Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Except when it is waged with rubber dinghies
Rayonnement franchouille dans toute sa splendeur. This from Chiraq who has stated that war is never a solution.
Birkenau comparisons surely forthcoming
Journalists Philippe Cohen and Pierre Pean say the paper has become a "modern-day Pravda" run in a "climate of fear" by an unscrupulous triumvirate.
Albeit Gitmo scares murderous malcontents, and Le Monde goes for the socially low-hanging fruit by scaring it’s readers.
Corpor(e)al admission rituals
You are what you
I’m still waiting for the continent that’s habitually outraged by the mere breathing of U.S. troops to say something.
Still waiting.
No, that’s okay. I’ll hold.
No, I really don’t want to watch Caligula in the mean time, I’ll just wait, thanks. The fuse is lit!
Take the side of good against evil
Play Paris Riots (the game comes with English subtitles). The 'official game' which re-enacts last year's riots by French youths, Paris Riots places you in the role of French riot police facing off against ultra-violent French racaille. Wipe 'em out!
The wings are clad in an esoteric alloy an ordinary engineer would call "unobtainium"
P.J. O’Rourke on the A380:Two months to the day after the A380 first became airborne, Peter and I were at Airbus headquarters, in Toulouse, France, in the A380 systems-testing facility. The building is as blank-walled as the Kaaba and much larger.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Fête de la Liberté on Sunday
Next Sunday, Erik Svane will be signing his books at the Fête de la Liberté, along with over 30 other authors, including artist Dan Greenberg. 
Erik (entre Pierre et Marine) et Dan à Genève pour le 10ème anniversaire des éditions Paquet
The Mata Hari New York Times
The effort, which the government calls the “Terrorist Finance Tracking Program” (TFTP), is entirely legal. There are no conceivable constitutional violations involved. The Supreme Court held in United States v. Miller (1976) that there is no right to privacy in financial-transaction information maintained by third parties. Here, moreover, the focus is narrowed to suspected international terrorists, not Americans, and the financial transactions implicated are international, not domestic. This is not data mining, and it does not involve fishing expeditions into the financial affairs of American citizens. Indeed, few Americans even have information that is captured by the program — though there would be nothing legally offensive even if they did.The New York Times has done it again. They have published enough about methods, people, and operations to compromise them, and to deter anyone from cooperating with the US Government because their identities would be blown by cretinous scribblers who are fighting their own little Jihad against what they have obviously always believed are expendable human lives – anyone they don’t understand in their own society.
And unlike the last vital program the New York Times compromised — the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, which the same reporters, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, exposed last December — there is not even a facially plausible concern that the TFTP violates statutory law. The provisions germane here (mainly, the Right to Financial Privacy Act that Congress enacted in 1978 in reaction to Miller) do not even apply to the nerve center at issue, the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
And their “poodles” are on it like white on rice. The fuse is lit!
Subliminal Economics
Bankruptcy in the age of SoDoKo and the dismal science that dares not speak its’ name.
Out of the woodwork
3 cops pull over 2 motor scooter riding French youths in Nanterre ... and are attacked by 15 suburban scum.
Faut être franchouille -- c'est à dire pédaloïde obsédé par son image -- pour penser ça
The USA doesn't try to cover things up, the USA does the right thing and punishes wrong doers, and leaves the whole transparent process open for the world to see -- but Libération PropagandaStaffel bleats that Uncle Sam is only taking care of his image.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The obvious, graciously omitted
Le Vieux Continent copiera-t-il les vins du Nouveau Monde?
(Will Old Europe copy the wines of the New World?)
Note too when it’s acceptable to use any sort of warrior speak vocabulary in EUtopia: Brussels embarks on conquest to recover wine markets
You go out there and git ‘em, champ!
Maybe the MRAP hacks will try to sue the Economist
Not so long ago, you would be hauled in by French cops on trumped up charges of extreme right activism for printing an image like this one or for uttering the word "Eurabia".
Transnational Soul Train
These are some of the colorful ideas for reconnecting with disgruntled EU folk in a Commission document obtained by the news agency. Others include a new EU logo and theme tune, a Commissioners' Day and a kitsch pop extravaganza modeled on the Eurovision Song Contest. "We want to show the EU can dance," the report says, according to Reuters. An anonymous, presumably British, official is quoted as saying the aim is to make the Union "more punter-friendly" and to "show that the EU can be fun." Diplomats from some new member states are not so keen on the idea. "They feel people are being forced to dance and sing, like they were by the communists," said one.
