The Republic of Dissent

Playing dumb to ignore the context

I agree with Joel Meares's assessment of the latest media controversy in the US involving Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican party, and his assertion that Afghanistan is Obama's war:

It is a case in point of something the political press does all the time: latch on to the words or phrases that are sure to provoke, and play dumb i n terms of the fuller context or the speaker’s obvious intent.

This age is one where the media and the majority love to beat people up for the littlest thing just to be able enjoy another morbid spectacle of public apologies and shaming for misspeaking or for forgetting that nowadays finesse and complexities are out of style.

Journalists and the racist accusation

I agree with Lihle Tshabalala on this:

(...) there should never be a time in a journalists’ life where you need to call an interviewee a racist (not to their face anyway) and if you do, give them sufficient carte blanche to defend themselves against your accusations instead of getting your power back from seeing tears in their eyes because of you (the supposedly objective member of the Fourth Estate) and your imposed judgements on them

Paul Berman, Tariq Ramadan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Josh Gohlke reviews Paul Berman's latest The Flight of the Intellectuals and highlights his views on 'Western Journalists' and their preference for Tariq Ramadan over Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Ramadan is attractive to Western journalists partly because he is moderate in manner, always seeking consensus and middle ground. But Berman encourages us to ask: A middle ground between which poles? Between stoning adulteresses and maybe not stoning them if we can come to an accord?
Berman figures Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali refugee-turned-activist who has unequivocally condemned mistreatment of women in the Muslim world, as Ramadan’s foil. Hirsi Ali is infallibly immoderate in tone. For that she has earned the backhanded admiration (at best) and disdain (at worst) of Buruma and other journalists. But at least some of her principles—a woman’s right to keep her genitals intact, for example—aren’t the sort on which democratic societies can afford to compromise.
How did Western journalists come to be more respectful of decorous fundamentalists than they are of brash secularists? For one thing, they fear that Hirsi Ali’s criticisms of her own tradition will embolden anti-Muslim bigots and xenophobes in America and Europe. Berman adds another answer that’s startlingly simple: rejections of Islamism have become life-threatening. 

I agree with Berman's main point about the attractiveness of Tariq Ramadan and the fact that he has acquired a legitimacy because he is moderate in tone while Ayaan Hirsi Ali isn't. I think that such a disparity in treatment shows that the notion of difference is so ingrained in certain elites that they are willing to apply different moral values to unacceptable situations as long as one is able to agree on them one some issues and thus to reassure that they are on their side, which means being on the left politically. Tariq Ramadan is perceived as being a lslamic leftist while Ayaan Hirsi Ali as radical conservative, which isn't as attractive. To use a telling comparison, I would say that in the mind of most journalists, Ramadan is close to Barack Obama while Ayaan Hirsi Ali is closer to Sarah Palin. That explains the difference in their treatment by the media. However, these realities don't lead me to the same conclusions as Berman.  I think that the mistake is always to draw a line in the sand and to chastise those such as Ian Buruma who are uncomfortable with absolutism. In short, Paul Berman is unable to accept the idea that there isn't just one way to fight extremism and that confrontation can be about something other than a brutal clash and the castigation of the wolves in sheep clothing. That inflexibility may be a sign of moral rectitude, but is problematic because it strengthens one's intellectual status without providing  solutions that change reality. But again, Berman's problem might be that he isn't interested in changing reality, but simply in condemning abnormalities and atrocities while scolding those who don' t do i with the same vigor as him.

Manly men and shrill strident hag bitches

I agree with Ophelia Benson on this:

Being considered strong and tough is not all that unpleasant even if the people who consider you that detest you. Being considered a shrill strident hag bitch is a whole different thing. (...) women can’t win no matter what they do. Either they hang back and don’t get the top jobs because they didn’t grab for them, or they grab for the top jobs and spend the rest of their lives as shrill strident hag bitches.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg as Children of privilege

Interesting, but not surprising point from Sholto Byrnes for media coverage and biases depends on likability and other fluffy criteria such as as attractiveness and friendliness to the press:

Two of the three party leaders are the sons of financiers, attended major public schools and then went to Oxbridge. Both have aristocratic connections and high-powered, high-earning wives. Yet only one, David Cameron, is portrayed as the child of privilege, while none of the "revelations" about Nick Clegg – that Louis Theroux was his fag at school, that his grandmother was a Russian baroness, or that his family owns a chateau in France – stop many, including even a Daily Telegraph columnist, from depicting him as an "ordinary bloke".

Media coverage in political elections is always unfair and even often outrageously bias when what is important and even critical is the personality of the candidates. One only has to be reminded of the press coverage that Al Gore got in the 2000 American presidential election (Bush got favorable coverage because he was friendly to journalists and even had pet names for them) and the one of Hillary Clinton who was considered to be unsympathetic to the press got while Obama was glorified.

