Political correctness hits a new and historic low
Coda
Greg Bean

It was the great Obi-Wan Kenobi who said, “I feel a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out ... and were suddenly silenced.”

And there was indeed a great disturbance in the Force last week, an immense collective scream, a national gnashing of teeth.

But the cause of the disturbance was not a planet blasted to smithereens by the Death Star, it was the news that in the battle royale between Paris and London over who would host the 2012 Summer Olympics, London had prevailed and the French came up puny once again.

When the International Olympic Committee announced that London would host the games, it seemed the entire French nation cried out in simultaneous exclamations. Unlike the victims of the Death Star, however, they were anything but silenced. And while the British were gracious in their victory and Americans gladdened that if New York couldn’t have the games, at least our across-the-pond cousins would, the entire French nation seemed on the verge of a paranoid psychic meltdown.

Once they were finished weeping, the airwaves and news accounts were filled with diatribes from these bitter losers, almost none of whom grasped the real reason for the snub. In their outrage, they blamed everything from unfair lobbying on the part of the Brits, to payoffs, to back-room maneuvering by George Bush, to international pique over France’s sandbagging of the European Union.

Paris had the strongest bid, did it not? How then could it have possibly come in second place?

There was one French woman interviewed on public radio the day of the announcement, however, who I believe may be the only sane and reasonable person in that country. The real reason France lost, she said, was because “almost nobody likes us anymore. Nobody wants to come here.”

Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

Ask a hundred international travelers who have visited the great cities of New York, Berlin, Paris, London and Madrid where they were treated best, and 90 will give similar answers. The travelers were well received by every nationality except the French, in whose country they were treated arrogantly and rudely, feeling every minute as if their hosts believed they were second-class human beings, simply because they did not have the good fortune to be born French.

There will be those who say that is simply not true, that the French are perfectly nice and well-mannered people. But you can’t deny they’ve got a bad reputation for Gallic arrogance and unfriendliness, despite the egalitarian ideals of their revolution — and you don’t get a reputation like that without there being a kernel of truth.

It’s not like people in Britain haven’t tried to keep their French neighbors from getting their feathers ruffled and being embarrassed by historical fact.

Take for example, last week’s celebration of the 200th anniversary of the sea battle of Trafalgar, in which a British fleet led by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson whipped the French and Spanish fleets and paved the way for a century of British naval supremacy.

As part of that celebration, organizers planned a naval review, featuring a re-enactment of the great battle and sailors and soldiers in period costume on period ships, paying homage to a seminal moment from the past, much like the folks here in Monmouth County do every year when they re-enact the Battle of Monmouth.

Unlike the re-enactors in this state, however, the British organizers succumbed to the tyranny of political correctness. In an effort to avoid making the French — whose ships would be taking part in the celebration — feel slighted and start throwing around accusations of “triumphalism,” the fleets would not be identified as British and French and Spanish.

Instead, they would be known as the Red Team and the Blue Team.

I am not making that up. Perhaps, the thinking went, referring to the French as the Blue Team would keep them from feeling humiliated that their navy lost a great battle 200 years ago.

The notion was ridiculous, of course, and even sparked an angry comment from Nelson’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Anna Tribe.

“I am anti political correctness,” Tribe told Reuters news service. “It makes fools of us.”

But Red Team and Blue Team they were during the celebration, although Nelson is probably spinning in his grave to think that modern British children may now think he was killed on the deck of his ship by someone on the Blue Team instead of a French sniper.

And were the French mollified? Did they respond well? After all, since they have a long history of military defeat, were they at least grateful the British were soft-pedaling this particular upset, a battle in which British ships were outnumbered 55 to 27?

Not on your life.

As a matter of fact, last week at nearly the same time the celebration was taking place, French President Jacques Chirac stunned everyone with his comment that you can’t trust any people who cook as badly as the English, and opined that Britain’s main contribution to European agriculture is mad cow disease.

Granted, the British are not known for their fine cuisine — fish and chips being superior only to the Scots’ haggis and the ubiquitous boiled concoctions favored by the Irish.

Still, Chirac’s comments about English food and mad cow were a low blow and ought to have made for some interesting moments as Chirac and Blair faced each other over the table at the G-8 Summit in Scotland.

If I were prime minister, I’d have taken the opportunity to invite the French president to bury the hatchet and be my guest during the 2012 Olympics. I’d have offered to put him up in Nelson’s bedroom, feed him salt pork for breakfast and take him on a tour of Trafalgar Square, including the admiral’s statue. Later on, we’d explore the possibilities of keelhauling.

That’s my idea of political correctness, but I’m no Red Team diplomat.

In other, more serious matters, our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of last week’s cowardly terrorist attack in London. May God bless.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.