h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and the brits burned down the white house in 1812 but we GOT OVER IT!

check your baggages riotact...

it would appear that you have your pommes mixed up with your oranges.

alec.

i have just discovered that tesco's sells "french red wine" in cans. i think if this had been widely known yesterday, we might have seen real bloodshed on the champs élysées. the grenadier guards may be crack troops, but they would have been severely outnumbered.

er...but isn't that to make it easier to pour the stuff on yer chips?

alec.

I posted this on 'The Olympics' thread three days ago, but it seems to have become a non-sequitur...so, for posterity,
here it is again...did anyone else pick up on this wonderful example of fr*nch sportsmanship? comments please.

F19585?thread=457492&post=5724547#p5724547

alec.

What exactly is your problem with the French? Why this obsesion with digging up all their *alleged* faults?

You're clearly not an unintelligent guy. Why not find something more positive to do with your time?

Blue (or is it Azul now ) everytime this thread crawls out from under it's bridge it makes the French more and more appealing Let Alec do the French Tourist Board's work Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Typical double standard - it's OK for the french to be arrogant, everyone just accepts that. If anyone else did it though...

Why do the french get such a free pass? Is it pity b/c they got the cr*p kicked out of them so many times?

People aren't saying it's OK to be arrogant if you're French.

I think the point is that being sufficiently bothered to maintain a thread which contains all the 'misdeeds' of the French - including this sort of trivia, says more about Alec than it does about the French.

The second point is that you could run this sort of thread about any large nation.

If you're wondering why this perceived arrogance didn't make the media, perhaps that is because that it is a non-story in a minority sport?

Dogs bite men. Professional sportsmen and women are often arrogant. Neither make the papers.

As for your last comment, what kind of historical timeframe are you taking into account? I would suggest it is a bit short.

sprout

Correct.



True enough. Though my guess is that this display of 'arrogance' at winning might just make most of us laugh. It did me whaen I read about it, especially when so few winners have even been able to crack a smile, and indeed many of them have just looked like a smacked arse.

Starting with 50 BC (Julius Caesar) through 1940 (WWII). Yeah, I guess that is pretty short, given the earth has been around about 4-5 billion years. My bad.

Hey sprout, why don't you wander over to the what's wrong with americans thread, and make the same comment?

So lets get this straight, Fencer celebrates victory with a bit of acting. So what? Footballers od this all the time. i remember an American footballer who, when he scored a touchdown once, his teammates lined up and he shot them all down in turn. And another who hid a phone in the cushioning around the post and made a phonecall when he scored a touchdown. Footballers in England do such bizarre things as sniffing the touchline, miming spinning of records, pretending to be aeroplanes. Bebeto of Brazil celebrated a goal in the 1994 world cup by mimning the rocking of a baby to sleep. Paul gascoigne celebrated a goal against Scotland by mimicking the drinking of tequila ina dentists chair, but using water.I don't see how the Fencer's any different to any of these, and I don't think any of those are arrogant. Some may eb in bad taste, but they generally just strike me as a bit of fun.

>Starting with 50 BC (Julius Caesar) through 1940 (WWII). Yeah, I guess that is pretty short, given the earth has been around about 4-5 billion years. My bad.<

Apart from the periods when they ruled most of Western Europe, which was two or three occasions from the fall of Rome to the start of WWI.

>Hey sprout, why don't you wander over to the what's wrong with americans thread, and make the same comment?<

Sprout will correct me if I'm wrong, but like me he probably gave up on that vitrilolic hate filled thread many moons ago. It was started as a genuine enquiry from a US citizen as to why people didn't like the USA. It became a bile filed diatribe from one or two researchers who couldn't approach the problem with a clear head a little civility.

gave up? gave what up? He never said anything like that on the WWWA thread at any point.

You're right Blues - I don't think it is possible to have a dispassionate or even reasonable discussion on that thread anymore.

Dave - I have never posted on that thread, but I have lurked a bit. That thread, like this one, makes me sad, and as that is not what I come to hootoo for, I don't feel I have to get involved.

I should probably ignore this one as well, but I've slightly got sucked into it, as I've spent a lot of time in France and my wife and some of my best friends are French.

sprout

French military victories, did someone say?

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html



RF

fine, no one says it's OK for the french to be arrogant.

But by *not* condmening it (like they would if an american did it...) they implicitly condone the french arrogance.

So you think it's an example of French arrogance that the fencer performed a mime after winning? Would you count the other examples I included above as American arrogance/Brazilian arrogance/whatever?

>But by *not* condmening it (like they would if an american did it...) they implicitly condone the french arrogance.<

Wrong. I don't perceive it as any more arrogant than any other display by any other sportsman, just as Egon points out, so 'condoning' it doesn't enter into the equation.

That you perceive it as arrogance says a good deal more about you that it does about either the Frenchman who did it or the French as a whole, I think.

Oh, and of course that link is hilarious but wrong, RF, as I suspect you well know. There was a pretty big French Victory at a little place called Hastings, if i remember correctly. And of course if they were that sh*t at winning battles, we'd still own most France rather than Mary, Queen of Scots going to her coffin with Calais engraved on her heart.

absolutely to both. But the specifics of this example, if performed by an american, at the olympics, would clearly have drawn a much larger response. Do you accept that?