The Polish tragedy and mortal fears

Pertinent observations from Adam Chmielewski and Denis Dutton on the Polish Tragedy:

Polish politicians, as do those in most democratic countries, live in mortal fear of the media and the opposition. For years some of them have mumbled about the necessity of upgrading the government’s air-fleet; but no decision was made, for fear of the response that state officials wish to enjoy the luxuries of new planes at the expense of impoverished taxpayers. Yet leading figures across the political spectrum had no qualms about spending over $1 billion to buy
forty-eight F-16 fighter-planes on the grounds that this purchase would be seen as a proof of their concern for Polish security - planes which, for all their sophistication, are mostly grounded in Poland and largely useless. They did not dare to spend a fraction of this sum to secure the safe transport of the government itself.

I'm just wondering how right Chmielewsky and Dutton are that Polish pols fear the media and the opposition too much to upgrade and modernize their means of transports. If they are whether this is just particular to eastern European countries and former communist countries or to as they suggest true in all modern democracies. I would agree with the latter point if the argument is that the fact that modern democracies have become one where polls and public opinion are everything thus making the media very powerful means that it is increasingly difficult for politicians who are both talented and ambitious to do what is in the best interest of the country if that means becoming unpopular and unelectable.

Journalists and flashy English

I agree with Merrill Perlman on this:

Journalists seem to love certain words that no one actually uses in normal conversations. Have you remarked on the “acrimonious” divorce your friends are going through? (Almost 300 hits in Nexis in the past month.) How about those “temblors” that have shaken the world recently”? (More than 300 uses in the past month.) Did you ever note that your favorite team has been “beset” by injuries? (Nearly 700 hits.) Have you ever said that you were “slated” for surgery next week? (More than 3,000 hits.)
All of the words are perfectly good English, but people just don’t talk that way. They’re really jargon—non-idiomatic uses of words that rarely appear anywhere but news reports.
Journalism, written or spoken, should be conversational, so it can make a better connection with the audience. Depending on audience, the language can be informal, even slangy. But these words go in the opposite direction

The new scramble for Africa

Via Mother Jones (h/t: Sean Jacobs), here is the new map of Africa highlighting the fact that Africa is ground zero for celebrity activism. I'm not scandalized for outrage is easy and moreover, it is useless in this situation for the key questions are does celebrity activism facilitate or hinder the development of African countries?And why is it so prevalent?

Addicted to sex scandals

I agree with Judith TImson on this except that I don't believe that it is the fault of the internet if most of us love or rather are addicted to sex scandals:

Sex, sex, sex. We’re trapped in sex-scandal hell, and the story of Sandra Bullock – who has, as the cliché goes, “remained tight-lipped” about her troubles even as she’s mobbed everywhere by concerned citizens – is the latest manifestation.
The Internet has turned these private and painful tales of sexual betrayal into a multi-platform nightmare: blogs, voice mails, pictures, texts. The cycle starts with whispers and revelations, proceeds to widespread shock and outrage, and ends up with late-show jokes and op-eds in The New York Times .
We say, “No, we’re better than this,” but we don’t really mean it.

The growing importance of trivial news

Women and their vaginas

Quote of the morning from Natalie Wilson :

I wonder when/if the mainstream media will allow ads that admit - horror of horrors - that females have vaginas and this bodily reality is not disgusting, not a curse, not even a reason to boogey-down in celebration but rather nothing more or less than a bodily reality.
I am not saying that having a vagina is not cause for celebration (I personally rather like mine), but I feel whenever the body (or part of it) is showcased as something to uncritically celebrate, the flipside - where the body is denigrated and denied - is not far behind. Instead, I would like to see wider recognition and acceptance of the fact that menstruation happens, and does so often (for too often for my taste, in fact), that the body is not all pleasure and desire but also pain, inconvenience, and monotony.

Journalists, conflict of interests and the White house

I agree with Glenn Greenwald's on his reaction to Howard Kurtz's article about the fierce competition among journalists covering the White House to get inside stories to write books:

The conflicts in having "journalists" report on the administration while simultaneously begging top White House officials for highly lucrative book-access are as self-evident as they are corrupting.  Richard Wolffe covered the Obama campaign for Newsweek at the same time he was writing an access-dependent book on Obama; when he left Newsweek, even Newsweek staffers complained about the prospect that he had used magazine funds to cover the campaign while withholding key stories from the magazine so he could use it in his book instead (the same controversy that has plagued Bob Woodward in the writing of his Bush-glorifying books while also working for the Post). 
(...)Is it even remotely conceivable that this stable of access-desperate reporters would write negatively about the White House or the President, or conversely, refuse to do their bidding?  Look at what Ryan Lizza writes to get the answer.  They're all vying for the lucraticve position of unofficial royal court spokesman (which Bob Woodward occupied in the prior administration).  How can one possibly purport to be a "watchdog" over the very political officials on whom one's livelihood and hope for riches depend?

Journalists are always reluctant to call each other out when one of them crosses the line. They would rather point their critical glare to others; this lack of consequential self-criticism and of the lack of mandatory ethical guidelines to put things awkwardly are one of the main causes of  the problem. Journalism in America has become first and foremost a business.

