't know, I don't like books"!. So telling, isn' it?! Then he asked her what were the first words ever spoken over the telephone. She answered, "Can you hear me now?", which was the advertising slogan of a large cell phone carrier here in the US.
Oh my....
Sorry for the long rant.
Cheers!
Monty Python is the other place besides the movies that we learn about other countries and historymbenigni wrote:Where does Monty Python fit into all of this?These Canadians seeded the American airwaves with French-disdaining comedy skits (where they are allowed to dislike the french) and it kind of snowballed from there to a long running gag.
UTENZIL a tool... of the muse.
1. Windows XP - Indian software developers hired by Gates, on H1-B visas;motormouth wrote: who came up with the operating system you're using on your computer? who came up with youtube? Google? The Internet itself? It's predecessor, the Arpanet? Who came up with the lightbulb, the telephone, mass-produced the automobile, who harness ac/dc electrical currents, who came up eith the first nuclear reactor, uhhh where did jazz, blues, rock n roll, hip hop, house, techno music etc etc etc etc etc etc come from. Who helped save you Europeans from Hitler and then held Stalin and the communist u.s.s.r. at bay for the rest of the century.....who came up with a vaccine for smallpox and so many other medical advances....???
2. YouTube - an Asian dude, an Indian dude, and their white figurehead used to get funding;
3. Arpanet - inspired by fear of Russian sputnik launch;
4. Internet - Lawrence G. Roberts, Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and Al Gore; in other words, a Christian, a WASP, a Jew, another WASP, and a fat dude trying to save the world from global warming.
5. Lightbulb - Sir Humphry Davy, an English physician, and then British scientist Warren de la Rue (with a french name).
6. Telephone - Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited; in other words, an Italian, a German, a Scot (Bell was born in Edinburgh), and an American.
7. Automobile - Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, may have built the first steam powered car around 1672; François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed the first internal combustion engine.
8. Mass Production - Ford was first to introduce mass production in recent times, the idea was first developed in Venice several hundred years earlier, where ships were mass-produced using pre-manufactured parts, and assembly lines.
9. Electricity - Franklin came up with it; Galvani (Italian), Volta (Italian), Faraday (British), Ampere (French...hmm the "amp" sounds familiar), and Ohm (German...hmm ohm also sounds familiar) all took the ball and ran with it.
10. Enrico Fermi (Italian) and Leo Szilard (Hungarian Jew) were the first to build a nuclear pile and demonstrate a controlled chain reaction.
11. Jazz - Jazz originated in New Orleans ,Louisiana, United States at around the start of the 20th century. Born out of a blend of African American music styles.
12. Blues - evolved in the United States in the communities of former African slaves, from spirituals, praise songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants.
13. Rock and roll - began to emerge as a defined musical style in America in the late 1940s as an offshoot of both the rhythm and blues music, or R&B, of African American culture.
14. Hip hop - both a music genre and a cultural movement developed in urban communities starting in the 1970s, predominantly by African Americans and Latinos – primarily those of Puerto Rican ethnic heritage.
15. House - an underground spot in Chicago, attended primarily by gay black men, became known as "The Warehouse". The resident DJ at The Warehouse, Frankie Knuckles, mixed classic disco, European synthpop, new wave, industrial and punk recordings. Club regulars referred to his mixes as house music.
16. Techno - came from Detroit, heavily influenced by electronic sounds of Giorgio Moroder (yet another Italian), Kraftwerk (Germans), and Tangerine Dream (more Germans), among others.
17. Etc. etc. - Et cetera is an expression that means "and other things". It is taken directly from the Latin expression.
18. Hitlet and Stalin - ut was called World War II because there were many countries at war, not just us.
19. Smallpox vaccine - David Jenner, while at medical school in London.
My point here is that no one country can take credit for anything entirely. And it's precisely because of statements like yours that people think we're stupid.
Motormouth, indeed.
