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…
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Some in the black community are beginning to question what happened to the black leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, especially in the city of New Orleanswrites Brian DeBose.
Meanwhile, Michael Tremoglie brings a startling revelation (thanks to Tom Pechinski). Incidentally, it would be interesting to hear the opinion of , among others, Gerald Gallinghouse of in the matter (if he is still alive).While a few black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Congressional Black Caucus, have singled out the president for blame, others say Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is black, is responsible for the dismal response to the flooding that stranded thousands in the city's poorest sections.
"Mayor Nagin has blamed everyone else except himself," said the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny.
"The mayor failed in his duty to evacuate and protect the people of New Orleans. ... The truth is, black people died not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco," he said.
…Mr. Peterson … chastised those who would lay all the blame at the feet of Mr. Bush.
"If black folks want to blame someone for this tragedy, they only need to look in the mirror. Hopefully, this will help black people realize the folly of depending on the government or leaders and serve as a notice to avert future tragedies in other cities," he said.
As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on President Bush’s ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left – pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical “diversity” over human life – sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina.So much for the race factor as well as for the myth of the flood being the result of greedy capitalists failing to heed the environmentalist call.
How about reaction of the average American? Were Americans overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster, or were they overwhelmed by something else (emphasis mine)?
Spending my days on the ground in Louisiana last week, I did not see much television. But I understand that some media let the violent and destructive acts of a few overshadow the many acts of compassion and heroismremembers Bobby Jindal as a ray of hope rises over N'Awlinz.
Contrary to the pictures you may have seen, the vast majority of New Orleanians did not take to the street with weapons--far more risked their own safety to help neighbors and strangers.
When first responders said they needed more flat boats to pick people out of the water, they were overwhelmed by the line of volunteers. When people at a shelter in Baton Rouge announced they needed drinks, within hours they were flooded with more Gatorade than they could possibly use.
Churches throughout Louisiana opened their doors to take in evacuees. Individuals organized a network to open their homes to strangers, using phone trees and the Internet to link up those in need with those who care. Evacuation centers are flooded with volunteers and supplies.
Many rescue and relief workers, themselves victims of Katrina, have not left their posts for days. Health-care staffers have hand-ventilated patients. Law enforcement officials braved high waters and violence. People from all over the nation are contacting me, especially people in areas recently devastated by their own tragedies, to offer assistance.
From Agence France Presse via Expatica: Unhappy, alienated America on view at film fest
It seems that the less the European social-political elite understand about a place, or feel unable to control it, the more nervous they get. They appear to be continuing to express these feelings not just in their endless yackity-yack, but in film festivals, which to them might seem like the height of human decisiveness and social action.
«DEAUVILLE, France, Sept 9 (AFP) - If movies coming out of a country speak to the fears and aspirations of its people, then Americans must be feeling very much strangers in a strange land right now, judging from the Deauville Festival of American Film.»«Brosnan, an Irish actor living in the United States, went further and laid bare Hollywood's general disdain for the man in the White House.
Now that sure took a great deal of grace, didn’t it? Short of making the nodding and wise film-fest organizers, speakers, the press road-show, and attendees look nodding and wise, it makes them look like resentful whiners who simply don’t understand the rest of the world.
"This man called President Bush has a lot to answer for," he said at the start of the festival. "I don't know if this man is really taking care of America."
The reflection of US society in its celluloid mirror will be brought into even sharper focus with the speeches at the close of the Deauville festival on Sunday -- the day America commemorates the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.»
Then too, the predictability of their press release comes at so little of a surprise, I wonder why a news outfit would even carry it. It’s not like we wont be able to hear the exact same thing again in about a month or so, and it’s not like any of their predictions of doom and darkness have ever actually materialized.
Whether they’re “nodding and wise” Stepford-child-like poseurs or zit-faced twits sitting around in their Spiderman undies and beating off makes no difference – they don’t actually DO anything, and they are nothing more that a sideshow trying to wield more influence than they deserve as a sort of lesser tribe of the trazi guilt-trip circuit.
Far from being ignored, it’s probably not a bad idea to see just who it is that admires them. Whatever they do, be wary of it and look into the reasons to pursue the opposite course. In the past they haven’t been right about much of anything. They make an excellent contrarian guide.
So by all means CARRY ON Pierce, show us the way! In fact show EVERYONE the way, even Doctors, Lawyers, relief organizers, and people with PhDs in International relations. We know you’re an authority - after all you have all that experience in the “law enforcement look” that’s so ‘mid-90s’, and your stand-in can sight a pistol, pilot a plane, and apparently disarm a warhead and de-orbit a flight vehicle… Wow, what a CV! Tremendous for a man that didn’t get past high school.
