Emily makes her return to Back Office, but alas it looks like she won’t be getting too much alone time with Mike right now.
Linktacular!
Back Office
In a Call-Center…no one can hear you scream…
Emily makes her return to Back Office, but alas it looks like she won’t be getting too much alone time with Mike right now.
Nice Groundskeeper Willy reference. ^^
I know I mentioned Karen and Magnu tangling with Gary, but it seems that he may annoy Emily to the boiling point as well. So many wonderful possibilities…..
@Delta: Groundskeeper Willy? Oh, right, he did use “surrender monkeys” once, didn’t he? I’d almost forgotten that. I associate the phrase with Rush Limbaugh and other troglodytes, not the Simpsons.
I was hoping others would spot that (there’s plenty of ‘easter eggs’ in my work that no-one ever seem to spot 😀 )
Ah Willie…yes, I was referencing him. I wanted a silly name for a French resturant, and this was the only thing I could think of 🙂
@Kessy: The phrase was written specifically for Willy (who doesn’t like the French) by Simpsons staff writer Ken Keeler. It has been used worldwide to smear opponents, and the French in particular.
Simpsonism as “D’oh!”. 🙂
*Sigh* my beloved cheap, crappy Lenovo Chromebook dropped “It’s almost as famous a” from the beginning of the last line just as I posted. ><
@Delta: And I imagine that 2003 wasn’t the first time the phrase “Freedom Fries,” was ever used either. But for better or worse that’s what both phrases are associated with. I didn’t realize the Simpsons use of it came first.
@Kessy: I had remembered it from the Simpsons first, but I can certain see the possibility of people not knowing this. Willie’s use of the line was an hilarious stab at the French which poked as much fun at Willie himself and by extension the Scots.
I do remember this turning into an intentional insult towards the French during the run-up to the Iraq War. Around about this time I also remember the usage of ‘Freedom Fries’ being mentioned (Which is funny as all hell, because French(ed)-fries are so called because the potato has been cut in a way that is known as ‘frenching’…that has nothing to do with France – The Country.) Many over here in Europe were a bit miffed by this attitude, since the French had every right to object to what looked like opportunistic Middle East war that appeared to be based on thin (or even made-up) evidence. The vitriol directed towards France by certain conservative elements in the US, was both surprising to us and felt silly on their part. Surly enough, you probably won’t find ‘Freedom Fries’ in Europe (most counties use the french word ‘Pommes Frites’ for this) and if we call the French ‘Surrender Monkeys’ it’s usually a friendly jab that will often be followed up by reciprocal jab for one of your own nation’s stereotype 🙂 (The drunken nature of my own Irish people is often the jab of choice)
Ah, so it turns out to be a difference in the perspectives from Europe and the US. Just to be clear, I don’t have any sort of problem with the use of the phrase here, it’s just not a choice I would have made because of the associations it has for me.
For those of us in the US old enough to remember the run up to the Iraq War, “cheese eating surrender monkeys” is *very* strongly associated with that debate. And believe me there was absolutely nothing friendly in the way it was meant. It was intended in the most insulting and contemptuous way possible. When Bush said that you’re either with us or against us, he was expressing entirely literally the feeling of a lot of people on the American right. French opposition to the war was seen as a betrayal and a stab in the back. You know how some people on the internet will interpret it as a betrayal of trust and friendship if you don’t completely back them up in an argument? It’s the same attitude, and pretty common in some groups in the US.
There’s also been a strain of suspicion and contempt for Europe in the American psyche that goes all the way back to colonial times. It’s similar to the way some in Britain tend to look a bit askance at Continental Europe. The current manifestation in the US is a tendency to see European culture (especially France) as effeminate, wimpy, untrustworthy, overly intellectual, arrogant, and condescending. Keep in mind that most of the people with that sort of attitude suffer from really bad cases of testosterone poisoning, and are generally extremely insecure in their own sense of manhood and masculinity.
Although “Freedom Fries” was originally also meant entirely seriously, it’s so ridiculous that it quickly became a joke even at the time. It was often used to mock right wingers, and it probably would still be used that way if the American Right hadn’t thoroughly disowned the Iraq War.
@Rawr: and @Kessy: The concept of the French as ineffectual cowards owes more to the collapse of the French army during WW II after the Germans defeated the famed Maginot Line defenses simply by marching around them, and from the collaborationist Vichy puppet government the Germans set up afterward.
A fairly popular joke of the day went like this: Question: Where is the most dangerous place on earth? Answer: Anywhere between a Frenchman and a white flag.
Add to that the fact that the leader of the French government-in-exile, Charles DeGaulle was the absolute embodiment of the arrogant, cowardly, self-serving caricature of the French as a group, as he demanded that the Allies make suicidal attacks to put him back in power, while he sat safely away from the battle. Sadly, his prominence as the face of the French resistance overshadowed the fierce courage of those relatively few who actually fought behind the German lines.
After the war, DeGaulle’s insistence that France had freed itself from the Germans, and America had little to do with it made “French” sort of a pejorative in the US.