When I was in college, I had a French landlord with whom I had to sit on the floor of my apartment-to-be and drink a bottle of wine while engaging in philosophical debate before he would rent the place to me. He was, after one such evening, forever convinced that I was a “closet existentialist”. Reading this (sent by Karen this morning, bless her heart) makes me wish it were true. Vive les Bérets Noirs!
French Intellectuals to be Deployed to Convince Taliban of Nonexistence of a Deity
[author unknown]
The ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of the remaining Taliban zealots by proving the nonexistence of God.
Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade (the “Black Berets”) will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency, and existential anomie among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris’s Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of pavement cafes at strategic points near the front lines. There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man’s lonely isolation in the universe.
They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers’ ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.
Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, an intense and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said, “The Taliban are caught in a logical fallacy of the
most ridiculous kind. There is no deity despite the Koran, and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet; I am talking.”
Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man’s nauseating freedom of action, with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the Frenchmens’ endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area.