Yesterday I saw a guy on a skateboard wearing a shirt that said "I heart Conceptual Marxism." In my ESL class earlier that day, "materialist" was a vocab word, and one of my students asked me if there was any relationship between "materialist" and "materialism." So, when I passed the guy on his skateboard, I said "Woo hoo! I heart historical materialism!" It was a nerdy and vague exchange.

Today I tried to suggest to my students that the expression "Tête de Turc" might suggest something about the way French speakers view Turkey, but they were skeptical. I think the figurative translation is something like "the person who is the brunt of all jokes" or else "scapegoat" or even "whipping boy."