"America Has Lost Its Soul"?Again? What Is It This Time?!

As I have pointed out before, with several articles as evidence (and more to come later this week), Le Monde doesn't lose a single instant to fire broadsides at Americans, their society, and their economy. Case in point is America's Olympic basketball team, which lost to Argentina on Friday.

Certainly, there is not much to defend about the team, but listen to how Alain Giraudo ends his chronicle on the front page of the special Olympic supplement (no link available at the time of this writing), and ask yourself if making comparisons with Buenos Aires's financial status (done in because of evil capitalism, naturellement) and evoking America's soul (once again) is not going slightly overboard.

According to the criteria of the IMF and the World Bank, Argentina is a country in a severe bankrupt state. According to our criteria [whose? those of all Frenchmen?], the United States is a country that has lost its basketball shoes [a French expression meaning to lose one's head or one's grip] and therefore its soul.