Luke Angelo

Anybody who has read very much of my stuff, know that I harbor something of a bias against what Mr. Rumsfeld has called 'the Old Europe', France and Germany, especially. It goes deeper than that, actually.

Not long ago Mr. Kleinfeld asked if I actually knew anybody from France. I didn't answer him then, please let me do so now.

First, I have never traveled outside the United States except for a few days in Canada, French Canada, La Belle Quebec. Pretty nice place outside the big city of Montreal where they love American money. I love, for instance, the Gaspe region.

Second, I took two years of French in high school. I speak a little, can read news articles and books pretty well with the aid of a dictionary, and have fond memories of an in-class war that lasted every day of those two years. She hated me; I returned the favor.

Now here is a true story that I have never told outside a small circle of friends. We have a relative in France, a cousin, actually. I have never met him. He is a member of the large Italian clan that was my support group before my birth father died when I was seven.

This dude's name is Nicolo, or Nick. He was nineteen when he came ashore on June 6, 1944 as part of the invasion force that was designed to liberate France from the Nazi hob nail boot. Nick enlisted at the age of seventeen, breaking his mother's heart, of course. He was one of seven or eight kids in a boisterous, family that was the norm in Boston's Italian North End back then. Most of the people Nick would have known were the immediate descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Many of them still inhabit the same streets in this most delightful of Bean Town's many ethnic neighborhoods.

Nick was dead within a very few days following the sixth of June. I have seen long ago two fading photographs of a small square inside a little town somewhere on the Cherbourg Peninsula. The first picture shows a tree of some sort, a little wrought iron fence encircling it. The second is a close up of the same tree. Affixed to it is a small, printed sign reading ICI REPOSENT TROIS SOLDATS AMERICAINS. "Here rest three American Soldiers�" It goes to tell the date they died. It does not reveal any names, nor how they died. Family legend tells us that this Nick's final resting place. I don't know. It's a great story and it may well be true. The little square looks like a pretty spot to spend eternity.

But the fact is that Nick and thousands of young men and boys died saving France from the Germans in two World Wars. I am sick of the bull crap that claims we ought to honor the French because they bailed us out in 1781 when French Admiral De Grasse helped Washington bottle up British forces at Yorktown in the last major battle of the American Revolution. Or that they donated the Statue of Liberty now seated comfortably in New York Harbor.

Despite all the French wars of conquest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, despite French incursions into Africa, The Americas, and South East Asia, the last real French military victory was way back in 1781. No amount of pretend moral puffery can make up for the fact that France is out of it on the playing fields of major world powers.

There is, apparently, something of an inferiority complex running through the modern French psyche. It is interesting to note that the vociferous French Ambassador, Dominique deVillepin, has written extensively about Napoleon and might even be accused of wanting to bring back the glory days of that Imperial Empire. That was before, of course, the Russians kicked the crap out of the Grande Armee de la Republique in 1812 and sent the Emperor back to Paris, minus the nearly half a million men lost along the way.

The French live in a very smug, self-satisfied culture, devoid of much of the elan that marked their more dynamic history. Sorry, but these bastards don't have much to teach us.

And over in the Pacific our former enemies there we term 'Japs'. This offends many in the limp-wristed land of Political Correctness, but there are several dead North End Italian boys killed by American-hating, xenophobic, suicidal JAPS on coral atolls as well. We didn't bring all our dead home back then. The body bag hadn't been invented. Wrapped the poor guys in shelter halves and stuck the remains in the sand so they wouldn't rot in the hot sun.

JOHN KERRY made it official today. You can get our take on his announcement by clicking on http://politicalpulpit.com and hitting the LUKESTER link. I guess they call me Lukester, over there.

Have a great week. Hope your Fall goes well. We should all get lots of laughs out of what is taking place over in California.

Ciao,

Luke Angelo
Macon, GA
C. Joke Ellis, Mayor

PS: Remember 9/11

So, you don't know anyone French, then, c'est ne pas? And your opinion is based on an event long before you were born, non, and without actually knowing the country or people? Just checking... -- Ian

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Luke Angelo, Cyberbrat Out Of Hell, lives in Macon, GA, where he regularly causes trouble and proves that the pen is far mightier than the Mayor