Amnesia Nigeriana

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani on the Nigerian propensity to ignore bad news or rather to live with it as if it is part of the Nigerian normality

I’VE heard it said that we Nigerians are the happiest people on earth. We’re also accused of being passive about issues that would stir up revolutions in other countries. For instance, it’s been just over a week since ethno-religious violence left hundreds dead around Jos, a city in central Nigeria, but the slaughtering of our fellow citizens has already largely faded from our headlines and conversations.(...)Amnesia Nigeriana, someone called it: that tendency of Nigerians to blank out national trauma. As it happens, more than anything else, it is the reports that persist on the BBC and CNN that remind us that hundreds of innocent Nigerians, women and children, were slaughtered in their sleep that Sunday night. When I look up at the huge TV screen in the newsroom where I work, there’s usually a foreign reporter with a look of high seriousness, scenes of Jos in the background.
Every time Nigeria experiences an episode of violence, we seem to go quiet while the rest of the world becomes fixated. Perhaps it’s understandable that we begin to resent these foreign journalists and the constant focus on our disasters.

Something tells me that Amnesia Nigeriana is an affliction that does not plague uniquely Nigerians...

Winning wars while apologizing

I agree with Allan Richarz on this:

Therein lies the first problem with the US military’s media strategy: It is impossible to win a war if one spends half the time apologizing. Compounding this, pledges to avoid civilian deaths, short of a stop to all military operations, are unfeasible. What the military ends up with is a public relations disaster and essentially “wins the battle, but loses the war.”

However, I don't think that public relations can replace effective war strategies, which take into account of the realities of the ground and placed the emphasis on what is doable rather than on what looks good on TV and sells politically. The trouble with the Afghan surge is that it is based on the idea that lightening will strike and nothing will go wrong when in wars, whatever can go wrong, usually does.

Black Mammies and other 'positive' stereotypes

I agree with Adam Serwer on this:

Mammy" is not a "positive" stereotype. There are no "positive" stereotypes, all stereotypes are created with a dehumanizing flip side that is inseparable from the faint "compliment" used to justify their invocation. But the legacy of the Mammy in particular is a grotesque one. Like every other carefully engineered old-school caricature of black people, it's meant to reinforce notions of what kind of behavior is appropriate--in this case, a docile, even happy acquiescence to white authority. "Mammy" was meant to depict black women as ugly and asexual, content to exist as surrogate mothers to the saintly white children of their owners or employers. Mammy's false happiness assures white people that the institutions of slavery and later Jim Crow have black people's consent and approval, her rotund body an alibi for the rampant exploitation of black women by their white slave masters. 
There's simply nothing "positive" about it. Mammy may give some people the warm fuzzies, but that has to do with whom the stereotype flatters. It sure as hell doesn't flatter black women.

To attract Zealots

After reading this sugary excerpt from an article in the Daily Telegraph on Haïti , I wonder how people can be surprised when Zealots and other religious fundamentalists such as Laura Silsby go to Port-au-Prince believing that God has sent them on a mission to save Haitians from themselves or from their country, which is portrayed as the heart of darkness:

Port-au-Prince seems not like a city at all now, but a waking nightmare where even the most ordinary morning walk can turn distinctly lurid. There is a car in one of the streets behind the national palace that has been flattened by falling masonry. The driver’s body is still at the wheel.

There have been other catastrophic earthquakes in recent years – Iran (2003), Pakistan (2005), China (2008). But Haiti, all agree, represents a unique level of awfulness.

'It really is one of the worst earthquake situations I ever saw,’ says Dr Richard Munz, 56, an expert on international humanitarian aid, writer, surgeon, academic and veteran of 38 disasters over the past 20 years. 'It hit a very vulnerable population, it hit the capital city, and it hit a place without any pre-existing local response systems – all the systems that might have been there on the ground were just destroyed.’

Since independence in 1804 Haiti has endured a pattern of poverty and exploitation: crippling debts, US occupation, revolts, coups, dictatorships and 28 years of brutal repression under François 'Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude ('Baby Doc’). Since the latter fled into exile in 1986, the country’s move to democracy has been accompanied by further coups and instability.

Some 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 75 per cent; foreign aid accounts for 30-40 per cent of the government budget. Even in the good times, Haiti was short on infrastructure; there are only two fire stations in the entire country. Not only did the earthquake severely dent the services you turn to in a disaster – hospitals, airport, roads, port – but it also loosed inequalities and frustrations that were only provisionally contained.

The sterile American political debate

Interesting and thus relevant tiny bit from Mary Beard's post on Roman elections and the way to lose them:

All in all, it's hard not to feel a bit envious of Roman face to face politics -- when compared with what we shall get in May or whenever.
It's not just the trained monkey, American style spectacle of the televised debate that looks set to remove yet more real argument out of the electoral process.

