Conversations with Karma - Somali Pirates

Saturday, October 10, 2009
*ring, ring*

Somali Pirate 1: Hello?

Karma: May I speak to the Somali Pirates, please. This is Karma.

SP1: Just a second - let me put you on speakerphone.

*click*

SP1: Okay. We're all here. Who are you and what do you want?

K: I'm Karma. The eastern idea that people get what they deserve. You know, what comes around, goes around? Karma.

SP2: We're a Muslim country. We don't believe in Karma.

K: That's okay. I believe in you.

SP3: What do you want, infidel?

K: Well, I have some special, special plans for you guys. Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but every once in a while I have an idea that is so stunning, so perfect in its elegance, I feel like I need to bask in the glow of my own brilliance.

SP4: Get to the point. We have places to go.

K: You do indeed. You might even say you have a DATE WITH DESTINY.

SP5: You know, I like that idea! A DATE WITH DESTINY!

K: I'm sure you do. Listen, I'm going to explain this plan, and you guys can tell me just how awesome this will be.

SP2: We don't have time for this. Get the skiff ready. We need to get going.

SP4: Yeah, load the Kalashnikovs. I have a good feeling about today.

K: Um, yeah. Today is going to be LEGENDARY.

SP1: To the skiff, fellow pirates!

SP2, SP3, SP4, SP5: TO THE SKIFF! TO THE SKIFF!

K: Hello? Hello?

*cue crickets*

K: Oh, well. I guess they'll find out my plan soon enough. But seriously, how ironic is this plan? They're going to mistake a French Naval vessel for a civilian craft, and they're going to be captured. By the French Navy.

K: ::snort::

K: I kill me.

10 comments:

Random Michelle K said...

OK. So.

This is a serious question.

Why does everyone look down upon the French so much? Yes, they're snobs when it comes to language and food, but this is the country that helped us win the Revolutionary War, allowed American soldiers to fight when the US refused to enter WWI, and became a home to many many talented black Americans when the US was treating them like third class citizens and refusing to allow them into full society.

What, precisely, is so horrible about that?

Janiece said...

Michelle, it's not the French per se. At least in my case, as I agree with your points.

It's the French military, who, deserving or not, have a notoriously bad reputation when it comes to their craft.

Anne C. said...

I think it's mostly because of WWII, Michelle, and a reputation, even today, for objecting to military actions by other nations (I think it's more of reflective of isolationism than pacifism, but YMMV). I wouldn't call it bad, per se, just ironic in this case.

John the Scientist said...

It's a lot of things, Michelle. First, the French want to run the EU, and they take a lot of shit for their snooty attitude about their culture. The Poles and Czechs especially resent the French telling them that they are inferiors.

Second is...what exactly is France proud of? Their pride is based on pre-Revolutionary achievements. They have not produced more than a few great scientific breakthroughs since they cut off Laviosier's head - despite their lavish spending on their Academies. Half of the Curie team was Polish. Arts? Literature? No more lights there than in other countries.

Industry? HAH! With a 35 hour work week? They're even losing their grip on wine, and their attitude towards upstarts that p[roduce jsut as good a wine for less money (such as California and New Zealand / Australia) once again invites derision.

Militarily, in the last 2 centuries, they've been beaten by the English, the Russians and the Austrians (1812), the Germans (1866, 1914, 1940), and the Vietnamese (1954), and have hardly single campaign since 1812. England had to bail their ass out twice in the last 100 years, and all they get in the way of gratitude is the appelation "les rosbifs".

Their slow slide since the Revolution would not invite as much derision if it were not for their attitude of superiority (as in the Academie Fracaise that tries to keep evil English-based neologisms out of the French language - even the fucking Japanese don't do that).

When de Gaulle became president of France after WWII, he tried to keep the UK out of the EU so that France would be the dominant power. The counntry that shielded him, armed his pitifully small force of non-collaborateurs, and put him back in power - he wanted no part of them in the EU. THAT is the French attitude (and ingratitutde) in a nutshell, and it should be mercilessly mocked.

John the Scientist said...

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention their supposed tolerance.

They were happy to accept black musicians in the 20s and 30s. they were treated almost as pets.

I've lived in both the South and the North, so I've come to see a phenomenon up close and personal where one or two people from a different culture are welcomed as guests and novelties, but once a critical mass of "others" builds, the racism comes out.

France is like that. Their treatment of their much larger racial minorities today (relative to the 20s) is not so hot. Last time I was in Paris my cab driver was from Africa, and had served in the French military. We had quite a long discussion about this very topic. If I were French, I would not go out of my way to pat myself on the back for superior racial sensitivity because my country invited Louis Armstrong to come play his trumpet in 1925.

Eric said...

O'course, another answer to Michelle's question is that over the course time the Francophilia that dominated American culture during America's first half-century was replaced by a thawing of Anglo-American relations and (by the time of WWI) a degree of Anglophilia; this might well be expected given the shared linguistic and cultural history between the two countries. In the course of that process, traditional rivalries between the Brits and French have been transferred to our side of the pond.