In fact the over-reported cultural festivals of France are turning into a kind of social policy think-tank which is so ineffectual that they’re easily outdone by Loyal order of Moose in their ability to advance humanitarian causes and goals – without all the negativity, cognitive dissonance, and self-loathing that comes with being a wealthy socialist.
”Bush Bashing Corporation” seems to be the watchword at Bush House these days. Even the BBC’s Radio programme “Reporting Religion” is in on the act.
FEET OF CLAY? «One commentator called it "the moral emptiness at the heart of God-fearing America".
First we have to note that “Reporting Religion” is one of the only programs on their international service that isn’t broadcast domestically, except when the use the World Service as an overnight filler for Radio 4. I guess they don’t think insomniacs will end up in the typical outrageous fear of faith ubiquitous in the UK, but know that someone on earth somewhere, most likely in Africa, might not be offended by the sound of the word religion. At least in a fashion not used for blame, personal problems, and heartache.
Have the scenes of devastation and social disorder following Hurricane Katrina shown another side to a deeply religious nation? What, if any, are the shortcomings that have been highlighted by the events of the last couple of weeks? »
But where to start with the web-page tagline, which wasn’t nearly as bad as the radio presentation played out to be. It simply assumes that all Americans are alike, the same way a jerk might say that all east Asians look alike. To the Beebazoid a nation is comprised of persons of a predicable nature. Variances from this are rare, and must be reported as aberrations similar to finding a lost tribe somewhere.
You would think that Reporting Religion would at least be aware that every society has people who do good and evil, even if they are just in transition between the two. Since they seem so madly in love with the notion of a “personal journey”, wouldn’t it dawn on them that people doing good or bad things have arrived at a waypoint or a destination in that hike of the soul. The life of the soul is more than just self-reflection, or in the case of the leading lights of British life the DISPLAY of self-reflection in order to be admired.
One of the program segments itself was perfectly comical. Two American churchmen were invited to discuss the lootings, shootings, and other horrible actions in the flood zone. While one was sincere, the other one who is an obviously political activist type and a lefty, talked about nothing other than taxes, and that they should go up. He simply couldn’t get on topic or stay off of his own topic. He truly seemed like a clown.
My thought was that this was a great way for the BBC to reintroduce comedy programming to the World Service. But seriously folks – because the presenter has to work with the BBC’s datum line on the constructed moral impression of refent events, he is forced to begin by talking to the subject from the viewpoint that the US thinks it’s some sort of “moral and religious super power”, and that there was “a perch that it was knocked off of”. I’m using their examples specifically. They are quite simply nonsensical solipsisms that come from believing that if you think something, then it is real and doesn’t require questioning.
It’s the leftist and eternally perturbed European press that implies that sort of idiocy. Repeating it so frequently, that if becomes a sort of received wisdom about the U.S. Any Christian can tell you that there is no such thing as a “good Christian” – just people striving to be “good Christians”.
Whether those who put the series together are unaware of what it is that the overwhelming majority of believes do, or is simply forced to take as a starting point the fictitious vision of the garden variety Guardian reader is immaterial. They aren’t reporting religion in view of today’s issues, they’re reporting it from within Europe’s corrosive Kultursmog where the faithful are suspect and society has devolved back to a point where people are struggling with the most basic ethical issues whenever a tragedy appears. In short, RR seems to have been demoralized into believing that they are dealing with an audience and programming executives who are idiots, at least when it comes to religion.
Their grandparents had significantly less trouble with common moral questions like “why do bad things happen to good people”, would have a place to start thinking through it, and would have been able to do it in adolescence. They then had a continuing and growing inner life which we still dignify with the title “contemplation”, but have a hard time admitting to ourselves that the public does it, especially people confessing to religions that the middle-minded don’t think if as exotic and cool.
Now many people struggle with simple moral dilemmas into middle age. No better for the experience, many end up surrendering to confusion, convenience, quasi-cults, pop-psychology, or just drawing a blank. Isn’t THAT worthy of a reporter’s attention, or is it too close to the bone for programming executives of a certain generation?
Aujourd'hui, les Américains peuvent, à leur tour, mesurer l'ampleur du soutien et de la générosité de la communauté internationale. C'est dans les pires adversités que se reconnaissent les vrais amis.America's ambassador to Paris has an article in Le Monde.