I, of course, agree with Beard. I don't remember the last American debate when after watching,  I thought that I learned something important about policy instead of the fluff and when I didn't feel that everything was so rehearsed that only the mundane, such a whether a candidate looked at his watch, walked to the other when he was supposed to maintain an agreed upon distance between them, talked about the homosexuality of his rival's homosexuality forgetting that to too many in America that it is an object of shame, winked or simply failed to remain to sign autographs for the audience afterward, became the focus of everyone's attention.

Beckism and fascism

This line of reasoning from Sandy Levinson against Glenn Beck troubles me:

We are indeed in a true moment of cultural and political warfare, in which Glenn Beck has made very clear that he has no regard whatsoever for the most basic notions of civility (which begin by granting the possibility that one's opponents simply disagree rather than are "cancers" to be ripped out of the body politic).
What "Beckism" presages is more terrorist violence like that conducted in Austin, Texas, where a demented citizen flew into an IRS building and killed a true American "hero" a/k/a known as a public servant who had dedicated his life to tax collection. One might remember that Justice Holmes called taxes "the price we pay for civilization." Part of our move toward fascism is to view as "heroes" only those who carry guns and are prepared to risk their lives while preparing to inflict fatal violence on others. We must recognize that all public servants are, in their own ways, "heroes." The Republican Party for the past generation has systematically viewed all public servants, save for the military, as chumps, who if they had any real talent, would be working in the private sector (perhaps in Goldman Sachs, etc.). I truly fear for our country.

As despicable as I find Glenn Beck, I don't think he is Mussolini or Hitler. Beckism isn't a prelude to fascism or nazism, but simply a symption that in America, faux populism whether it comes from the right or the left works because it designates scapegoats for the increasing number of people who feel marginalized by the system. What surprises me is that many such as Levinson are voluntary becoming victims of historical amnesia  because they don't know how to fight Beckism. They don't have any answers for people who follow him precisely because they are angry about the fact that America no longer works for them and that he gives them answers that comfort their "conspirationist" world view. An analysis of the recent history of these types of angry popular/populist/fundamentalist movements show that branding them as fascist doesn't work for it doesn't confront the underlying issue which is that increasingly the American political system is seen as not dealing with pertinent issues. What Levinson ought to fear isn't the rise of "Beckist terrorism", but the widening gap between the elected and the electorate that would force people to turn to opportunistic figures such as Beck in order to explode the system. In one sentence, Beckism is just one of the symptoms of a more potent disease, which is ailing America.

Sharing personal secrets for profit

I agree with Libby Purves on this:

Personal secrets, whether about facts or feelings, are a kind of currency. We share them with friends, and the sharing binds us together. Sometimes, on air or in print, we decide to share them with a million unseen strangers, either to help them in fellowship or to counteract false images of ourselves. It only gets dangerous and degrading when you use deep secrets of fact or feeling merely for profit: to get sponsors back onside, voters into the booths, buyers to the tills. If all the world is your confidant, what is left for friends and family? Truth or Dare is a dangerous game.

Charity and media saturation

I agree with Peter Singer on this:

Why do people give generously to earthquake victims, but not to prevent the much larger number of deaths brought about by extreme poverty, insufficient food, unsafe water, lack of sanitation, and the absence of even the most basic healthcare?
Media saturation obviously makes a critical difference. Scenes from Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami, and now the Haitian earthquake were shown over and over again on all television news broadcasts. An earthquake in a remote part of Pakistan that killed 80,000 people received relatively little television coverage, and a much less generous response. The daily deaths of children in poor countries from diarrhoea, measles, and malaria are part of the background of the world we live in, and so are not news at all.
Suppose that a million children all in one place seemed likely to be swept away and drowned by approaching floodwaters. The media coverage would be enormous. Now imagine the jubilation if they were saved! And imagine the acclaim for the heroes who had saved so many children.

The Al Jazeera effect

Noah Bonsey and Jeff Koogler on the increasing influence of Al Jazeera on Mideast politics ore especially the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:

For Americans seeking to understand Al Jazeera’s role in shaping public opinion, it is perhaps useful to compare the channel to Fox News or MSNBC. Al Jazeera largely reports the facts, but in choosing which stories to highlight and which guests to invite on regularly, it betrays a certain political perspective. Of course, whereas Fox News and MSNBC operate in a highly competitive media environment, Al Jazeera is the main source of news for a majority of Palestinians and is the most popular television channel in the Arab world. This maximizes its influence. Indeed, Al Jazeera’s dominance of the Arab media makes it a political force unto itself. In no place is this more true than in the Palestinian arena, where it focuses much of its news coverage and where its market share is particularly strong.

No wonder, the Obama administration has chosen to have closer ties with Al Jazeera through   détente rather than conflict and confrontation.