OK that makes sense, that Google thing "french victories" was done by Canadian teenager.mikemc wrote:I think some time ago, like mid-70s, there were a thread of poking fun at the French in a number of comedy shows. Most of the people that create and perform in these shows are Canadian, because, as was indicated earlier, we are not really smart enough to be that funny.rikhyray wrote:Could someone explain why the French are so unpopular in US, as I can see from this thread ? I thought that you 2 are friends - Statue of liberty, Marquis de La Fayette and the whole support for American revolution, something gone wrong recently ?
These are mainly the English speaking Canadians, who don't like the French Canadians very much, but they are not allowed to dislike the French because Quebec, which has a lot of money, will shut off all of the heat to the English speaking east coast provinces of Canada (which have hardly any). They can be a hoot, too. Anyway...
These Canadians seeded the American airwaves with French-disdaining comedy skits (where they are allowed to dislike the french) and it kind of snowballed from there to a long running gag.
Mainly, we know the French are classier than us, have a more interesting culture, better wine and cheese, better cuisine, more fashion sense, longer vacations and an inexplicably deeper appreciation of Jerry Lewis while tending to find new ways to say *pfffft* and dismiss us with a vague wave, so about the only thing we can do is try to make mean jokes about them that don't make much sense about them and confuse, well, the German folks, I guess.
[edit] Historo-politically, we are sisters, they are our "older worldly sister", we are the "younger naive sister" so to some extent we have mimiced/envied them, and they get a bit of a smirk from pointing out our faults. (maybe aunt and niece? anyway, you get the idea).
I wonder how many of Norteamricanos (including Canadians) are aware that Napoleon Bonaparte is not a character from Sopranos and Austerlitz is not a type of Cocktail. As far as I know the French have some of the most skilled armed forces that actually are extremly efficient, their interventions in past decades were what other would wish to be like, they went, did the job and gone home ( even if I do not support those action on moral grounds cannot oversee their professionalism).
I feel genuinely sick.
american culture is great. I love it - Jazz, Pynchon, Walt Whitman, Robert Johnson, Ali and so on. But one must agree that the average american citizen is one of the dumber asses among developed (and not so) countries.
On the "contraire", Bush wouldn't be reelected.
Anyone knows about the dreadful external politics of US trough the last 100 years. Rumsfeld doctrine, the corrupted military industry politics, environmental issues, etc, reflects the alienated majority, who doesn't give a shit about the world they're living, only to money, guns and such.
Of course there's always exceptions. But in general I think the americans eventually will pay for what they are. Anti americanism throughout the world is the proof of that.
american culture is great. I love it - Jazz, Pynchon, Walt Whitman, Robert Johnson, Ali and so on. But one must agree that the average american citizen is one of the dumber asses among developed (and not so) countries.
On the "contraire", Bush wouldn't be reelected.
Anyone knows about the dreadful external politics of US trough the last 100 years. Rumsfeld doctrine, the corrupted military industry politics, environmental issues, etc, reflects the alienated majority, who doesn't give a shit about the world they're living, only to money, guns and such.
Of course there's always exceptions. But in general I think the americans eventually will pay for what they are. Anti americanism throughout the world is the proof of that.
http://soundcloud.com/coelho
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Dave Smith Prophet 08 SE, Genelecs, RME Multiface, Faderfoxes, Doepfer Drehbank, Padkontrol, DIY Footcontroller, Electro Harmonix Pedals.
I have no issues with the fact that this country provided the opportunities not afforded elsewhere...which is why immigrants like me have come here in the first place. My point is that by making statements that many americans tend to make, they have a sense of entitlement and a cockiness that builds animosity, resentment, ill will, and ultimately, make all of us sound like fucking morons. I don't really care how circular that is, it's just the way it is. It is what it is.mbenigni wrote:nebulae in some of the above you seem to be discounting the concept of American achievements if they were achievements of immigrants. But those immigrants largely comprise the US populace. I sense a circular argument here.