CNN is suing the government in order to stick it to the White House. What they don't realize is that they are sticking it to other victims. How would you like to be notified of the death of a lost loved one on TV, complete with a reporter sneering? Do you want a loved one to become a martyr for a reporter's political cause?
Robert, an American blogger in Germany is pissed off, and rightly so. From Divided we fall:«I for one don't want to see the bodies televised, or found as photos in magazines. These bodies were once mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, step brothers and sisters. They deserve better than to be shown in various states of decay since their deaths.
We HAVE seen bodies. We WILL CERTAINLY see more. It’s not news that these people have died, but they want to follow mortuary teams around.
I ask you as any reader who has a sense on humanity in them, to write to CNN and tell them that this is inhuman. Their bloodlust must be stopped. I as a viewer of televised news don't want to see people who are dead by any means. You can write a comment to them by clicking here.»
If the former residents of these town, and the public for that matter find this to be an excessive invasion of the privacy of those lost, and do so in view of their humanity, then WHY DON’T the people at CNN feel the same things? In view of the empirious declarations of it’s founder that he single-handedly ended the cold war, one shouldn’t be surprised.
Based on exit polls on September 11, the LDP's Junichiro Koizumi has won a decisive victory in the elections in Japan. Following Australia's John Howard; following America's George W Bush; following Denmark's Anders Fogh Rasmussen; following Italy's Silvio Berlusconi; following Britain's Tony Blair; and with the singular exception of Spain's José Maria Aznar (and that only because of a series of bombs strategically set off three days before the election derailed large-scale predictions of a PP victory); yet another ally in the war on terror, one whose troops are engaged with the Coalition of the Willing with boots on the ground in Iraq, has won a national election, and indeed has won by a landslide.
• The report written for a Paris university occurred in 1954, writes the author, when "the future president of the Republic nourished a real admiration for the United States". The idea conveyed by the sentence is that the young idealist really made an effort to love America, suggesting that the dimming of his passion over the years and decades is nothing but the fault of the (clueless) Americans themselves.
• As would-be guard dogs towards any instances of racism, the French should perhaps be surprised when it bobs its head up amongst themselves — and that, not only unnnoticed but lauded, as Wieder describes a sentence as "a keen sense of social analysis".
[L' ]étudiant Chirac … y révèle déjà un sens aigu de l'analyse sociale, à propos de "l'état d'esprit" du "docker noir" : "Cela est frappant quand on visite le port, le docker ne paraît pas fournir un effort physique très grand, ni faire preuve de hâte dans son travail manuel (ce qui serait du reste contraire à la psychologie des Américains du Sud des Etats-Unis en général et du Noir en particulier)."Hm. Maybe Klansmen and other Nazis can get away with their antics by referring to them with the expression "a keen sense of social analysis".
The story of the birth of a cartoon character 100 years ago proves that the French sense of superiority, its need to demonize (or ridicule) its perceived opponents, and the vocabulary used in the process are nothing new…
One thing is certainwrites Amir Tahri (thanks to TIA Daily).
Iran is engaged in a low-intensity war against the United States and its allies, including most Iraqi political parties. The Iranian calculation is that the U.S.-led coalition is tired of Iraq and will disengage within a maximum of 3 1/2 years, that is by the end of the Bush presidency at the latest.Insoafar the war in Iraq can be compared to Vietnam, adds Peter R Kann, it is not because of what happened in Southeast Asia's rice paddies — the similarities "just aren't the ones the critics cite."
And then, as Khamenei has said, it will be the Islamic Republic — not the United States — that will decide the future not only of Iraq but of the entire Middle East.
…in the case of Vietnam, the war was lost less on the battlefield than on the home front. North Vietnamese leaders themselves have frequently credited "the peace movement of the heroic American people" as important to the communist victory. Few military authorities would any longer dispute that the vaunted Tet Offensive of 1968 was a significant military defeat for the North Vietnamese, or that well into the early '70s the military balance on the ground had shifted in favor of the Americans and South Vietnamese.
Now get a load of this Stern dookie:"The History of the USA: No nation has ever dominated the globe like the USA. And its people could care less about the rest of humanity."
Not to be outdone there is always the BBC which has a facinatingly quiver-lipped habit of trying to hide it's quiet envy at anyone who escapes a lot in life that they can't understand. They have a little thing called BBC Online where they can broadcast policial screeds worthy of the Third Reich.
In their high sophistication and intellectual depth, they use CERTAIN ACCENTS as means of displaying negativity. Case in point: a 'documentary' about gambling addiction. They present a mock casino advert which obviously makes the casino out to be satan's disengenuous handmaiden while shaking the change out of people's pockets and convincing them that the tax money makes them great citizens. The accent? One of their butchered attempts at a generic American accent of the broadcast variety. One that they seem never to get right anyway.