Haiti and Avatar

Thought provoking and more importantly necessary statements from Giovanni at Bat Bean, Beam (hat tip: Daniel Trilling) comparing Haiti and Avatar (which I haven't seen because I don't want to, I still haven't digested the overkill that there was for Titanic):

The comparison may seem outrageous, but note what these two sets of comments have in common: the idea that analysis is inappropriate, criticism and a sense of time or history not befitting the moment. A large-scale human tragedy calls for immediate action; a spectacular movie calls for immediate enjoyment. In both instances, reflection is grossly inappropriate, even offensive; thus Hallward and Calder are not chastised for being wrong, but for speaking out of turn.
I guess this would also not be the time to reflect on information as spectacle and entertainment, a concept so naturalised and ingrained that raising it in the most innocuous of circumstances is bound to get you labelled as a Neil Postman wannabe, or worse. Let alone at this moment, when the circumstances are all but innocuous. So I probably ought to refrain from pointing out what everybody knows, namely, that Avatar is owned by a company called News Corporation, whose principal, one Rupert Murdoch, is a fanatical supporter of Western imperialism, both military and economic. Yet the film passes, at least amongst a significant proportion of the people who - unlike Calder’s detractors - chose to take it seriously, precisely for a critique of imperialism. Regardless of the merits of that argument, which is not my intention to discuss here, did James Cameron just a few hours ago, in accepting his Golden Globe for best director, really speak Na’vi? What kind of gesture was that? What does it mean to pay homage to the struggles of a people that does not exist, and to do so right now, at this moment in history, when it is bound to be preceded in the news bulletins by footage from Port au Prince?
Now this obviously is a coincidence, and the release of Avatar was never meant to overlap with the Haitian earthquake. But what if it dulls its reality? What if that appeal to fictional indigenous rights criminally distract us, by creating a warped space of reflection on plights that aren’t real?

It is sad to assert but in our times, disasters and everything else need to be able to produce nice pictures, infomercials to catch and to keep the attention of America first of all and of Hollywoodized world. What has bothered about the continuing Haiti saga is precisely the lack of analysis and of thoughts because we are too busy feeling, being overwhelmed by the pictures of Anderson Cooper looking tanned in the middle of glamorous misery. 

Hell is reading others's people sleaze

After reading Jessica Dweck's article in Slate, I know that I'm going to hell:

In his new tell-all book, The Politician, Andrew Young claims to have discovered a sex tape recorded by John Edwards and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, in a box of trash. Although Hunter apparently tried to dismantle the video by pulling the tape out of the cassette, Young was able to restore it and view the footage with his wife. How do you destroy a sex tape so that it actually stays destroyed?

Are American political journalists still serious people? Or is that an unbelievably naïve question? What is the point of the sex tape "information" except to appeal to our basest instincts?

The media and Haiti

I agree with Colin Murphy on this:

There were other anomalies and inadequacies in the reporting from Haiti. The US military was prominent in news reports: footage of heavily armed soldiers distributing bottles of water, of airdrops of food, and of US helicopters landing in front of the ruined presidential palace, was widely used to accompany reports on the humanitarian response. These efforts may have been laudable, but they paled in comparison to those of the United Nations and charities on the ground in Haiti. The UN’s World Food Programme said it had distributed three million meals to 200,000 people by late this week, and estimated that a further 100,000 people had been fed by charities. There were plans to scale this up to reach two million people, with four key distribution sites identified. By contrast, the US Southern Command reportedly made two air drops during the week of some 17,000 meals each.
Of course, some of the most prominent stories in the days since the quake have been good news stories: those remarkable images of people being pulled alive from the rubble by international search and rescue teams. Dozens of teams from all around the world helped rescue over 120 people. Yet even this creates a misleading impression. As anyone who has worked in a crisis zone knows (I spent two years in Angola, working on emergency relief programmes), the most important “rapid response” always comes from the people themselves. Early footage after the quake showed ordinary Haitians desperately sifting through rubble, searching for, and no doubt rescuing, family and neighbours – their successes, though, remained uncounted and largely unreported.The media is a vital part of the response to any crisis such as this, and there has been much outstanding reporting coming out of Haiti; Twitter, meanwhile, has proved valuable for getting some sense of the voice of ordinary Haitians. But too often, reporters and their editors have led with glib headlines and poorly sourced information. The courage of those on the ground deserves more.

Tragedy

Good point from Christopher Hitchens on the media and what it considers to be tragic:

The media now say tragedy when they mean that bad things have happened to good or—even worse—famous people. But the types of tragedy that really deserve the name are of two main kinds, the Hegelian and the Greek. Hegel thought it was tragic when two rights came into conflict. The Greeks thought it tragic when a great man was undone by a fatal flaw.

The only Nkosi

I agree with Stanley Fish on this:

(...) because he is the object of unceasing criticism, Obama is also the object of unceasing attention. Day after day and night after night his is the face we see and the voice we hear. (On Sunday, we could have seen and heard him on five networks.) Like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he bestrides the political landscape like a colossus. Every administration takes its name from the president, but in this administration the president seems to be the only one performing.

