Our French lesson for today, boys and girls, is "faire une bêtise". This means "to do something stupid".A bêtise is a "stupidity", a "silliness". If your kids are acting up and getting on your nerves, you might tell them to arrêtez les bêtises!
Here are some very fine examples of grown-up people qui a fait une bêtise, all reported in the news recently (since we no longer have our former President to make fun of, I had to go looking for something else):
Why do we REALLY need tougher gun control laws in the United States? Because too many stoopid people, like this guy, want to own guns.
- Proof that taking drugs makes you stoopid: man tries to buy crack and pay with his CREDIT CARD. Then he stole a car. Then he called the cops to report it stolen. And then he told the cops he'd tried to buy crack with his credit card.
- And it's not just stoopidity in America either. Here's one from our neighbors to the North. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) and their so-called professional fact-checkers mixed up two films by Georges Lucas in the same news story, making for a "fairy" good bêtise, indeed.
- Oh, wait. I DO have a good political bêtise. Sarah Palin, who everyone knows is salivating at the idea of running for President, apparently has to write her speech notes on the palm of her hand. And then had to look at her hand for the crib notes. After she mocked Obama for using a teleprompter (which every president has used since they were invented, I'm sure). And THIS is a woman we want to see in the White House? (But shame on the White House guy, though, for mocking Palin in return with his own stoopid little hand-notes joke. Was that really necessary?)