Virtually every new radio documentary that they promote uses this childish signifier. They might as well be throwing red mead and PCP at the public, waving their arms, and howling 'nya nya' as a means of informing and entertaining them.
It's sickening, pathetic, and well beneath the mentality of their audience, if not insulting to their intelligence. Who do thie think they're fooling?
Now look at THIS little ditty. At first they were selling it as a sort of "who runs the companies and the media" thing which one would expect to find a platform with which they could plump themselves up with the notion that their programming is free. Far from the case.
This documentary is called "Who runs your world?" It's now being peddled without much of a veil, answering it with "George does".
Note that under "debate in" there is no obvious option for english, and that even though they run a promo for it every 90 minutes on the BBC World Service, they make it hard to get to from the English language page. I had to get to it through the "World Service Trust" (non-profit, surely) based in NEW ZEALAND.
You can also dig the leading questions on their "quiz" about power - where the only possible outcomes are limited to a view that power has nothing to do with leadership or ethics, but possibly something nasty like religion and war.
« This was not, however, the way the BBC's foreign correspondents saw it. British viewers got more dramatic eyewitness reportage from Matt Frei, actually on a freeway overpass in New Orleans. He reported with heavy irony, " [after days of neglected misery], the cavalry is on the way." - unable, as always in a Bush context, to resist western movie clichés. In any event, did Frei's eyes deceive him? It was clear from watching the footage that General Honoré and his 40 vehicle convoy were not "on the way" but were on the streets of the city and in control.Maybe they didn't want to notice this. As a BBC listener, I have begun calling it “monitoring enemy broadcasts” – the fact remains that in their frezy to find a political angle, they really aren’t informing anyone, not “adding value” that would make them any better than Yahoo News, Google Video, or raw feeds for that matter.
Back to the flooded streets and Hewitt speaking from his boat to a camera that was presumably held by a BBC man walking backward through the shallow water. It was unbelievable, he said angrily, how long it was taking the authorities to come to these poorest neighborhoods to rescue people, although he had to raise his voice as he spoke as there were three or four helicopters hovering overhead winching people up. Needless to say, help was "too little, too late". Why no large wheeled vehicles, he demanded? Instead, "it's pickup trucks and guns. More guns than doctors." Well obviously, to have equal numbers of both, military personnel would have to carry a doctor as well as a gun.
Back home in London, the prestigious current affairs show Newsnight weighed in. Moderator and inquisitor-in-chief Jeremy Paxman, under normal circumstances possessed of a sharp intelligence, suffers, like so many other on-camera BBC employees, from a form of Tourette's syndrome whenever President Bush's name is mentioned. Among his comments on the program, according to blogger Natalie Solent, were "This is going very badly for the Republicans", despite that the Republican administration in Mississippi was doing blazingly well and the collapse of New Orleans civil order was solely caused by Democrat ineptitude. Unable to stop himself, he kicked out again, hopefully, "This is going to have a big impact on the way President Bush is seen by history, isn't it?"»
"... Maurice G. Dantec, réputé le plus américain des auteurs français contemporain, à la fureur néoconservatrice dérangeante, ..."
"... Maurice G. Dantec, who has the reputation of being the most American of contemporary French writers, with his troubling neoconservative furor, ..."
Dernière apparition publique en France ce soir à la Cigale.
Inner City Minister Sues Democratic Party For Reparations « In his 100-page brief, Perryman concludes that the past racist policies and practices that were initiated against African Americans by the Democratic Party - were no different than the policies and practices that were initiated by the Nazi Party against the Jews. In both situations millions of lives were destroyed.»
From Perrymans legal brief: «During the past 21 decades the Democrats successfully disguised and concealed their horrific acts against the African Americans by operating and committing these acts under the following aliases: the Confederacy, Jim Crow, Black Codes, the Dixiecrats and the Ku Klux Klan. Congressional records, historical documents, and the letters and testimonies from several brave black citizens revealed that these groups werent separate independent organizations, but were actual auxiliaries, divisions and/or the legislative efforts of the Democratic Party. The debates on the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 further revealed that these auxiliaries were committed to use every means possible to carry out the Democrats racist agenda of White Supremacy, including: lynchings, murders, intimidation, mutilations, decapitations and racially bias legislation and adjudication.»
