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Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys?
Why ignorant stereotypes about the French in World War II are wrong and need to end.
A group of us at work were talking about Target the other day. One of the more opinionated people piped in to say she never shops there because it’s owned by “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” By this, she meant it was a French-owned company.
There are a lot of things wrong with this statement, the first being the notion that Target is French-owned.
Target is an American corporation founded in the 1960s in Minnesota and still based there. It’s about as French as I am — which is to say, not at all. It is not now, nor has it ever been, a French company.
I’m not sure where this notion comes from, but it’s a common one because numerous websites have articles debunking it. It appears to proliferate among political conservatives.
Regardless of its origins, it is totally and irrefutably false.
Secondly, is it appropriate to refer to French people as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys?” More to the point, did the French surrender impotently to the Germans in World War II, as is commonly believed?
