FRENCH FRIED: French Mad over Cadillac Ad That Mocks Them For Taking ‘Whole of August Off’
U.S. luxury car maker Cadillac has provoked anger in France with an advert which pokes fun at countries where workers ‘stroll home, stop by the cafe… and take the whole of August off’.
The commercial features Desperate Housewives actor Neil McDonough as a successful businessman who compares ‘hard-working’ Americans to their counterparts abroad who in his words ‘don’t work’.
He says: ‘Why do we work so hard? For what? For this? For stuff? Other countries don’t work, they stroll home, stop by the cafe, they take August off. Off.
Website Slate.fr carried the headline ‘The lamentable anti-French advert by Cadillac’ while magazine Nouvel Obs said it implied the French were ‘lazy, spending time relishing their paid holidays’.
Writer Marc Naimark wrote sarcastically: ‘Ah yes, these frogs, these cheese-eating surrender monkeys, known for their laziness, the 35 hours a week, the ban on work e-mails after 6pm… what a difference to the Yankee workers, who relish spending their time doing everything, except nothing.’
Read more: Daily Mail
