Businesses in France Feeling Sting of Boycott

[Tsyroc]

Well I bought some Avian (French) water the other day. It tasted like shit but I needed a cheap plastic bottle for water at work and I like the embossed mounatins on Avian bottles.

[Darth Fanboy]

Give the French a break, if its not the constant reminders about Germanophobia its their crushing loss in the last World Cup, HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA ha

[Master of Ossus]

In the absence of a contract, nobody has any moral obligation to buy anything from anyone.

If I decide to eat Burger King instead of Taco Bell because that fucking Taco Bell dog used to piss me off, am I being immoral? Frivolous perhaps, but immoral?

What if I take my car to Jiffy Lube instead of Bill's Oil Change because I have an irrational distrust of people named Bill? Now I'm paranoid, but am I immoral yet?

Or what if I quit going to the mall because the building owners painted the walls green and started piping in Limp Bizkit? The poor vendors had nothing to do with that. Is that immoral?

Your kinda trivializing the points peple are trying to make.

Nonetheless, his points are valid. And I STILL think that the wine-makers should have just entered into the futures market. What the hell were they thinking?

[Iceberg]

Let's suppose some guy working at a factory in New York was fired because he expressed anti-war views. Would you support that? Because I don't see much difference between that and attempting to cause financial damage to French businesses for their nation's antiwar views.

A better analogy (and one that you, Mike, understand quite well) would be refusing to buy electronics at Circuit City because you don't like DivX videodiscs and the company policies that caused Circuit City to create and support DivX.

People make value judgments in assisting them in determining which merchants to patronize or not all the time, using criteria ranging from trivial to vital.

[Enforcer Talen]

Thursday, March 13 12:01 AM EST
France Demands Return of the Statue of Liberty
By Brian Briggs

Paris - France has invoked a long forgotten clause to demand that the Statue of Liberty be returned.

The people of France sent Lady Liberty as a gift to the people of the United States in 1886, but the recent row between the countries over Iraq has them rethinking their present. A graduate student in history, Jean Renault, at the École Centrale Paris uncovered a document which gives France the right to recall the gift under certain conditions.

"It says right here," said Renault pointing to the aged document, "that if America drops below a certain level on the Franklin Scale (an international measure of a country's liberty and freedoms) that France can demand the statue back."

Jacques Chirac glowed with excitement at the discovery. "Finally, the Americans will feel the wrath of the French. We plan on putting the statue in Eurodisney, or giving it to a more freedom-loving country like North Korea."

Chirac also warned that if the statue is not returned that France would "vigorously enforce its patent on French Fries, and send all its good red wine to Germany." Economists believe such moves would cripple an already weak American economy.

The news infuriated many Americans. Karl Cabot of Waukesha, Wisconsin said, "You know I sorta remember reading about a clause like that before, but I say screw the Frenchies. The statue should stay in Washington D.C. where it belongs!"

President Bush vehemently opposed the request. "America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. It says so in our constitution. God bless America."

A recent poll showed that Americans favored renaming the statue to the Statue of Quasi-Liberty, or The Torch Lady in order to keep the monument in New York harbor.

Tony Blair suggested a compromise in which the Statue of Liberty would be left exactly where it is and France would "bugger off."

[Darth Wong]

Let's suppose some guy working at a factory in New York was fired because he expressed anti-war views. Would you support that? Because I don't see much difference between that and attempting to cause financial damage to French businesses for their nation's antiwar views.

A better analogy (and one that you, Mike, understand quite well) would be refusing to buy electronics at Circuit City because you don't like DivX videodiscs and the company policies that caused Circuit City to create and support DivX.

Correct; they were out to destroy the very concept of home video ownership, hence the outrage. If they had only insulted a politician, this would have been an insane overreaction.

People make value judgments in assisting them in determining which merchants to patronize or not all the time, using criteria ranging from trivial to vital.

