I’ve Had it With France

Hands up who’s sick to death of the frenetic posturing, the Gallic chest thumping, and the over-blown, tumescent ego-sausage the French keep waving in everyone’s faces?

Let’s get it straight right now. The French have no friends; all who do not bow and scrape in goodly fashion are enemy.

UN to back France against US culture

THE French campaign against the global tide of American entertainment is poised to take a big stride forward when almost every nation backs the first world convention on protecting culture.
The reality of the French is that they’d gladly impose their precious modern ‘culture’ on absolutely everyone else, just as they impose it on their own with countless restrictions, state subsidies and grants – that is if they could – and that is if their modern ‘culture’ wasn’t so obviously weak that they have to prop it up by restricting ‘evil’ influences that are quite obviously more compelling, and evidenced by nothing more powerful than their own pathetic caterwauling and proscription.

Most of the 190 members of UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, are expected to vote overnight for a "convention on cultural diversity", which enshrines on a global level France's longstanding policy of subsidising its arts and imposing quotas on American films and music.
Of course. They despise America as much as France does.

The vote will be a big defeat for the US, which held out against the plan with partial backing from Australia, Israel and Japan.

The convention could now be cited by any country to justify protecting its entertainment industry, with measures similar to those used by France, if they are contested at the World Trade Organisation as barriers to free trade.
Stuff ‘em. If the globe really wants to keep watching its own home-blown passion plays about ‘Ivan the Sausage Filler’, or twenty-four hour film marathons about ‘A Day in the Life of Boooran the Goat Herd’, then that’s absolutely fine with me. But that’s the point, really, isn’t it. They don’t. And these tossers bloody-well know it. That’s why they want to be able to compel. Once again, that magic word: 'compel'. And therein lies the real difference between America and the rest.

Richard Harris, the executive director of the Australian Screen Directors Association, told The Australian the convention's most significant achievement was "to establish that there is a difference between cultural and economic products - there is something intrinsic to cultural products which means that they should be treated differently under trade rules".

Mr Harris added: "One of the most significant elements of the US's opposition is that it is almost a symbol of how it views the world differently on cultural issues."
Yes, Mr. Harris, it is most certainly a symbol of how it (America) views the world - it’s called freedom of choice - a concept someone in your line of work must absolutely detest!

France spends tens of millions of dollars each year to subsidise its film industry, theatre and opera.
Of course it does. It has to. How else would its industry actually make any money? Just as the Australian film industry would die in a heart beat without its government grant life-line, given its myopic infatuation with producing turgid bore-fest after bore-fest that no one wants to watch.

It also protects music and TV production with strict quotas on the amount of non-French songs and programs that may be broadcast on radio and TV.
Move along people – nothing to see here. Even more crap along the lines of 'Last Man Standing' for us, it seems. . .

France believes it has scored a triumph by extending to the world its policy of "cultural exception", the term for the defence of French language and culture against the US ascendancy.
Oh yes – another French ‘triumph’. Triumphantly crotch stamping as much as they can plant their boots into, as per usual. It’s no wonder they collaborated with the Nazis so enthusiastically during WWII. They absolutely saw eye-to-eye. . .

And here’s the rub:

The definition of culture is open to abuse, they [the Americans] say. For example, the French parliament declared this week that the controversial pate foie gras was officially part of the protected French cultural heritage.
I wonder if the French will next declare ‘being a psychopathic arsehole’ as ‘officially part of the protected French cultural heritage’?

Now that I wouldn’t object to in the slightest. . .

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