Saturday, March 25, 2006
Imagine if a non-Frenchman behaved this way.
Chirac gives use of English tongue lashing
An ardent defender of the French tongue, Mr. Chirac said he was stunned to hear English on the lips of the Frenchman in a speech at the two-day European summit.
"I was deeply shocked that a Frenchman would speak at the council table in English," he told journalists, explaining for the first time his abrupt walkout when the summit opened on Thursday.
"That's the reason why the French delegation and myself left, so as not to have to listen to that," he added.
Mr. Chirac's surprise exit was one of the few incidents to spice up an otherwise staid summit focused on agreeing to a joint EU energy strategy and reviving the bloc's economy.
When Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, head of the UNICE employers federation, started his speech to the EU's 25 leaders, Mr. Chirac interrupted and asked why he was speaking in English, according to a French official.
"I'm going to speak in English because that is the language of business," replied Mr. Seilliere, former chief of the French employers' group MEDEF, which has been at odds with the government recently.
Raising eyebrows among his EU counterparts, Mr. Chirac stood up and left the session with Finance Minister Thierry Breton and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy in tow...
Sensitive, sensitive, weak and dangerous.
And for comic relief:
"This is a present from your friends at the Sun," Mr. Lea told the French leader, who first looked puzzled, then smiled as he slipped the little tome into his pocket.
The tabloid waged a provocative campaign against Mr. Chirac in the run-up to the Iraq conflict in 2003, branding him "Le ver" or the worm.
This is why the EU is failing. Who cares what language a political representative speaks, as long everybody understand it. I prefer to speak english to others because it's an easy and universal language, but I also know that english speaking natives are arrogant regarding their language, especially americans, but what they don't know is that I will always understand them, but they will not understand me if I speak my own language. That's why the French are so stupid, they don't see this advantage.
this really does illustrate the way that De Gaulle's legacy is carried forrward. "France is not France if it is not in the first rank... France is not France without its glory.' that's bad enuf coming from the leader of a country that folded in days to the Nazis and would still be occupied if it weren't for anglophone intervention, but even worse from a country which, over the last 60 years has supposedly thrown its lot in with international cooperation.
if Jean-Paul Sartre is the patron saint of bad faith, then France seems to have adopted him as their national saint.
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Chirac is becoming more and more of an old buffoon. Or is it baboon I had in mind?
Allez vous faire enculer - translation for you ignorant fools... go fuck yourselves and take history classes.
Why Frenchy, go wash your mouth out with soap!
(This is soap, btw. HTH)
do not worry, french as language will be dissappeared in the next 100 years. The world will speak english only..
French Arrogance? the idea seems rather outdated in this day and time. France has had it's heyday. from glorious kingdom to mighty empire , now quasi EU state. A second rate nation @ best france is no more , at the front of European integration. this strange nation now seeks to recover the glory of it's past.