John's history leaves out French's triumphs under Napoleon (Corsican or not), France's vast sphere of colonial influence in Asia and Africa up through WWII, and the fact that French was the franca lingua of diplomacy and (along with German) science up until the WWII era. (Ironically, one of the areas John overlooks in which France has led the world has been medicine; between its inaugeration in 1887 and WWII, the Pasteur Institute was arguably the single most important medical institution in the world.) As for the arts: whether France has produced more literary luminaries may be debatable (certainly Sartre and Camus shouldn't be overlooked), however French importance in film cannot be underestimated, with the French New Wave being the most important period of cinema history until the American New Wave of the '70s (which, if you couldn't guess from the name, wouldn't have occurred without Americans watching French films).

One repeated theme in the previous paragraph: "up through WWII"; France's defeat by Germany and the efforts of the collaborationist Vichies severely damaged France's prestige. With the collapse of colonialism after WWII, France's fate as a second-tier nation was assured, but without the goodwill in the West held by their post-Colonial second-tier fellows, the Brits.

That, at least, would be an alternate perspective.

John the Scientist said...

Eric, I was a bit harsh, but, quite frankly (hah!), I think they deserve it.

French has not been the Lingua Franca (hah!) of science since the Enlightenment. I can trace my scientific pedigree back to Laviosier's lab (my advisor's avisor's advisors's avisor, etc). Very quickly in that path, the line jumps from France to Germany and never returns. German was the language of science from the early-to-mid-1800s on.

As for the Pasteur Institute - while undoubtedly important, not as important as the French make it out to be, in fact Johns Hopkins and other institutions had passed them by WWI - the Institute had a heyday of perhaps 20 years. Pasteur himself, is, of course, an exception to my shotgun blast of condemnation at their scientific reputation. But the point still stands, since Laviosier's neck met the blade, French science has not held the dominant position it did during the Enlightenment.

As for Napoleon, that is why I deliberately started at 1812, leaving aside that he was a tyrant only marginally better than the mess he replaced, he did lead the Grand Armee to many victories - and then one horrendous defeat after another from Bordino to Waterloo.

I think one reason for the transfer to us of the British antipathy for the French was our increasing horror of the hash they made of their revolutions - so the shift in attitudes was not totally without merit.

As for the Arts, I think you have a point about film, though I'm not a fan - I probably sold them short there. You also forgot the art of painting, specifically Impressionism, which I love and they dominated.

In literature, I stick by the statement that their pride is not reflected in a domination of the Art form post-Enlightenment. Sartre, Proust and Camus are of course leading lights*, but no more than, and arguably less than, what the Russians produced in that timeframe, despite the French sneer of "scratch a Russian and find a Tartar". I think the French would be more celebrated and less reviled if they gave other cultures their due.

*Counterbalanced by the complete horseshit of Derrida and Foucault. They almost cancel out anything good the French wrote in the 20th Century. :p

Eric said...

Sure, but the French hardly have a monopoly on nationalism. I mean, there's not a country on Earth where, for instance, patriotic citizens celebrate not hosting an international sporting event and mourn one of their leaders winning an international award (however improvidently or prematurely awarded).

Errr....

What were we talking about again? :)

But seriously: I have to confess to a certain degree of Francophilia. Sure, they can be snooty and hard to love, but it's a beautiful language, they've produced some brilliant art (my mention of literature focused on the 20th Century and therefore neglected 19th-Century luminaries like Hugo and de Maupassant*), and much of the trash-talk directed their way isn't deserved. And even some of it that is deserved is ungracious--we Americans do owe them a Revolution, however long ago it was, and we commit the same sin you (perhaps rightly) accuse the French of when we forget our debts.

I think you may undervalue that 20 year period for the Pasteur Institute, by the way: I don't really disagree with your assessment of the timespan, but that was two decades that saw some tremendous accomplishments. Conversely, Johns Hopkins reached the heights it did by WWI by consciously emulating the Pasteur Institute (and similar institutions in Germany)--when the PI was established, American Medicine was hardly better than woo and hoodoo, something JH was specifically founded to remedy by applying the Continental approach to medicine. The student may have outpaced the masters by the end of the Great War, but they did so by standing on the shoulders of giants.

-----
*And, while not necessarily a great writer, surely we SF fans should acknowledge the father of "hard" SciFi, M. Verne.

Eric said...

Oh, I know what else I wanted to add: I think your point about the transference of British attitudes to our shores being the result of horror at what happened in the French Revolution is very well taken. I wish I hadn't missed that in my earlier comment. Thank you.

John the Scientist said...

Eric - I came off as harsher on the French than I actually am (it is one of the languages I speak, and I do like vacationing there), but I wanted to make the point that much of their pride in their accomplishments is based on old, old, stuff, and their current place in the world is not nearly as high as the Academie Francaise would have one believe. It's not that they are bereft of achievements, it's just that they are not the first among equals their attitude would seem to be saying. Therefore they get skewered all the time.