Useful nationbuilding skills, indeed - but what will restore their former dignity as adult humans?
Dreaming for a War Between America and Iran?
Difficile de l'avouer mais Villepin rêve secrètement d'une crise internationale majeure pour se refaire. Plusieurs hauts diplomates de l'Elysée le cachent à peine. «Il mise sur un conflit avec l'Iran pour reprendre la main et dire aux Français qu'ils ont besoin pour les protéger d'un homme d'Etat à la hauteur des grands enjeux internationaux», confiait récemment l'un d'eux avec le plus grand sérieux. Comme si son heure de gloire lorsqu'il était ministre des Affaires étrangères lors de la crise irakienne pouvait à nouveau sonner.
If Libération is correct, the wise, non-egoistical, peace-loving, dreaming-of-a-better-world representative of the people of France (who, don't forget, are friends of the Americans) — lionized for his That's right, Roger. No thought control.
Trying to sustain a wheezing career, Roger Waters of the former Pink Floyd has shaken the cobwebs out on Israelis trying to protect themselves from Palestinian snipers, by spray painting on ‘the ApartheidNaziZionistWall,’ 95 percent of which is actually a fence.
Wall? Fence? Getit? Hu-huh-he-huh!
If there ever was a ‘yeah, whatever’ aura to another washed-up entertainment figure trying to say something they find meaningful about the Israelis protecting themselves from snipers and infiltrating bombers, this is it – the reason world traveling entertainers are coming to Israel this summer after years of staying away is because it’s safer now. The ‘ApartheidNaziZionistWall’ appears to be doing a fine job of protecting Waters and all the other little darlings who always seem to know better than anyone else about how we mere plebes and proles should comport ourselves.
A look again at the solipsism of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” tells you everything you need to know about what’s behind this stunt – the movie was ginned up by Waters about himself, and wallowing in his lost years in an emotional wilderness caused and conducted only by him. It’s the perfect example of what presently passes for the arts in large part at the moment: self-absorption with no real point other than a self-therapeutic display which the artist expects us to pay for solely because of their ceremonial position and title of artist. "I've seen pictures of it, I've heard a lot about it but without being here you can't imagine how extraordinarily oppressive it is and how sad it is to see these people coming through these little holes," he added. "It's craziness."
He’s right – it is horrific that people are trying to get through in order to kill the likes of Waters. Does he ask himself why they’re coming through at all? For their freedom from the misery created by the Palistinians in the West Bank, maybe? Probably not, since he cant imagine that it keeps people OUT, not IN, and that it might be there for reasons he might just understand:Roger Waters was inspired to create the album during a 1977 concert tour for Animals, dubbed Pink Floyd — In the Flesh. In Montreal, a fan's disruptive behaviour resulted in Waters spitting in the fan's face. Waters was immediately disgusted with himself, and his alienation from his fans urged him to build a wall between himself and the audience, an idea which later evolved into the album
Roger, imagine that that fan had a bomb belt packed with metal flechettes like hooks, screws, ball bearings, and other objects foreign to the human body that the fence itends to keep out. Imagine he had a firearm that “society’s betters” in your native Britain have banned.
The purpose of the fence is to disengage Palestinian killers from the Israeli civilians – to prevent fighting by limiting contact. The likes of Waters don’t have the depth to understand that the Palestinian terror militants don’t want the fence so that they can continue to pick off Israeli civilians. It DOES form a border – one between reasoned though and barbarism. It permits Israel to have a boundary that lets Hamas, the PFLP, and Fatah to imagine an Israel not violently thrown into the sea, and the fact that Waters feels safe enough to travel to Israel is proof of that.
Were the misapplied and cryptic allusions to Orwell's Animal Farm, that great work that Waters was trying to ride the coat-tails of in "Animals" entirely lost on him? When every detached celeb (who knows what to say to be heard) parrots the same line, there are reasons to complain about thought control.
The celebrity set has indeed become a class – they have evolved into the Pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm – trying to convince us of their commonality to their paying customers while showing that they are more equal than others.
If combatants who fail to obey the laws of the Geneva Convention were entitled to its privileges, its very purpose would be rendered a nonsense
Michael Winterbottom has a (cough) documentary about Guantanamo, so naturally Le Monde has Thomas Sotinel devote an entire page to the film and the filmmaker. The last time we looked, there was still no trace of Buried in the Sand in France, nor any translation of the Wall Street Journal article, The Savages: A barbaric enemy disqualified from the Geneva Convention.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Giving them a reactor? Why didn’t I think of that?
