"France . . . would never be the Arkansas of a United Europe"
Arkansas Ozarks, April 28th, 2010
Tim Ernst, Photographer
Arkansas made the international news, belatedly, of course. . . . as in years belatedly!
Tom Buhrow, an evening news anchor for ARD, one of Germany's television networks, reports in "We've Waited Too Long for Europe" (IHT, April 27, 2010) that just prior to the expansion of the European Union, European politicians realized "that deciding by consensus would not work any longer, and a real federation was discussed . . . [b]ut Jacques Chirac, then president of France, said his country would never be the Arkansas of a United Europe" (emphasis mine). Upon being "told that France could be California, he said this too would never happen."
Well, as irony would have it, the California got the Austrians, France got the Maghrebines, Germany got the Ottomans, but Arkansas is still free of occupation, thank God!
But, more seriously, what did Chirac mean? That in a United States of Europe, France would be poor, isolated, uninfluential, and the butt of hillbilly jokes even if Chirac himself were the Euro-President?
I suppose that's all true of Arkansas if not of France, but isolation has its charms, as the above photo reveals . . .
Labels: Arkansas, European Union, Ozark Mountains
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 3:18 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
There is one minor problem with France not agreeing to participate - that means we'll have to remain content battling Mississippi alone for last place in whatever category a list is being prepared for.
On the bright side, we'll not be bailing out Greece.
JK
There's always a silver lining . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
You know I thought Tennessee was battling for last place.
I miss the mountains.
Arkansas will always be first among the least!
I know how you feel about mountains . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Mr. Chirac, I live in Arkansas, I know Arkansas, Arkansas is my friend. Mr. Chirac, France is no Arkansas.
Somehow, that sounds familiar, Daddio.
Jeffery Hodges
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