I hate my country sometimes. Really hate it. Visceral stomach-heaving loathing.
One such time is when candidates for high office tell us that ignorance is good and knowledge is bad. It makes me murderous. Yes, ignorance is good, poverty is good, starvation is good, disease is good, pain is good – and that’s what we have to offer, the candidates imply. Vote for us and pride yourself on not knowing any pesky foreign languages.
Quelle horreur! Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has been skewered in a new political attack ad – for speaking French.
The ad, released by rival Newt Gingrich, seeks to draw unflattering parallels between Mr Romney and another Massachusetts politician, John Kerry.
Entitled The French Connection, it features a clip of Mr Romney talking in French when he ran the Winter Olympics.
Newt Gingrich has a PhD in history – European history. He has to have had minimal competence in at least two European languages for that.
His 1971 dissertation, Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960, contains a number of sources in French in its bibliography.
Miserable lying bastard.