The headline only makes sense when you realize that Straub was part of Clinton’s failed policy on North Korea which envisioned giving them a reactor in exchange for them saying out loud that they’d play nice – which they didn’t. It is, incidentally, the same thing the EU3 tried to do with Iran – offer them “sweets and nuts”.
One fundamental failure of Bush's approach was the tendency to raise tensions and make South Korea nervous by stating that "all options" were the table, a phrase underscoring U.S. intentions to use force against North Korea if necessary, he said.
It needs to be noted that Straub was not deeply involved in anything that succeeded.
Quiz time for bobo
Guess who these folks might be:
[One] was previously a registered nurse. Two others in my company had IQ's over 150 and were members of Mensa. Two more were had law degrees. Several were published authors and poets.Their answer is usually the officially pitiable and those structurally oppressed for the public moral vanity, but sorry Spanky, as usual you’re wrong.The fuse is lit!
Something to do with them being humiliated, and all that
French youths from the dirty 18th prey on bag lady.
N'en déplaise aux vieux pubards pédérastes aigris qui sont réduits à dispenser des conseils diététiques aux quadras ringards
Yves Roucaute, political science professor at Nanterre, who wrote an excellent article about French hyprocrisy and pig-headedness over Gitmo, has one more excellent article on Old Europe's failures (failures against communism, fascism, and present-day terrorism -- and failures as a friend and ally of the United States) in today's Wall Street Journal Europe edition. Support the few French intellectuals who have the guts to buck the system and speak out.
The curious sustainability of bad ideas
Some things inspire popular culture, others infect it, or are infected by it.
I think I have found the object of reference and goal that Greens can use for their future utopia: The survivors of war, overpopulation, and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten outside world. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanism which provides everything,
But all would otherwise not be perfect. Humans need crises to feel anguished and involved. Bleakness is, after all, the new gold standard of art, beauty, and thruth: 
Not only was the world headed for catastrophe, but there was little that could be done to avoid it. Some parts of the world might see some minor and temporary recovery, but "a minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century"
The consequences are already clear - Earth is under mounting stress from human activities, with its climate changing and its ecosystems failing. But recognition that we must act urgently to preserve our natural habitat has been undermined by persistent failure to admit the multiplier effect of human numbers. Without policies to reduce world population, efforts to save our environment cannot succeed. With smaller populations, living in greater harmony with nature, our horizons may stretch far into the future.
However the science inspired by fiction causes further fiction to accepted as science: Social pressures on both men and women to marry and have children must be removed. If society were convinced of the need for low birth rates, no doubt the stigma that has customarily been assigned to singles and childless couples would soon disappear.
Stunningly, none of the of the fearful theories bandied about can explain our continued existence as a species – our already present sustainability, if you will, and provides insight into the whacky world of the do-gooder and their theories.
Compulsory control of family size is an unpleasant idea to many, but the alternatives may be much worse. Some governments practice involuntary population control, these usually being the poorer, less educated, overpopulated countries. Most times these countries use vasectomies on all fathers of three or more children, or a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child.
Never mind the jihadist trying to kill you now, we have naturally occurring atomized carbon to sequester!
In common cause with the enlightened European elite
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
If he is financing terrorist activity then you must look for the social causes of his malaise
An Imam from Clichy-sous-Bois has been brought in for interrogation by French authorities regarding the funding of terrorist activity. Associates are screaming "frame up" (you can hear them from here to Haditha).
Clichy-sous-Bois is where last year's French riots got their start. The politically correct French press has always taken objection to the international press using the term Muslim riots to describe the mayhem that ensued.
Clichy-sous-Bois is where last year's French riots got their start. The politically correct French press has always taken objection to the international press using the term Muslim riots to describe the mayhem that ensued.
Breeders soundly ignored
For any reason, reasonable or not. PropagandaStaffel reports that the PS love their poop chutes: At the Gay Pride conference and festival of June 24, Ségolène Royal, the probable candidate for the Socialist Party for the presidential election of 2007, clearly changed her position on gay marriage and the adoption by homosexual couples. In an interview in the monthly magazine « Têtu » (tr.: stubborn) which appears Wednesday, she stated: “I can guarantee that I will advance the issue”, and clearly saying that these issues are part of the Socialist Party platform.
