Are You Smarter Than a Cliché?

[Freudian_Slit]

@garygnu

What animal makes up the body portion of the Great Sphinx in Egypt?

(It was phrased a little differently than that.)

Ah, gotcha, thanks.

[Gary_Robson]

@adam yax

It’s ‘Cheese eating surrender monkeys’. And it needs to be said, or at least heard in your minds ear, with a heavy Scottish brogue.

[nitpick]
It’s a Scottish burr. The brogue is Irish.
[/nitpick]

[sturmhauke]

@Rube E. Tewesday

Oh, and fwiw, here’s a page found by a googling “French military victories” and not stopping at the Google bomb.

Urban Dictionary: French military victories

Heh, it’s amusing that the top ranked definitions on Urban Dictionary, of all things, debunk the “surrender monkey” thing quite handily.

[mr.jp]

@Rube E. Tewesday

Maybe, I dunno. It is the kind of thing that cost that nice lady so much money, though.

I probably get more annoyed about this than I should, I’m not French and have never been in the military. But sometimes I think about all those brave poilus fighting and dying at Verdun and in so many other hellholes of WWI, and think it’s sad that so few people in the English world seem to care.

Why is that sad? I don’t care what they fought for in WWI. What should I care about them?

[Drunky_Smurf]

@garygnu

What are you? Fr…
I can’t.

Oh my Milli Vanilli. This is too rich. I scared my cat when I guffawed at this post.

[Rube_E.Tewesday]

@mr. jp

Why is that sad? I don’t care what they fought for in WWI. What should I care about them?

Shrug. I don’t know. Why should anybody care about you?
Some people think about things beyond themselves.

[Baldwin]

@mr. jp

Why is that sad? I don’t care what they fought for in WWI. What should I care about them?

Why should you care? Look at the banner at the top of the page.

I really get tired of hearing about how France immediately surrendered to the Germans in WWII. Yeah, after 90,000 French soldiers gave their lives trying to hold back the invasion.

Currently, crack French troops are helping us out in Afghanistan.

I’m glad that lady lost all that money. How do you get on that show?

Edited to correct spelling.

[mr.jp]

@Rube E. Tewesday

Shrug. I don’t know. Why should anybody care about you?
Some people think about things beyond themselves.

Well, I do. I care about, say, Hippasus, Archimedes, Socrates, Giordano Bruno, Magellan, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, Georg Wilhelm Richmann, Jesse Lazear, John Lennon, Mike Smith, Daniel McFarlan Moore, Prometheus, David Webster, Dian Fossey, Yehia El-Mashad, Vasilis Xanthopoulos, Marie Curie, Gerald Bull and Ardashir Hosseinpour.

But why should I care for people dying in WW1, when I dont care what happened either way? Now, if they had made the Christsmas peace work longer, that would have been another matter.

[Tamerlane]

@Randy Seltzer

Go to google.

Enter “French military victories”

Hit “I’m feeling lucky.”

I’d be interested to hear from an actual historian on this list.

I’m no “actual historian” but we went over this particular parody in some detail in this old thread:

Brief history, with scores and commentary, of French Warfare.

[RealityChuck]

Up until the 20th Century, the French were considered the most feared millitary power in Europe. Sure, Napoleon lost in the end, but only after conquering most of the continent. His generalship at Austerlitz is among the best in the world, and even Waterloo was more bad luck than bad fighting.

Even in modern times, it was the French army that ultimately stopped the Germans in 1914, forcing trench warfare.

As for surrendering, that’s what you do when your army is defeated, even if you fight hard against it. No one implies the British are cowards because they surrendered to George Washington. No one calls the Germans “surrender monkey” for losing two world wars.