"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys", sometimes shortened to "surrender monkeys", is a derogatory description of French people, referring to their cheeses and military history, that was coined in 1995 by Ken Keeler, then-writer for the television series The Simpsons. The phrase has since entered two Oxford quotation dictionaries. After being popularized by National Review journalist Jonah Goldberg, it has frequently been used by journalists and academics. The phrase was particularly used in the run-up to the Iraq War, since France was opposed to military intervention in Iraq.
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Famous quotes containing the words surrender and/or monkeys:
“There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The monkeys winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras,
supreme in their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
and strictly practical appendages”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)