Brain-Jockey

Pardon My French

Written by Audrie Zettick on June 15, 2009

The downside of being a policy and politics blogger is that it’s tough to really take a vacation.  No matter where I’ve been for my family sojourn the past two weeks—travelling through New England, hoofing it up to the Citadelle in French Quebec—I’ve been drawn to things that are writing prompts.  

 

I was strolling through the upper olde town portion of Quebec (within the walls of the original fortification).  Graffiti is not prominent, but I had just passed “Quebec e Liberte” scrawled on one wall—Quebec Independence.  The Governour Generale of Canada had made a rare appearance at her quarters there, and a supporter of independence took advantage of the event to make his passion known. Hopefully, this was a youthful exuberance by a supporter of Parti Québécois or of Bloc Québécois , not a sign of activity of the almost-but-not-quite-defunct FLQ, a Marxist-leaning and violent organization of previous eras. The PQ and BQ are left-leaning but focused on either independence or protection of the French language, not blowing up coffee shops.  This reminded me of a conversation I had on the previous day with a German couple–sorry, just couldn’t help myself–about countries having official languages (like the U.S. English movement).  I was enjoying using my French but couldn’t help discussing what language differences could do to the unity of a country.  Again, my propensity for political thought trumped all. 

 

Further down the street, as I was admiring the many street cafes on this sunny afternoon, I spied this graffiti:     

 

If you can’t read it, it says  

 

Americans in Deep S@#%  A.i.d.s. 

 

A decidedly French-Canadian spin on the current American economic and spending situation.  And with the state of the debate on Obama’s budget and the forecasted impact of the ballooning national debt, I’d say I agree.