[SFDXA] Andy Rooney'

[Bruce Phegley]

Subject: Andy Rooney's


  Andy Rooney's Take on the French
If you missed Andy Rooney on Sunday night, read on.
  Most that heard him couldn't believe their ears. They
  kept expecting CBS to cut him off.
  Included below is the weekly commentary by CBS News
  correspondent Andy Rooney:

  You can't beat the French when it comes to food,
  fashion, wine or perfume, but they lost their license
  to have an opinion on world affairs years ago.
  They may even be selling stuff to Iraq and don't want
  to hurt business.

  The French are simply not reliable partners in a world
  where the good people in it ought to be working
  together.

  Americans may come off as international jerks
  sometimes but we're usually trying to
  do the right thing.

  The French lost WW II to the Germans in about 20
  minutes.

  Along with the British, we got into the war and had
  about 150,000 guys killed getting their country back
  for them. We fought all across France, and the
Germans finally surrendered in a French schoolhouse.
  You'd think that school building in Reims would be a
  great tourist attraction but it isn't.
The French seem embarrassed by it. They don't want to
call attention to the fact that we freed them from
  German occupation.

  I heard Steven Spielberg say the French wouldn't even
  let him film the D-Day scenes in "Saving Private Ryan"
  on the Normandy beaches.
  They want people to forget the price we paid getting
  their country back for them.
  Americans have a right to protest going to war with
  Iraq. The French do not. They owe us the independence
  they flaunt in our face at the U.N.

  I went into Paris with American troops the day we
  liberated it, Aug.25, 1944. It was one of the great
  days in the history of the world. French women
  showered American soldiers with kisses, at the very
  least. The next day, the pompous Charles de Gaulle
  marched down the mile long Champs Elysee to the Place
  de la Concorde as if he had liberated France himself.
  I  was there, squeezed in among a hundred tanks we'd
  given the Free French Army that we brought in with us.

  Suddenly there were sniper shots from the top of a
  building. Thousands of Frenchmen who had come to see
  de Gaulle scrambled to get under something. I got
under an Army truck myself.
The tank gunners opened fire on the building where the
  shots had come from, firing mindlessly at nothing. It
  was a wild scene that lasted, maybe,10 minutes.

  When we go to Paris every couple of years now, I rent
  a car. I drive around the Place de la Concorde and
  when some French driver blows his horn for me to get
  out of his way, I just smile and say to myself, "Go
  ahead, Pierre. Be my guest. I know something about
  this very place you'll never know."

  The French have not earned their right to have an
  opinion about President Bush's plans to attack Iraq.
  On the other hand, I have.




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  PEACE through STRENGTH


Bruce Phegley, W4OV,


                http://www.qsl.net/w4ov