As well as talking out of both sides of their mouths. While saying that anything resembling opposition is a sign of backwardness, Royal promises that she can slime any contraversial initiative through:
With good argument [she said] “with this issue one can anger people for whom homosexual marriage and adoption by couples of the same sex are alien notions (….) I have the will to lead these reforms without wounding anyone’s feelings, without raising the public’s anger”.In other words, they really won’t bother with what the population thinks, and like all good little lefties do something ‘progressive’ to them whether they want it or not.the fuse is lit!
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Questions on EADS and Airbus
Le Monde editor Frédéric Lemaître had an online debate about the EADS scandal Tuesday afternoon, in which the entire affair (unlike, say, Enron) was relativized with a smile. Notice the very first comment/question: little to no anger/disappointment/concern about being lied to/deceived by the élites (political, financial, or other), whether specifically about the Airbus scandal or the wider description of the rivalry with America in general. The concern is noted in a (passive tense) statement of worry that the champion's reputation has been (rather unfairly) damaged (in the eyes of outsiders who are not lucid enough to realize that making too a big a scandal of this will help those dastardly Yanks), not that the champion's leaders were (or may have been) crooks and/or liars.
Any (righteous amd understandable) resentment of one's own kind and concern about insider trading are thus immediately (dare I say automatically?) trumped by the appearance of the Yankee bogeyman. In other words, demands for an accounting (or simply healthy interest and curiosity) are swept aside by a rally 'round the flag war cry. Europeans, you have learned your lessons well!
(Note to Grifone: Boeing did not use to have a monopoly, near or otherwise; it had to contend to with the likes of McDonnell-Douglas. MDD is American also, so that doesn't count, you say, ça revient au même? Oh, that's true, you think the business environment, the cynicism, and the two-faced double-dealing of the type prevalent in Europe must invariably be the same in the United States. Never mind.)
Where Can One Of McDonald's Cash Cows Be Found?
The recent student protests, [Denis Hennequin] says, made him recall the unrest that roiled France in May 1968, when he watched the demonstrations as a 10-year-old from the window of his parents' apartment. "What bothers me is that what they are doing today, in a sense, is protesting in favor of the establishment; they are scared of the future," and hence against change. "I understand where they're coming from," he said. "At the same time, what a waste."
Another item in the list of reasons why the credibility of the "mainstream media" has been plunging
Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the wrong party is in office.Thus writes U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone (as Sylvie Kauffmann demonstrates perfectly what he is talking about).
That belief has its perils for journalism, as the Fitzgerald investigation has shown. The peril that the press may find itself in the hot seat, but even more the peril that it will get the story wrong. The visible slavering over the prospect of a Rove indictment is just another item in the list of reasons why the credibility of the "mainstream media" has been plunging. There's also a peril for the political left. Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them. The pursuit of Karl Rove by the left and the press has been just the latest episode in the attempted criminalization of political differences. Is there any hope that it might turn out to be the last?
Sarko, Ségo, and the Opportunities for Change in France
In taking on Chirac's potential heirs and French society in the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur writes about such things as Sarkozy, the ruling party, Ségolène, and France's 35-hour workweek ("a Socialist conquest for humanity that has gone without replication elsewhere"), as well as "State interventionism that's been biblical writ forever for both the French left and right".
One of Daily Kos's Top Stars Hails From France
Corine Lesnes has an article about Jérôme Guillet, a Daily Kos contributor from (surprise, surprise) France who seems to be one of the blog's top stars (although the "Polytechnicien's" suggestion for more taxes on gas didn't go over well, even with progressives)."Je fais partie de — entre guillemets — l'élite technocratique", reconnaît-il. Et, en bon technocrate, il défend l'Etat. "Sur les questions de santé, d'énergie, de régulation des entreprises, on a besoin de gérer les externalités que les mécanismes de marché ne sont pas capables de contrôler, comme la pollution, le changement climatique."
Outre sa contribution à "Daily Kos", il a monté un site européen pour répondre aux médias anglo-saxons, où s'exerce d'après lui "une vraie démonisation" de la France, "le pays qui défend encore le rôle de l'Etat". "Les Anglo-Saxons ne peuvent pas admettre que l'électricité, en Europe, fonctionne grâce aux surcapacités françaises qui ont été planifiées par l'Etat français."
Stick it in and break it off
The IDF sticks it to Human Rights Watch. Unable to contradict the IDF's claims. Oh, the humanity!
