Tour de France 2013: The Funny and the Ugly
To be honest I'm not a big cycling fan. When I was a child my sister and my father spent hours in front of the TV watching the Tour, talking about cyclists during the dinner and I found that incredibly boring. Nowadays I watch this on TV but I'm not really interested by the cyclists, I watch it for the countryside and the occasional cultural comments. Anyway, this year the Tour was in Marseille for the end of the fifth stage so I decided to see that for real just to enjoy the experience once in my life. Well I waited a very long time but I had a very good spot and it was funny apart something in the end. I will talk about that later.
Before the arrival of the cyclists the publicity caravan passes and they throw things to the public (t-shirts, caps...). Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch anything but I think I can live without a Cochonou sun hat (Cochonou is a brand of delicatessen).
I took a lot of pictures:
As you can see there were cars for different things: bakers, police, labor union, newspapers, mineral water, supermarket, Corsican airline company, brand of washing powder...
And at last, the cyclists!
I was able to film them (sorry about the lack of stability):
And now something less funny. No, I don't speak about doping, it's something else. Recently, France legalized marriage and adoption for same-sex couples. It was a campaign promise from François Hollande, public opinion was mainly favorable to that but the opposition and a minority of Catholics organized demonstrations against the law. Particularly a group called La Manif pour tous. They claim in particular that a family is a father and a mother and that the adoption by gay couples is harmful for the children. La Manif' pour tous was overtaken by even more extremist groups than them, there was an increase of violence against the gays, but the law passed anyway. But La Manif pour tous doesn't want to die. Their new idea? To appear in sport events broadcast nationally or even better internationally to show that they still exist. A guy disrupted the final of the French Open (but French TV cuts his appearance). They planned to disturb the final of the French Rugby Cup but rugby fans saw their announcement on facebook and made them understand that they shouldn't spoil the show.
So now they shake flags of La Manif pour Tous on the roads of the Tour de France. And that afternoon when me and other people including a woman with her two grandchildren waited during more than three hours, two children (about ten and twelve) skipped in front of the others and when the cyclists passed, they brandished their flags.
Two interesting things about this incident:
- With their flags, they blocked the view of people who waited since longer than them (the grandmother was really furious). No good means to convert people to their cause. Rather counterproductive. Well so much the better.
- Even if these children skipped in front of people who were there since longer than them they stayed under the sun without caps and water during more than two hours and they were stuck against the barrier. Their parents sat behind the crowd and just shout them to bring out their flags at the last moment. But of course gay parents are harmful for the children, not them, they protect the children, don't you see?.
Before the arrival of the cyclists the publicity caravan passes and they throw things to the public (t-shirts, caps...). Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch anything but I think I can live without a Cochonou sun hat (Cochonou is a brand of delicatessen).
I took a lot of pictures:
As you can see there were cars for different things: bakers, police, labor union, newspapers, mineral water, supermarket, Corsican airline company, brand of washing powder...
And at last, the cyclists!
I was able to film them (sorry about the lack of stability):
Click to viewAnd now something less funny. No, I don't speak about doping, it's something else. Recently, France legalized marriage and adoption for same-sex couples. It was a campaign promise from François Hollande, public opinion was mainly favorable to that but the opposition and a minority of Catholics organized demonstrations against the law. Particularly a group called La Manif pour tous. They claim in particular that a family is a father and a mother and that the adoption by gay couples is harmful for the children. La Manif' pour tous was overtaken by even more extremist groups than them, there was an increase of violence against the gays, but the law passed anyway. But La Manif pour tous doesn't want to die. Their new idea? To appear in sport events broadcast nationally or even better internationally to show that they still exist. A guy disrupted the final of the French Open (but French TV cuts his appearance). They planned to disturb the final of the French Rugby Cup but rugby fans saw their announcement on facebook and made them understand that they shouldn't spoil the show.
So now they shake flags of La Manif pour Tous on the roads of the Tour de France. And that afternoon when me and other people including a woman with her two grandchildren waited during more than three hours, two children (about ten and twelve) skipped in front of the others and when the cyclists passed, they brandished their flags.
Two interesting things about this incident:
- With their flags, they blocked the view of people who waited since longer than them (the grandmother was really furious). No good means to convert people to their cause. Rather counterproductive. Well so much the better.
- Even if these children skipped in front of people who were there since longer than them they stayed under the sun without caps and water during more than two hours and they were stuck against the barrier. Their parents sat behind the crowd and just shout them to bring out their flags at the last moment. But of course gay parents are harmful for the children, not them, they protect the children, don't you see?.