July 13, 2005 11:50 PM
Rant # 6: Boycott France?

I recently bore witness to the most hypocritical, illegitimate, and nonsensical bumper sticker known to mankind. What I saw was a tremendous blow to my usually optimistic view of humanity-- it blows the whole Jesus Fish/Darwin Fish debates right out of the ocean and reverses the velocity of the wind so that Calvin is either drenched in his own urine or crushed by that massive cross. The bumper sticker wasn't flashy. It contained the colors blue, white, and red; around those colors was a circle with a slash through them, and underneath read the words, and I quote: Boycott France.

Boycott France? Boycott... France...? Boycott France?! What the fuck does that even mean? Beyond the lack of easy empirical evidence, wasn't the whole patriotic tirade against our coffee-swilling, cigarette-smoking other ancestral neighbor across the pond over with a year ago? Didn't their presidential day bombing restore any sympathy among our cold, hard, rich American hearts? Boycott France? How?! Why?! To what end?!

First of all, let's look at it this way: anyone who feels the way that this motorist clearly does ("to hell with those Frenchy frogs!"), and feels so strongly that they pay their own hard earned money to advertise those feelings, surely wasn't going to France anyway. I highly doubt this middle-aged husband/wife duo ever seriously thought about seeing the Eiffel Tower, visiting the Louvre, or respectfully remembering the Nazi march through the Arch de Triumphe while gazing up at it as the sun set behind it's gleaming stone structure. No. Chances are, they love french fries (notice the lack of capitalization) and are rightfully pissed off that now they can't enjoy them during their Sunday barbecues after attending Mass. No, now they have to settle for okra, or onion rings-- or, heaven forefend, a salad! It seems equally unlikely to me that this couple could even afford to visit France, unless the Geo Metro they were tooling around in was their short-distance car and they save the Bentley for those long drives from Lewisville to Aspen for their yearly vacations.

I wish I could have pulled the couple over and asked them if they even know what the word "boycott" means. Quoth Merriam-Webster Online, "a refusal to have dealings with (a person, store, or organization) usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain contions." If I may assume, and I must because I did not pull the offenders over to the side of the road, the disapproval, I can imagine, has to stem only from France's general disapproval of the United States' actions in Iraq. If that is the case, then, isn't thrusting hate upon someone or something, or some country, for disliking your own country, well, hypocritical? How is anything supposed to be accomplished with that mentality? Surely, the French will wake up and see the error of their ways because these two Americans have felt it necessary to boycott their homeland and advertise the fact that they're doing so.

Um, again. No! Chances are, the French citizenry don't give a rat's ass whether or not Americans ever set foot in their country again. As for the politicians and business leaders of the land, surely they want American dollars, but I think they'd be willing to settle for one (or even a hundred, or a thousand) less open-minded individuals who, really, weren't planning on visiting anyway. Where/when exactly was this couple going to deal with France, then? Never and nowhere.

So, what's the point of boycotting a country? It seems ridiculous to me in action and absolutely absurd and pointless in spirit. I wish I had a bumper sticker, and a pin and a hat and a shirt and boxers and a chain and a tattoo, that read: Boycott the Ignorant. Because, just having such a lifestyle isn't nearly enough. I need to advertise it, too.

Posted at 11:50 PM | Comments? (368)