Wipeout
Via Adloyada on the 9 June deaths on a Gaza Beach. Human Rights Watch concludes that it was UXO, and that: the deaths were not directly caused by artillery shelling as they had claimed.
Sounds to me like Human Rights Watch is getting tired of the Pali Psycho Death Cult©® leading them around by the nose.the fuse is lit!
Monday, June 19, 2006
Leftist unwittingly compares himself to terrorist
The war against terror is a war against domestic political opposition, not against terrorists. If it were against terrorists, we would have a national-unity type government doing all we need to do against real terrorists with broad consensus. Think WW II and FDR.
- Posted by nohero on June 15, 2006 02:44 AM
Not Bush -- that's not what this war is about at all. Successes such as Zarqawi's death, however significant or not -- we don't know yet -- are a signal to the likes of Rove and the rightwing radio wreckers who plague us to pile on big time: "Democrats would cut and run" and therefore could never have gotten Zarqawi. (Of course, they never would have been so stupid as to get us into the current mess. In fact, NO other president would have.)
The goal of the war on terror is to finish off democrats and other nonconformists asap. Al Qaida can do what they want. In fact, another real attack would enable Bush and co. to further consolidate power.
Links not by the original commentator on the Graun. The current "mess" is no different than any other one. Does the commentator suppose that George Bush was President during the Vietnam War, Korean War, Bosnia, Kosovo...?
Non-reportage noted
Biased BBC asks why the coverage of this story was so limited.
"My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. "I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy - but it has persecuted its leaders."
It’s simple: it doesn’t fit the media’s script of parading that they seek a diversity of opinion when they prefer that it didn’t challenge their staff’s view of the world.
The root cause, if there ever was one, has been found
Writing for the Washington Post’s Editorial page of Monday 16 June 20006, Robert Kagan surprises Post readers with this and provides us with examples of the “depth” (not!) of the incessant nagging:I recently took part in a panel discussion in London about civil conflict and "failed states" around the world, centered on the interesting work of the British economist Paul Collier. The panelists included the son of a famous African liberation-leader-turned-dictator, the former leader of a South American guerrilla group, a Pakistani journalist, a U.N. official and the head of a nongovernmental humanitarian organization. Naturally, our reasoned and learned discussion quickly transmogrified into an extended round-robin denunciation of American foreign policy.
I’m going to leave it at that. It’s safe to say that the panel was made up of the ‘cream of the crop’ of the ‘world’ public opinion that so many people idolize as meaningful. What seems more evident is that there is a emotional avoidance principal at play that is the root cause of much of the passive-aggression that some try to call policy. I really have to wonder though, if those poor folk who are kept miserable by the elite represented by the panel really agree with them, or are just bobbing their heads to get that sack of rice they were promised.
As for "failed states" and civil conflict, several panelists agreed that they were always and everywhere the fault of the United States. The African insisted that Bosnia and Kosovo were destroyed by American military interventions, not by Slobodan Milosevic, and that Somalia was a failed state because of American policy. The Pakistani insisted the United States was to blame for Afghanistan's descent into anarchy in the 1990s. The former guerrilla leader insisted that most if not all problems in the Western Hemisphere were the product of over a century of American imperialism.
When someone pointed out that the young boys fighting in African tribal and ethnic wars could hardly be fighting against American "imperialism," the African dictator's son insisted they were indeed. When the head of the NGO paused from gnashing his teeth at American policy to suggest that perhaps the United States was not to blame for the genocide in Rwanda, the African dictator's son argued that it was, because it had failed to intervene. The United States was to blame both for the suffering it caused and the suffering it did not alleviate.
If we refrained from action out of fear that others around the world would be angry with us, then we would never act. And count on it: They'd blame us for that, too.
Looks like too much oil money to me
Doomsday is coming! Ever see a Norwegian tin-foil hat? Our EuroWanker of the Day has a nice one.
When pigs have wings
So, either Forgeard really didn't know about the delays regarding the A380 (in which case, EADS-Airbus has management on par with a bunch of jerk-offs who couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery) or he did know and it's insider trading (something which French State TV and PPDA repeat incessantly is only possible in the US of A).
Made in China
Globophobe crypto-communist cell Attac, which spearheaded the French campaign to turn down the Zeropean Constitution, gets ripped apart like a cheap toy. Naive supporters look on in disbelief. Next up for implosion: Le Monde Diplomatique with Ignare (je n'arrête pas de me faire) Ramoner.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Mais, bon sang, mais c’est bien sûr
Once that ugly past is all forgotten, the history books will be re-written. Tariq Ramadan states that it is wrong to say that Europe had a Judeo-Christian past.