Cel phone communication is hard to come by on trains, but at one point I heard I had a message on the answering machine. I called the number to hear the message. It was my (New York-born) mother, and all the message said was to please call back: "There has been a series of catastrophes in the States".
Befuddled, I headed out into the corridor and called my parents, and after answering, my mom said I should talk to my dad. I listened incredulously as my father explained that planes had been deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and that both Twin Towers had collapsed.
Needless to say, I headed back to the dining car in another state of mind, totally closed off and unable to communicate with anyone.
At one point, three or four members of some state-owned company (they may have been EDF) entered the dining car. Although they discussing the day's events, they were obviously heading to Paris to demonstrate against the government, and during their conversation, I overheard one of them making a joke (sic). With a snicker, he said "Ils l'ont fait exprès pour saboter notre manifestation" (They [obviously meaning the Americans] did it on purpose, in order to sabotage our demonstration). Alhough the others barely laughed at what was obviously an instance of sophisticated humor à la française (smiles were in order, though), the comment should give a better idea of the real state of friendship harbored towards America then the presumed one extant in the myth of the squandered sympathy.
I was too emotionally drained to react to this comment, and anyway without a radio and a TV set to get a better idea of the situation, the extent of the terrorist attacks was hard to believe. I had listened to learn more, and had certainly not expected anything but empathy for Americans.
(Meanwhile, fellow webmaster Bill was taking a drink in a Paris café — listen to his experience with French proclamations of ever-lasting friendship.)
Anyway, another two hours went by without news, without images of any kind, and when I arrived at Gare de Lyon, I rushed home faster than I ever have before, arriving drenched with sweat just in time for the 8 o'clock news. That night I hardly slept, as I stayed up in front of the TV all night long, wishing, wishing drastically that the news wasn't true.
At my office the following day, there was certainly nobody among my fellow journalists who had anything sympathetic to say about 911 (or what they had to say they certainly weren't sharing with the guy wearing Old Glory on his head).
The previous August, I had joined a group of a dozen hikers (all of them French) in crossing the Himalayas at a point in northern India, and we had decided to meet again at one of our apartments on the Saturday three weeks after our return from the trek. This turned out to be September 15.
A couple of people brought their companions along. Eventually discussion turned to the events of the previous Tuesday. I never expected anything but sympathy to be shown (like I had on the train), but one female hiker's boyfriend obviously had none. I don't remember if he actually said he was happy about 911 or in so many words that Americans deserved it, but he certainly had not the smallest empathy for them, saying he hated their guts.
That is where I lost my cool.
"So that is the famous French solidarity, huh?!" I interrupted from my chair.
He tried to say something, but he wasn't about to get the chance.
"So that is the famous French generosity, huh?!" I bellowed.
He again replying, but…
"So that is the famous French tolerance, huh?"
I got up.
The others were begging me to drop the matter, to shut up.
"So that is the famous love of fellow human beings, huh? I am so-o-o-o impressed!"
His girlfriend was begging me, begging both of us, to let the matter drop, but I piled on with acerbic irony.
"Do you have any other examples of France's famed lucidité, we would love to listen to them!"
The other people were alarmed, they seemed to think we were going to come to blows, and, truthfully, both then and later, I felt like I was battering him, except by the use of words instead of fists.
"Oh, I am so impressed by your avant-garde feelings of solidarity towards the entire world — please, please, can you give us some lessons!"
Suddenly, the guy got up, crossed the room towards the front door of the fifth-floor apartment, and — walked out. Leaving his girlfriend behind, he started running down the stairway. In my fury, I still managed to register surprise, because that was the last thing I expected.
I sat down again, fury still registered on my face, and the topic quickly changed to something totally unrelated to international news.
The point is that, as John Rosenthal (among others) has pointed out, the story of the squandered sympathy is nothing but a myth: Over the following months, or years (weeks?), we are told, America's president (i.e., Bush) and his government squandered the sympathy that the world generously bestowed upon America in the immediate aftermath.
As it happens, the comment I heard in the apartment occurred four days after the terrorist attacks, and the comments that I heard in the train and that W heard in the Paris café occurred within hours (if not dozens of minutes) after learning of the terrorist attacks.
Those give quite a different context to the expressions of friendship such as those seen by clicking on the photo above. As many of our French commentators make clear, what is said in public (and nobody denies Europeans' mastery in handling the délicatesse of diplomacy) and what is said behind one's back can be quite a different matter; in any case, the friendship is tinged (soaked, rather) with (self-serving) paternalism.
Close friendship with America: it is all a lie, folks, it is all a lie. (Or if you want to be charitable, at best it is self-deception.)
