Bastille Day / Palm Beach 2008

Most Americans have an unfavorable attitude toward the French. This antipathy is based on the abuse most US tourists have suffered from dismissive Paris waiters. Few realize that these garcons are rude to their own countrymen as well as any estrangers. That is not to say that the French don't subscribe to a haughty self-esteem.

As a Belge friend joked, "How does Frenchman kill himself? By lifting a pistol six inches over his head and shooting his superiority complex."

It's even funnier when told in French to the French.

Are the French 'surrender monkeys' or 'froggies'?

>After the horrors of World War One the French High Command decided during the Fall Of France that they would be better served by surrender. The Gauls have a special way oif treating unwanted tourist.

Cracher sur le plat or spit on the plate is the best revenge for the weak over the strong and despite that I will defend the French, because they are loyal to those people they love, as I had learned after working at Paris nightclubs in the 80s. My friends from that period are still my friends. All the French I have met around the world are my friends too. They are funny, warm, and generous. Nasty too, but not like the Germans.

So yesterday I raised a glass of wine and toasted the French, "Vive la France."

Also it's a little known fact that one of the seven prisoners in the Bastille on that fateful day in 1789 wasn't the Marquis de Sade, so maybe sado-masochists should celebrate his liberation by the French."

>Vive de Sade and Serge Gainsbourg too.