Paris is still getting below-the-fold coverage in America

Paris is still burning—and still getting below-the-fold coverage

writes Telis Demos in Slate, proving that our detractors' claims that clueless Americans are gleefully overreacting to the events in France are false.

In addition to nine straight days of riots and protests in the city's poorest immigrant suburbs, new violence has erupted in three towns far from Paris. The WP blandly describes the current situation. While President Jacques Chirac has yet to deliver a major address, Muslim community leaders have started meeting to figure out how to curb the violence. Some suburbs are planning anti-riot protests for the weekend. The NYT's more incisive story looks at possible explanations, highlighted by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's anti-crime measures.

For more insight, don't miss Craig S. Smith's graphic piece in the NYT about a new wave of workers from central and southern Africa determinedly heading to Europe (via Spain, which has liberal immigration controls) as AIDS and other diseases devastate their home countries.

While Jamey Keaten reported that

In a particularly gruesome incident, attackers doused a 50-year-old woman on crutches with a flammable liquid and set her afire as she tried to get off a bus in the suburb of Sevran,

the AP reporter added that

At the State Department in Washington, spokesman Sean McCormack … said the riots were a French internal issue. "Certainly, as anybody would, we mourn the loss of life in these kinds of situations. But, again, these are issues for the French people and the French government to address."

Quite different from Mitterrand's attitude, and that of the French press, towards America…