What’s with this new obsession with hating the French?
Chicago’s NBC5 aired a story about tags inside some bags and backpacks that had (possibly) anti-Bush statements on them. They were written in French, a language that the reporter had obviously never heard of:
A message inside some bags and backpacks takes a dig at an unidentified president — but you have to know the secret language to understand it.
I guess that by calling it a secret language, you convince lots of those ignorant couch potatoes watching your station that the French are some kind of secret society who think they’re too smart for their own good.
Anyway, the rest of the story, which I find hilarious. They’re spinning it by saying that the message on the tag was meant for the company president:
Those who look closely at washing instructions inside Tom Bihn portable culture bags and backpacks, it reads, “We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn’t vote for him.”
Why hasn’t this caused more of an uproar? Because the message is written in French. Company officials claim they had no idea what the tags said because of the language in which it was written, NBC5 reported.
“No I didn’t have any idea and I wouldn’t because I am not in the manufacturing side of things,” said Sungra Rose, a spokeswoman for the company. “Now, I just look at it and say, ‘OK, there is the logo and made in Port Angeles and all of that, so I really never read through it.”
The company says it has a few hundred tags left to use up, and then they will have them re-designed.
The Tom Bihn Web site claims the message was “an inside joke among seamstresses and staff” at the company’s factory, and that it was “intended to poke fun at company’s founder and president.”
Tom Bihn, the President of Tom Bihn, Inc., issued the following statement:
“I am terribly sorry that this inside joke has been misconstrued to be a slur on any other president. The joke is on me, and I think it’s funny.”
Via Fark.
