(no subject)

[timepiececlock]

This whole "looking French" criticism of John Kerry by Republicans is bugging me. How does one "look" French? It's not like looking Chinese; French people look like a lot of other Europeans. I couldn't accurately tell a French person from an English or German person by looks alone if you paid me.

Comments

[ciardhapagan.livejournal.com]

Oh it's typical old "Nixionite" dirty tricks, associate the oppossing candidate with a country or culture that "ultrapatriotic" (read xenophobic) people have been taught to despise in recent times.

Kerry doesn't look French, he looks English- with that long face with a sharp pointed jaw and thin nose. (Ironic, because he's of Irish ancestry). There are facial characteristics that are more common in one European country than another, but yes you could easily find someone in any European country who looked "English", "French", etc...

Same thing goes for Asia. You can find a Chinese person that looks like a person from any other Asian country, etc... but there is a distinct set of facial features that is considered "Chinese", "Korean", "Japanese", etc... by people in Asia, just like people in Europe (and to a degree amonsgt whites in the US) are aware of distinct facial characteristic that are considered "English", "Irish", "French", etc...

And by the way, David Boreanaz doesn't look "Irish". ;) Doesn't look "English" or "Welsh" or "Scottish" either, now James Marsters, on the other hand looks "English". David Boreanaz looks kind of "French" ;) Although I believe the name is northeastern Italian in origin. Marsters is a English name.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

It's the berets, man.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

oui oui.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Maybe I just don't enough French and English people to see facially distinguishing differences. Distinguishing names? Definitely.

things I'm not going to be able to do

[klytaimnestra.livejournal.com]

I will not be able to allow myself to pay any attention at all to the American election campaign. The smug, mean-spirited, hate-filled, nasty, bigoted, outright barefaced lying by the Republicans is impossible for me to stomach; and the most terrifying thing is their smug assumption that Americans are stupid enough to fall for it. And the most terrifying thing for the rest of the world - all of us who don't get to vote, but who are seriously affected by the outcome? That maybe the Republicans are right. Seems incredible. But maybe they're gonna win. I can't see how they possibly could. But look at the numbers. SOMEBODY must be buying these Republican lies.

So rather than bare-knuckle it from now to election day I think I'll cancel my newspaper subscription. I don't listen to radio or TV news, so that should insulate me sufficiently from the lead-up, though not, alas, from the result -no one is insulated from that. . But after all, it's not as if there's anything at all I can do. Except pray, of course, and I'll do that.

This is my pre-American-election rant, now concluded; I'll avoid doing it again before the election. Had to get it out of my system, sorry. {/rant}

[sabrinanymph.livejournal.com]

People are saying John Kerry looks French?

I mean, I have my own set of criticisms of the man, but I'm proud to say they're on something a bit more sound than looks. And I have to agree. WTF?

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It's the new tag-phrase criticism for John Kerry by Republican news pundits.

but I'm proud to say they're on something a bit more sound than looks

That's why I like you and not Republican news pundits. :)

you personally are always welcome to rant on my journal

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It makes me sad to hear about things like this, because I know you're right: our election does affect you, and we might choose someone who decides you are building weapons of mass destruction and need to be liberated, and there's nothing you can do about that.

I just... I hope people in other countries realize how divided America's political culture really is, and how greatly that divide has increased in the last term. For the most part Americans care about the same things, but we different in our approaches to ideology and its place in politics, and what that means to us personally. And because America is so big, with so many people, we've developed or acquired differing cultures within our overall culture, and those cultures have their own view on what America's government is and should be, and they pass that down to their children.

So you have me, a kid raised by liberal parents in the most liberal part of California-- the Bay Area. And I'm about to move to Irvine, the central of Conservative Southern California.

It's like this anecdote a guy in my biology class last year told me-- that he was on a train in Europe (I don't remember which country he said he was in, but it might have been an Eastern European country), and he was seating next to someone who kept asking him why he elected Bush. And my friend spent the whole conversation explaining to him that he lived in California and voted against him and had nothing to do with his being elected.

Sometimes I want to run around to every country in the world and pass out fliers that say "Bush is not the face of all America. In fact quite a bit of us don't like him at all and know we can do better."

I suppose most educated peoples do know that, but I think about it a lot, and about the people in poorer countries that get a lot of anti-American sentiments and tie that to anti-Bush sentiments and I just want to explain that I'm trying, I'm really trying, the only way I can, through my vote, to dissasociate Bush from myself and the other Americans around me.

::sigh::

I think I went on a tangent there, sorry...

[sabrinanymph.livejournal.com]

LMAO!

Good! This is just... I don't get it. This might be my WTF? moment of the day... He looks French!? Oh please.