Typical French primetime entertainment
Sophisticated French show stupid Americans what satire and irony are all about!
OBL shows up disguised as Zorro. The French anchorman (puppet of Patrick Poivre d'Arvor -- France's #1 anchorman, who has a criminal conviction for bribery by the way) tells OBL that Zorro is a nice guy who is supposed to help widows and orphans. The plucky OBL states that he has done his bit to create plenty of widows and orphans in the United States.
Americans, you are hated here.
Zéropa balafrée sous la ligne de flottaison
Spain, a democratically an Al-Qaeda elected Zeropean leftist regime, granted mass amnesty to illegal aliens there. Since then, the backdraft created has become unbearable and the EU vows to step up maritime patrols to prevent illegals from getting in along its Southern border.
Not surprising in a country where the President roi-nègre gets 82%
After the French Green Party, it's the turn of Attac (a grouping of globophobe crypto-commie Saddamites) to suffer through an episode internal election fraud.
Did Condi pave the way for Ségolène?
Ségo, as we call her in France, is a different, altogether more seductive creature than the dumpy hausfrau Angela Merkel, the new German Chancellor. This is a woman who wouldn't look out of place on a catwalk despite what she lacks in stature (she's just 5 foot 2) and has been dubbed the ''Socialist in Stilettos'' and ''Madame Charisma''.
Fake. A total creation of a press so lazy to know what they’ll write about in the next year, that they need to create it. It’s just like the 4 unctuous “Jersey Girls”, the leftist agitators who use the seeming infallibility of being 9-11 widows to put them above criticism or discussion in order to rail at conservatives. They are such an apparent fabrication of the press that it reeks. In New Jersey, most people hate the term “Jersey Girl.” The cranky foursome clearly didn’t come up with it – some insulated Manahattanite did in order to put on them what people west of Ohio might find to be a charming spin on them.
When I met her recently in her office at the National Assembly in Paris, she was, inevitably, running late. It gave me a chance to snoop. On a round table in the centre of the room there was a notepad, a pen - and lip- gloss.
Their only purpose for the press is to give them a vehicle to opine and provide them insurance against having to argue their own idea – the goal was to make arguing with anything they say have all the appeal of a child molester - a sexist move if there ever was one, since it's hard for a man to be a bereved widow and mother, and would never garner the same sort of attention. Let's hop back to the other side of the pond:There is something undeniably sexy about a woman in power and Ségolène embodies it. We may not agree with President Mitterand's assertion that Margaret Thatcher had ''the mouth of Marilyn Monroe'' but some of her cabinet were certainly in thrall to her.
Actually they weren't inthralled by her lips, but by what came from them. They were inspired by the depth of Thatcher’s intellect and courage, possibly even a bit scared of it. A fact a pandering writer even in the Telegraph would happily jettison.
By saying that anyone is ‘using sex’, they must mean being a female – merely another number in the genetic lottery which is only a issue for SOME people between the very narrow class-theory bookends of Euro-thought. A leader needs leadership charisma, not lip-gloss. If there is any of that rare leadership ability to be found in Royal, the press isn’t capable of finding it because of the inescapable cultural clamp of being typically European narrow-minded cultural “successes” as they like to define their own social set. It somehow validated calling Merkel a "dumpy hausfrau".
The sexism – the real sexism – and rank hatefulness and hypocrisy is palpable for a nation and continent that will evangelize and browbeat anyone they can force to listen with lectures about even handed treatment, human rights, and any other social vanity lingering in the bottom of their rocks-glasses.
If any Arab leader were to take a “President Royal” seriously, it would only be for the experience they have with the seriousness of Secretary of State Rice who treats their wife-beating instincts for what they are – another hangup that's keeping them from getting beyond the 9th century in many ways, just as Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Ghandi handled their challenges. The conceit of using a term like "dumpy hausfrau" is a cheap and vicious smear that's beneath contempt because it isn't critque, but rather abuse.
Should Royal, or Bachelet for that matter, avoid similar treatment she would owe it to the real leaders who are women, not the social movements in the least. The big lie is any claim that the Marxist dominated feminist movement can make to the success of those that really broke through a glass ceiling - the conservatives. The fuse is lit!