I am Julien Massillon, the French Intern, and I approve Dino Rossi’s mistake.


For the first time in my whole life, I agreed with a Republican guy, and that had to be noticed. Usually, Republicans are just stupid: they wage war for nothing; they think they rule the world; they tell lies; they are way too much patriotic; they are so conservative that it seems they regret the old times of slavery, segregation, and painful secret hidden abortions; they believe in God in ways God himself may not approve; and they spend their time insulting French people, blind to the fact we are so much more superior in so many domains (education, health care, cuisine, fashion, arts, beauty, perfumes, architecture, etc). This is why I’m so confused to see that a Democrat candidate is against our French Airbus! What’s happening here? Democrats are our friends. I mean, they are American but we deal with it and accept them the way they are. Sen. Patty Murray is shaking our old habits for electoral purpose and you must not follow her path.

Dino Rossi may be the first one to embody change in the Republican Party and I’m glad he did. Even if he apologized for this, he was right: the illegal subsidies European governments gave to Airbus must not be taken into account by an American agency. You are the champions of liberalism and capitalism! If you prevent Airbus from competing with Boeing for these AirForce tanks because of unfair competition, you are no longer American. Why do you care about what’s happening abroad? These subsidies are no concern to you. Or now you also should start being worried about Chinese children making Nike running shoes and Indonesian families being deprived from home because of palm oil production for your processed foods.

Besides, it’s too late. You want to protect your jobs and get rid of this foreign threat? But YOU made globalization the way we know it today! Okay, we the French launched it, in a traditional and crafty manner with colonialism; but you made it an industry with McDonald’s and Coca-Cola spread all around the world. You can’t go back now. You must face the consequences of your imperialism. Did we ask you if you subsided Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron before sending them to pervert our youth and make it brainless?

You may ignore this, but for years, Southern developing countries have been fighting —and they still are— for the same sort of equal treatment you are struggling for in this case. European and American agriculture are privileged since farmers are granted to receive subsidies whatever the amount of crops they sell. In South America, that’s not possible. For instance, Brazil’s government cannot afford to give money to help farmers. And when Brazilian farmers are competing on the international market, European and American farmers always win because thanks to the subsidies they receive, they can offer lower prices. That’s a huge issue in the World Trade Organisation. Developing countries’ leaders have begged Europe and America to stop, or at least decrease the amount of the subsidies. But Western countries never agreed to do so, and the competition is still unfair. I don’t know if this proverb exists here, but you only harvest what you seeded.

You know what’s the most interesting part of this story? The media coverage. They all point out the number of American jobs at stake in this struggle. But I have not yet found any reporting the number of European jobs that could benefit of this contract. You’re not the only ones coping with crisis and unemployment.