The Moron French

[maples]

You can easily identify them with their irrational criticism of Lance
Armstrong. I've been dealing with such people for the last little while, and it's been sort of amusing to counter every single one of their arguments, but it's gotten tiresome and even dangerous recently.

The subject is usually introduced by the use of the term "The American" to describe Armstrong. Once, I responded with: "You think Tyler Hamilton will win," but the guy didn't understand me, because I used the English pronounciation. This is actually important, because if you, at any time, use American pronounciation for an American name, e.g., Richard Gere (hard "g", the French use the soft "j" pronounciation, one famous 'serious' journalist,
Cristine Ockrent, was surprised that Gere walked out of her interview, saying that maybe he was annoyed at the fact that she didn't use their pronounciation, apparently is pronounced with a hard g over there), then you are for all time considered American, in the sense that you have all their values, you have no ties to France, etc., etc.

Then the person will usually try to imply that Armstrong is doped up due to his cancer, one guy continually used the annoying term
"robocop" when referring to Armstrong. Of course they have no evidence to back this up. The weirdest thing about this is that these people also worship Richard Virenque, doper #1 who was the object of ridicule on French TV for the whole of 1998-99.
I suppose that they would defend their stance by saying that
Virenque finally admitted his sins, but what about Jalabert then?

Yesterday was particularly bad, because I almost ended up getting beaten up by an ex-racer who was singularly anti-Armstrong.
Consistent with his middle age, his hero was Hinault, whom he claimed was better than Armstrong, because he could have won a 6th Tour, if it wasn't for his promise to teammate Greg Lemond. I responded by saying that Hinault could have won 4 tours if he wasn't teammates with Greg Lemond, and later asked him why Hinault attacked Lemond at the end of the 86 Tour if he was so true to his word. He responded by saying that Armstrong had hired Heras to prevent him from winning the Tour, and I pointed out that in the 2002 Tour, Heras rode a total of about 5km for Armstrong, and the rest of the time was on his wheel.
About this time, he started telling me I was "a real American", and things started degenerating. The weirdest part about this is that he was riding a Cannondale. Oh, I think the problems started when he mentioned that he had done the centenary parade on the Champs
Elysees as 1961 Anquetil winner, and I told him that if I had been him, I would have started racing with some other winner, e.g., Hinault, and it dawned on him that I could think up something he couldn't...

Another time, some guy, also an ex high category racer, told me his cancer was due to doping, and I explained to him that there can be no way to assert this, so he just had to take it, especially given the fact that I was the one who had written papers on probability theory, so knew what I was talking about.

So, I always end up winning the arguments, but there was an interesting twist today. I once went to my wife's workplace and one of her colleagues is the bike fan who called Armstrong "that American." Anyway, since I shut him up with my correct argumentation, he had to take it out on her when I wasn't around. Of course, Armstrong was doped. His explanation:
since he only has one testicle, he gets extra testosterone shots, with medical consent. Of course, he doesn't know that the only rider with legal above legal testosterone is Botero, but I wasn't around to point that out. He also said that the reason that Armstrong can't stand the heat is that this is a symptom of people undergoing hormone treatments. Armstrong won the 2002 Dauphine Libere in extreme heat in a lone breakaway, but I wasn't around to point that out either. Then he said that he thought that Ullrich was really great, but this time my wife had the presence of mind to point out that it was Ullrich who tested positive and got fired from his team. Needless to say, Richard Virenque is his hero.

This even came out on Television. Every morning during the Tour, people can ask questions to a celebrity, and one time it was Jean-Marie Leblanc who was asked by some woman: "Can anyone stop this diabolical Armstrong?"
Well, he didn't beat around the bush and immediately jumped on the word "diabolical" by saying: "surely, you can't mean that in a negative sense. Armstrong is the hardest working rider in bike racing, has the most rigorous training methods, etc." I guess that in his position, he has to deal with these morons all the time.

[garciya]

ha! funny. did you know that some of the heavy weights of modern comedy (s.
martin, r. williams, w. allen, etc ...) acknowledge jerry lewis's brand of physical comedy as very influential in their own work? it appears that popular america has forgotten its own 2-decade long love affair with j.lewis.

irrelevance would hardly ever elicit so much bile ...

[bobodabear]

Because it's cheap and a direct threat to home produced TV. I wish it existed in the UK.
Having said that some of the HBO shows are the best TV there is!
All the best
Dan Gregory

[Judeccan]

AFAIK the legislation was for radio, not tv. There's a bunch of dubbed TV shows in France, and many of them German, not American.

[AlexanderYoshi]

Indeed. The Bush/Cheney Junta have tried to get the French to send troops to
Iraq, now that Coalition of the Willing troops are being killed and maimed daily.

[kagemusha]

Hey Smart French Guy -

If your culture isn't insecure about itself, then why do you have legislation limiting the amount of foreign (American) content on TV?

[kagemusha]

It all started with Bach.

[Erk779]

the elder winners were true heroes but comparisons have to cover everything..
yes Hinault deserves mythical stories about some of his victories , but look at the opposition in old days.
Like in TDF 1981 there were 12 teams, and one third of the pack was Belgian.
Pseudo-kermesse teams could just enter then. Structurally the sport was far away from the real professional level. And it only covered a handful of countries.
On a bad day Hinault could just punch early attackers to set an example. That's unthinkable now.

Eddy Merckx has passed the phase of envying the new generation. "yes we raced a whole year for crappy salaries. That makes them smart and us dumb, right?"

[garciya]

<snip>

i sympathize with your having to deal with jerks but where in the world did you get the notion that any nation had a monopoly on nationalism and xenophobia? if anything the last few month should provide you with plenty of examples of widespread use of generalization and guilt by association. check out the new york post (for example) and you'll find plenty of it.

[Glynhial]

Wasn't it Ancient Greece?