Like Other Americans, Jack Valenti Should Remain Open to French Criticism

Claudine Mulard has an article on Jack Valenti in which she describes, among other things, the 1993 fight over the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), using, naturally, the word "intransigeant" to describe Washington's position (when it is France which is refusing to yield in any international crisis, it is the word "firm" and/or "principled" that the French media use)…

When the 82-year-old (the age Mulard gives us doesn't fit with the DOB provided below) who headed the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for 38 years complains about the French attitude during the talks (and that in a rather diplomatic tone of voice — "I was extremely troubled by the hostility which arose in 1993 and afterwards"), Mulard manages to temper this with tongue-in-cheek criticism of Valenti: "the fighter whom one would have thought less sensitive to criticism!" (Exclamation mark hers).

(Needless to say, the Texan was not troubled for himself, but at the extent to which the American position — and America itself — were being defamed in the French press and French society.)

Of course, if (the) criticism is French, it can only be "valid", "creative", and "objective" — or, as Le Figaro likes to put it, "pertinent".