In other words, Obama is just like Sarkozy. He loves the spotlight and hates sharing it when it doesn't suit him as all actors who know how good they are, more often than not , do. No wonder, Sarkozy wasn't here to clap as Obama gave his speech at the United Nations

The ME era and civility

I know it's painful, but try hard to read this:

Over the past seven days, we have been treated to obnoxious outbursts by leading figures not only in politics, but in sports and pop culture as well. In addition to the heckle heard round the world issued by Rep. Wilson, there was the verbal attack launched by Serena Williams against a line judge at the U.S. Open, and the boorish behavior displayed by rapper and music producer Kanye West when he grabbed the microphone from award winner Taylor Swift at MTV's Video Music Awards.
All of these stories are rooted in the same basic fact: speakers who think it's all about them. And if it isn't about them, they seem to think it must be about some other individual who is even more important than they are. Apparently though, it's beyond any of the offenders' ability to appreciate that civility is about all of us.
Civility is about creating a culture of mutual respect, not simply making sure that the biggest celebrity in the room has their moment. But Serena doesn't get that, and neither do Kanye or Joe. And that's why they can not or will not offer meaningful apologies for their bad behavior.

I wonder on what planet Brad Hirschfield is living or rather whether he has been living in America for the last fifty years, which is the place where stars whether they are in politics or in entertainment apologize, cry, communicate on their private lives, make speeches about race, terrorism or whatever else when it is good for them, when they will be rewarded by the press (journalists are people too) or by the public through opinion polls or an election or the box office. We live in the ME era not only America, but pretty much in most of the rest of the world. Civility isn't about mutual respect, it is about the people asserting that certain behaviors stop because they find it repulsive through their vote or their pocketbook. But the trouble is that the joke is on them, because they/we have become mostly addicted to all of it because it make us feel good about ourselves since our dream is to be like them so we could indeed be masters of our domain.

Amish country and the Internet

Interesting...:

In a world where news still travels at a mail carrier's pace, the farmers, preachers and mechanics responsible for filling The Budget threatened to go on strike if the 119-year-old Amish weekly went ahead with its plan to go online.
The writers, known as scribes, feared their plain-spoken dispatches would become fodder for entertainment in the “English,” or non-Amish, world. The editors hastily rescinded the plan shortly after proposing it in 2006, and today, only local news briefs appear on The Budget's bare-bones website.

The act and the mirror

Glenn Loury on the affair of the summer:

It is depressing in the extreme that the president, when it came time for him to expend political capital on the issue of race and the police, did so on behalf of his “friend” rather than stressing policy reforms that might keep the poorly educated, infrequently employed, troubled but still human young black men in America out of prison. This is to say that, if Mr. Obama were going to lose some working-class white votes to the charge of “elitism,” I’d much rather it have been on countering the proliferation of “three strikes” laws, or ratcheting down the federal penalties for low-level drug trafficking, or inveighing against the racial disproportion in the administration of the death penalty.

Obama can't win on this issue and that's why he shouldn't have commented on it in the first place, especially the way he did by making an assumption that he didn't have the guts to defend because it would have Sharptonized him. He lost ground because he wasn't willing to stand his ground and to lead on this issue rather than to just comment, make a speech, and say the words that make people feel good about themselves by confirming that they are good and decent americans (the large majority of americans are) for having voted for him. In short, Obama was very Sarkozy-like on this issue, he started with a strong appeal to emotions then backed off when he realized that these emotions didn't make his electorate feel good and actually reminded it everything that it hates about what Shelby Steele like to call "race people."  It is difficult to act if one always do it in front of a mirror and in front the gaze of a public (which includes the press) that can be so fanatically adoring.

Remaining America

I agree with this:

The White House Press corps loves to laugh condescendingly at Helen Thomas because, tenaciously insisting that our sermons to others be applied to our own Government, she acts like a real reporter (exactly as -- according to Politico's Josh Gerstein -- White House reporters "could be seen rolling their eyes and shifting in their seats" when Obama called on The Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, who has done some of the most tireless work on Iran, gave voice to actual Iranians, and posed one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference).  The premise of Thomas' question was compelling and (contrary to Obama's dismissal) directly relevant to Obama's answers:  how is it possible for Obama to pay dramatic tribute to the "heartbreaking" impact of that Neda video in bringing to light the injustices of the Iranian Government's conduct while simultaneously suppressing images that do the same with regard to our own Government's conduct?

Wake me up at the end of the movie

I can't bring myself to be riveted by the whole Iran thing because the story  is hyped by the media which, I sense is waiting with unhealthy anticipation for an explosion, for the image, the interview, the thing, the moment that will bring more attention not so much to Iran, but to the courage of journalists covering the story. I feel as if I'm in a crowded theater watching a poorly made movie with an average cast who lacks the patience required to let the story evolve and speak for itself. I've seen all of this before and what are missing in this case, yet again, are distance, good reporting and something other than expected and cliché analysis about the struggle of a people for freedom. It's sad to say but I think this story will only become compelling at its end when the emphasis will shift from speed to accuracy and from syrupy clichés to singularity and fractured realities.

