The more things change…
On a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon in a mid-sized French city, a fellow American friend and I walked to our local bakery to indulge in French pastries. As we walked home, nibbling at our sweet treats, I spied a magazine cover displayed prominently in the window of a tabac. It read, Ils veulent le tuer, or “They want to kill him,” and had a picture of President-elect Barack Obama.
“What does that mean?” I asked my friend, horrified. “Who wants to kill him?”
“People do,” she said. “Crazy people who didn’t vote for him.”
“But that’s terrible,” I answered. “How could people say such things?” Then I fell silent for a moment before wondering out loud, “But, I suppose it’s really just the same thing as all those people wishing Bush were dead these last four years…”
“Well, yeah,” she said, “We all wish that!”
I felt myself grow very wary, but I could not allow that to pass. This girl was my friend, a young teacher like myself, a fellow citizen abroad. When you live abroad you realize how many more things you hold in common with your compatriots, even the liberal ones! “Did you hear yourself? You are exactly like those people wishing Barack Obama dead. How could you wish a man dead?”
“Well, he wasn’t my president,” she huffed, and we returned home in silence.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/the_more_things_change.html
