Farewell to France?

What do other Europeans think about the French?  Correctly match the description with the people that don't like the French and win a Quid Nimis t-shirt.

1. The French are chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humorless.
2. The French are pretentious, haughty and frivolous.
3. The French are cold, distant, vain and impolite.
4. The French are snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed.
5. The French are not very with it, egocentric bons vivants.
6. The French are agitated, talkative and shallow.
7. The French are disobedient, immoral, disorganized, neo-colonialist and dirty.

Answer choices: a.Swedes, b. British, c.Greeks, d. Italians, e. Germans, f. Dutch, and g. Spanish. 
Bonus points: Respond with your well-chosen adjectives and get extra points good toward a week-long, all expense paid trip to Gay Paree! Second prize: two weeks in Gay Paree.

In our continuing effort to provide balance to the prevailing negativity in the media, we bring you this little tidbit from The World and I, an online magazine that was originally billed as a teaching tool for school-age children but which we think is a way for the far-right to stealthily infiltrate the minds of our youngsters. All right!  We subscribed to it by accident (don't ask) and had such a hard time trying to figure out how to unsubscribe that we just ate the cost and thought nothing more about it.  Then we started getting these mysterious emails about "This Week's Headlines" from TWAI.  It was a couple of weeks before we started opening them and, lo and behold, it was really interesting.  International coverage from a different point of view and often about places few of us could locate on a map.  So today we find out that there is actually a chance that France could get voted out of the EU.  OK, it's a slim chance, but doesn't that just make you SMILE?  Even the title of the article is hilarious: "What's Wrong With the French?"  And the author, Gareth Harding, doesn't say "Do you have 5 hours?"  Our favorite bit:

But few ordinary Europeans would shed many tears if Paris were asked to leave the EU, because the French are probably the most disliked people on the continent and the French government one of the least loved in the Brussels-based club.

This is not the biased ranting of an Anglo-Saxon hack but the conclusion of a study -- titled "Why the French are the Worst Company on the Planet" -- by French commentators Olivier Clodong, a professor of social and economic communication in Paris, and Jose-Manuel Lamarque, a journalist.

One quibble:  most disliked on any continent.  Perhaps the Frogs will finally get their comeuppance but the best result yet would be if France rejected the new constitution and everyone else decided that the whole super-state thing was a bad idea anyway.

The bloom is off the French rose in a bunch of ways.  On Morning Edition (NPR) we heard that Schroeder would lose in a national election even if the US invaded France.  We think that there are a substantial number of Germans who would vote whole-heartedly for a party that supported an American invasion of France.  Earlier this year the French government had to effectively abolish the much-vaunted 35-hour work week by "allowing" employers to negotiate deals with staff to increase work time in exchange for more pay.  What a concept.  The trade unions are against this, of course, and here is the reasoning:

Besides working up to 220 extra hours every year — the previous limit was 180 — the new rules allow employees to put in "optional overtime" in return for extra pay. It also lets them sell part of their holiday entitlement back to their employers or put it toward early retirement, training or sabbatical leave.[...]
 Jouan [Remi Jouan, National Secretary of the CFDT, France's largest trade Union] believes the main impact of the reform will be felt when, or if, France's economy picks up and companies choose to increase hours instead of hiring. "That's our problem with this reform," he said. "It's just not an answer to unemployment."

Noooo... a growing economy is never an answer to unemployment.  Yoohoo,  Mr. Trade Unionist!  What is the answer?  We want to know, really!!  You would think, reading this, that the trade unionists think that this is the thin edge of the slavery wedge, that it's just a matter of time and a booming economy and everyone will be working overtime (for more money, BTW) and oopsie merde alors there goes our quality of life!  And God forbid we lose one of our (60 zillion) precious holidays!!! 

Mes amis, some things must be borne: just shut your eyes and think of Jerry Lewis.

Comments

[Julien]

I'm always fascinated by the absolute enthusiasm with which some americans hate the French. Picking isolated opinions and making them look as all French were lazy, rude etc. ( I was not for the 35 hour weeks law for example). But it would be interested to have the same poll about the American People. I'm pretty sure it would be as bad and close to a caricature as this one is. To add a ligthier note, I did enjoy that the swedes thought the French were "humorless" since they are of course known as the "fun nation", a place well known the love of fun and humor of its citizens... as somebody once said, what you don't like the most in others is often what you secretly hate in yourself.

[bbmoe]

Julien: Don't you worry: there are people in Europe working overtime to make sure that everyone has the worst possible concept of America and what it stands for. Check out David's Medienkritik or Luc van Braekel's blog for a start. As for Quid, we don't spend a bunch of time on the French because No Pasaran! does it so much better.
Let us be the first to say that we don't see the 35 hour work week as aymptom of laziness. It is only a part of the whole "worker's rights" populism that accrues good feelings for a governing system that actually takes away natural rights and substitutes unnatural, uneconomic principals of governmentand consolidates power in the bureaucracy. Yes, government has a role to broadly prevent exploitive practices in the work place, but in a vibrant, elastic economy workers have unregulated choice and vote with their feet. That is called the action of the market place. When the Socialists say with authority to the "workers," "You are entitled and the only reason you aren't getting these goodies is that the entrepreneurs are greedy, money-grubbing blood-suckers who want to destroy your quality of life"* they actually STRIP the liberty of self-determination from the worker and make them victims.
*Please substitute "American" for "Entrepreneur" and you have Gerhard Schroeder's campaign in a nutshell.