French people have funny accents and they are always making fun of other people’s funny accents, so this seems like a disaster. France have just made it a hate crime to make fun of the accents of others, punishable by 3 years in the Bastille. The French will put up with female armpit hair, socialism, and a Muslim invasion, but when you take away their right to be snooty, there can be only revolution.
RTL Today reports on this solution searching for a problem:
The French lower house of parliament on Thursday approved a law banning discrimination based on a person’s accent, calling the practice “a form of racism”.
The text, overwhelmingly adopted by 98 votes to 3, adds accents to the list of causes of actionable discrimination, along with racism, sexism and discrimination against the disabled.
So, laughing at a goofy accent is as racist as the N-word? Apparently so.
The law, proposed by centre-right deputy Christophe Euzet, was the subject of animated debate in the house, despite the overwhelming vote.
“At a time when the ‘visible’ minorities benefit from the legitimate attention of public authorities, the ‘audible’ minorities are the main forgotten people of the social contract based on equality,” Euzet said.
As far as I can tell, this important hate crime legislation was passed based on the anecdotal evidence of 3 people:
Maina Sage, deputy for French Polynesia, spoke of the difficulties that can be encountered by people, like her, speaking with an accent from outside the French mainland.
Patricia Miralles, the daughter of North Africans, spoke of the “mockery” that she encountered in her younger days over her Algerian accent, which she briefly reprised in the parliamentary chamber.
Last month Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the far-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement, was caught on camera being rude to a journalist with a southern accent who asked him a question at the National Assembly.
“Can someone ask me a question in French? And (make it) a bit more understandable…,” Melenchon said then, addressing a group of reporters…
Oh, the horror!
Considering history, I could see France should banning German accents, but this is ridiculous. In fact, check out what happens when you make fun of an accent:
The maximum penalty proposed in the new legislation is three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Sacre bleu!
This law is good news for Arnold Schwarzenegger and democrat Mazie Hirono, both who have hilarious accents, as they can now visit France without getting laughed at. Well, laughed at for their accents, at least. They can still be ridiculed for all that other stuff that makes them absurd caricatures of human beings.
I wonder if this law would protect Nancy Pelosi’s stammering white-trash Baltimore accent, or Joe Biden’s mumbly made-up language accent? Actually they are both so incomprehensible, that people can’t understand them enough to make fun of them. It’s really quite sad.
In America the national pastime is baseball. In France it’s being rude to tourists, trying to speak French. Take that away from the French people and heads are going to roll. No seriously, there will be guillotines in front of the French Parliament because of this.