And in the case of the Dixie Chicks, confusing "trivial" for "vital".

[Darth Wong]

Well I bought some Avian (French) water the other day. It tasted like shit but I needed a cheap plastic bottle for water at work and I like the embossed mounatins on Avian bottles.

I did some of those. I also did the Sprite bottles, and the Pepsi/Mountain Dew swirls. The nice thing about working in plastics is that it's easy to explain to your small children what you do for a living; you just take them to the grocery store or the parking lot, and start pointing at plastic parts.

[SirNitram]

Well I bought some Avian (French) water the other day. It tasted like shit but I needed a cheap plastic bottle for water at work and I like the embossed mounatins on Avian bottles.

I did some of those. I also did the Sprite bottles, and the Pepsi/Mountain Dew swirls. The nice thing about working in plastics is that it's easy to explain to your small children what you do for a living; you just take them to the grocery store or the parking lot, and start pointing at plastic parts.

I'm afraid I must say the Gatorade bottles have the superior tops. Twist and suckle.

Mmm.. suckle. nipples.

Uh. Did I start drooling?

[Darth Wong]

Well I bought some Avian (French) water the other day. It tasted like shit but I needed a cheap plastic bottle for water at work and I like the embossed mounatins on Avian bottles.

I did some of those. I also did the Sprite bottles, and the Pepsi/Mountain Dew swirls. The nice thing about working in plastics is that it's easy to explain to your small children what you do for a living; you just take them to the grocery store or the parking lot, and start pointing at plastic parts.

I'm afraid I must say the Gatorade bottles have the superior tops. Twist and suckle.

I did some Gatorades too. They're very particular about their logo.

Mmm.. suckle. nipples.

Uh. Did I start drooling?

Hey, you have the real thing available to you; no need to slobber over my Gatorade bottles.

[SirNitram]

I did some of those. I also did the Sprite bottles, and the Pepsi/Mountain Dew swirls. The nice thing about working in plastics is that it's easy to explain to your small children what you do for a living; you just take them to the grocery store or the parking lot, and start pointing at plastic parts.

I'm afraid I must say the Gatorade bottles have the superior tops. Twist and suckle.

I did some Gatorades too. They're very particular about their logo.

Yea, there was always that. That, and if you lose the top, nothing else really fits on it. So you're buggered.

Mmm.. suckle. nipples.

Uh. Did I start drooling?

Hey, you have the real thing available to you; no need to slobber over my Gatorade bottles.

Gives us the Precious!

[Tsyroc]

I did some of those. I also did the Sprite bottles, and the Pepsi/Mountain Dew swirls. The nice thing about working in plastics is that it's easy to explain to your small children what you do for a living; you just take them to the grocery store or the parking lot, and start pointing at plastic parts.

Now you should ask for a raise because I specifically bought that water because of the mountains on the bottle not because of the brand or the water.

[LordShaithis]

Being petty or silly is one thing, morality is another. And as I said, without a contract, nobody is morally obligated to buy from anyone in particular.

[Iceberg]

If I understand things correctly, what the people who are boycotting French products are really intending to do (at least, the intelligent and articulate ones) is to register displeasure with the French government for their attempts to undermine American foreign policy. Which is perfectly reasonable - especially considering that in some (thankfully isolated) instances, non-Americans have resorted to violence against American-owned businesses (or worse, local businesses operating under an American trademark, such as a local McDonald's franchise) in order to protest American foreign policy.

On the other hand, this Dixie Chicks thing is just utterly, utterly banal. I don't listen to them ANYWAY if I can help it. Sure, Natalie Marnes is easy on the eye (and she looks pretty good naked), but there are LOTS of other female singers who do that, and do we REALLY need yet another wistful cover of "Children Get Older"? I didn't even like that song when Fleetwood Mac did it (a friend of mine really likes them for some reason; I just think of them as having done too many of those crappy songs I keep hearing on the easy-listening radio channels).