A simple fact

A factual statement, which hasn't yet become relevant or rather which is relevant, but accepted at the moment

The press has become Obama's silent ally and seems in a state of denial.

The dirty circle of American politics

The most discouraging and disgusting about American politics is that the sleaze is the same, making cheap points works, and that journalists just complain just to complain and to feel, for a second, clean before covering the whole demolition derby like their sport colleagues cover major sports events. Here is an example of this vicious circle:

What is absolutely extraordinary at this moment is that anyone, anyone, is opposing Sotomayor on the matter of intellect, or, God help us, so-called temperament. Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) wonders if she has “the right intellect.” (The mere phrase “right intellect” boggles our wee mind. Is that too big or too small? Or perhaps the good senator invokes a Buddhist interpretation of intelligence? OK, never mind.) Unnamed sources in Jeffery Rosen’s New Republic piece sniff “she’s not that smart.” Come on.
It would be a stupid mistake for conservatives to take the road most traveled by the left in its decimation of Sarah Palin. Republicans or Democrats who resort to suggesting that smart women aren't should be sent to the political dunce’s auditorium, the wilderness dutifully staked out by the Republican Party. Why? I’d like to say because respecting women’s intelligence is the right thing to do. But I’ll be more practical. Question the intelligence of a woman who has worked hard and achieved much against odds, and you will really irritate women. Really. Ask those Hillary Clinton supporters and those Sarah Palin supporters. They didn’t agree on much, but neither group liked watching male politicians diss women.
Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh already know this. That’s why they’re hanging their Sotomayor attack hats on her “identity politics,” which apparently means the politics a woman espouses when she notes that her life experiences are, well, a little different than Newt’s and Rush’s.

This type of articles just make me tired. They are easy to write, they are predictable, and we know that they never lead to anything in great part because the writer after complaining stops and goes on to better and bigger things.

Question d'humour

The Economist has the best article I've read today. It is onthe presidents, comediants, The Onion and the difficulty/impossibility  of making fun of Obama. Aucun commentaire nécessaire:

The real Mr Obama baffles other comedians. David Letterman, a talk-show host, describes him as “cogent, eloquent, and in complete command of the issues” and sighs: “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” The new president is “not fat, not cheating on his wife, not stupid, not angry and not a phoney”, complains Bill Maher, another small-screen joker. Chris Rock, a stand-up comic, likens Mr Obama to Brad Pitt. “There’s no Brad Pitt jokes,” he told CNN. “You know, what are you going to say? ‘Ooh, you used to have sex with Jennifer Aniston. Now you have sex with Angelina Jolie. You’re such a loser’.”
At the White House correspondents’ dinner this month, Mr Obama was the guest of honour. The traditional task of roasting him fell to Wanda Sykes, a comedienne. Visibly star-struck, she ignored the crowd and addressed herself to the president, who was sitting nearby. (...) The writers of the Onion are unencumbered by any obvious party loyalty. To fit in, you have to hate everything around you, muses Joe Randazzo, the editor. Hence the headline that greeted Mr Obama’s election victory: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”. The Onion News Network, an online video venture, did a segment entitled “Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters to Realise How Empty Their Lives Are”. The camera showed pitiful young campaign volunteers lying comatose on a couch or wandering aimlessly through a park. “Who will take care of these people?” asked the anchor. “We really don’t know. Many have already driven away their friends and family with months of endless praise for Obama’s latest speech and constant reminders to vote,” said the breathless correspondent on the scene. “That does sound annoying,” said the anchor.

Fake showdown

Katia Bachko in the Columbia Journalism Review on the media-hyped showdown between President Obama and Former Vice-President Cheney:

(...) it’s completely unreasonable to frame these two speeches as an actual debate between two equals. We have a democratically elected president, and an unpopular former politician who are not directly engaging with one another. The question of national security is too important to important to sidestep in favor of a falsely construed schoolyard fight between a bully and the class president. What’s more, to set up these speeches as a contest presupposes that there might be an actual winner. But this sort of shallow, politics-as-a-game coverage only makes losers—of the press and of the public.

Journalists love feuds especially ones where they are able to take sides while pretending to be professionally objectives. Al the morning shows this morning covered the so-called feud between Obama and Cheney as if they were covering a wrestling match without ever acknowledging that it was much to do about nothing and that they could cover the differences between the different approaches on the War on Terror, which in my opinion are more about style than substance (which greatly explains the emphasis on fluff) without personalizing and caricaturing them.

When politics is personal

I don't like quoting Frank Rich except when he says something that is true and relevant without tainting it with too much ideology, which is the case here when he writes the following:

TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.

