Omelette Du Fromage Man

Submission 2,601

Part of a series on 2020 United States Presidential Election. [View Related Entries]

About

Omelette Du Fromage Man refers to a shirtless, masked American tourist who crashed a French news report to impersonate a French accent during a celebration of Joe Biden's apparent victory in the 2020 United States Presidential election. The man, wearing a messenger bag, a University of Michigan baseball cap and sunglasses, whose real name is Meka Anyanetu, leaned into the French reporter and said, "I’ve been to France; it’s beautiful. I ate escargot. I love a croissant." He also quoted the 90s Cartoon Network animated series Dexter's Laboratory when he said, "I love an omelette du fromage." The video went viral on Twitter in November 2020.

Origin

On November 7th, 2020, following the announcement by numerous news agencies and networks that Joe Biden won the U.S. presidency, French television news reporter of BFM TV Maxime Switek reported on the celebrations in Washington, D.C. During his broadcast, Meka Anyanetu interrupted the broadcast to impersonate the French accent to Switek's delight. Anyanetu said, "I’ve been to France, it’s beautiful. I ate escargot. I love a croissant. I love an omelette du fromage" (shown below, left). The final line references the Dexter's Laboratory quote and meme I Love Your Accent, Say It Again (shown below, right).

Spread

That day, on November 7th, 2020, Twitter user @pierre_It tweeted the clip. The tweet received more than 9.2 million views. 84,000 likes and 33,000 retweets in less than three days (shown below).

Additionally, on November 7th, Redditor TheAtheistArba87 posted the video on the /r/PublicFreakout^[2] subreddit, where it received more than 49,000 points (92% upvoted) and 1,400 comments in less than three days.

The following day, Forbes^[1] published an interview with "Omelette Du Fromage Man," Meka Anyanetu, a 30-year-old Washington, D.C. resident. "When I heard the result, yeah, I was ecstatic," Anyanetu said. "So I ran down and grabbed my emergency bottles of champagne." Anyanetu says that he is a "Francophone" and something of a "Francophile," stating that he had studied French while attending the University of Michigan. He also confirmed that "omelette du fromage" was a reference to Dexter's Laboratory. In the interview, he said:

Not only have I been in France, but I've traveled by myself. Let your audience know and let the Francophone world know that. I'm not just some oblivious American who watched one TV show. I actually used to know French. I love their transit and as well as their quality of food. Like just things like bread, the meat. I feel like basic items just taste so much better there.

On November 9th, 2020, BFM TV published a reaction to the video with Switek, the interrupted French journalist. In the video, Switek explains that he had already conducted a three-minute interview with Anyanetu before the viral clip. The post received more than 2,700 views in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Several media outlets covered the video, including Forbes,^[1] Uproxx,^[3] the New York Post,^[4] Pedestrian TV^[5] and more.