What strikes is how comfortable, calm and at ease Rich is with the notion that Obama can't turn the page on Bush and the fact that he isn't accusing him of dishonesty, of putting political convenience and pragmatism before doing the right thing, on being Clintonian (which to Rich is one the worst thing to be). Throughout the democratic debate, Rich was writing incendiary op-ed on Hillary Clinton and her campaign, which led readers to the conclusion that for him, she was really different than Obama and that Rich believed that she wouldn't be able to turn the page on Bush. So it is amazing that not even 6 months within Obama presidency, Rich writes a column, which shows the obvious that the most important thing to him is whether he likes the president and whether he believes that he can have some influence on him. I don't even want to imagine what he would have written if Mrs Clinton were in charge and he had concluded that she couldn't turn the page on Bush. Of course, Obama is a good person, when the Clintons were bad people willing to take the votes of racists to win, willing to do anything to govern. I wonder what Rich will say if it becomes obvious that Obama is willing to do anything to remain president.

Social unrest and révolution theory

When the Guardian writes an editorial about the risk of revolution of France, you know that we are in for more stories about the French, their childish belief in revolutions and their stubborn resistance to adapting to the world as it is not as it should be. What is funny or rather sad about the Guardian, editorial is that it gives the same old impression that France is paralyzed and that something is undeniably wrong within its society , which in my opinion leads automatically to the question whether the problem with most foreign analysts of French politics and society especially when they are Anglo-Saxons is that they start with the assumption that the French don't have the right to be French and that there is just one way for a society to prosper, meaning that we are back at TINA and the current economic crisis shows that such a mindset destroy economies and can make human life be about nothing more than their monetary value. This reminds of Madiha Tahir's article on Pakistan, the media and chaos theory; in the French case, the media's narrow focus, its obsession is on France, and social unrest and revolution theory. When I think that they were telling us that Sarkozy was to unfrench the French. Sugary excerpt:

Popular outrage at the banking bailout may be similiar around the world, but it finds different forms of expression. Barack Obama may have told AIG bosses that the White House was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. But in France the feeling is that the pitchforks are not just metaphorical.
International comparisons are deceptive, but on paper there is no glaring reason why the outrage in France should be so much more acute. The public deficit is high, but little more than half of Britain's. Nor is unemployment so much higher, although it is climbing faster. France entered the global turndown later than Britain, and fewer banks were in trouble. Social protection, although under attack, is still substantially more generous than in Britain.
The big picture, however, masks structural problems. France has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the developed world, with about one quarter of its 2.5 million unemployed under the age of 25. The truth is that no government in Europe has the luxury of treating French, German or Greek social unrest as a spectator sport. The breakdown in the social compact, the gulf between promise and delivery, should concern everyone.

Pakistan and Chaos theory

The best article I've read this weekend is Madiha Tahir on Pakistan in the Columbia Journalism Review and the coverage that it receives in the American media. She makes the argument  that the American press's coverage of Pakistan is not only simplistic, but focused narrowly on everything that confirms its strong presumption that Pakistan is a failed state. Sugary excerpt:

In late March, Foreign Affairs produced a three-day roundtable called “What’s the Problem with Pakistan?” proceeding to discuss the country as though it were a psychiatric patient refusing its happy pills. “Unfortunately for Pakistan,” declared Ashley Tellis from the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, “the West is losing patience with its shortcomings—and while Pakistan may be slowly changing, the threats emerging from that country toward the rest of the world are increasing fast.” The real issue in—and indeed with—Pakistan is militancy.
(...) The ‘tick-tock boom’ has been around since as early as 1964, says University of Chicago historian and blogger Manan Ahmed, with the publication of Lawrence Ziring’s The Failure of Democracy in Pakistan. By the 1970s, Pakistan had been tagged a troubled state based on development indicators established at Harvard’s Institute for International Development, as well as its Center for Development Studies.
“That narrative slowly percolates from the social sciences into the humanities and politics and State Department folks and outside of academia,” says Ahmed. “They’ve been saying this stuff for forty to fifty years, and there’s been no attempt to rethink or reformulate that narrative.” For Washington, the story has provided rationalizations for supporting dictators, encouraging repressive tendencies in successive Pakistani governments, and, lately, killing Pakistanis with drones. ‘Pakistan is chaos,’ the strange logic goes, ‘and the US will contain that chaos through dictatorships and bombing.’
Reporters, too, have their own ends. The “Idiot’s Guide” is—again, perhaps unwittingly—truthful about this, advising, “Tick off the name of a Taliban leader or two and make a reference to North Waziristan, and you might be on your way to a lucrative lecture tour.” Indeed. Journalism is a business, and the story sells.

A distinction without a difference

I'm wondering or rather I doubt that  Stephen Pollard's point about the difference between blogs and newspapers is still relevant or even true because I have to say that I believe that most journalists have become bloggers in an attempt to escape their conviction that blogs and the Internet will doom their profession and newspapers:

In the end, the difference between quality newspapers and even serious blogs is that your default reaction to a newspaper piece should be that it is true, whereas your default reaction to a blog post should be that it might be true, but it might equally well be a pack of lies. Rather like government smear campaigns.

Rebranding and change

If there is one thing that is to be expected of journalists is that they are always able to get the required distance to see the forest through the trees long, long, long, long after what they cheered for or rather supported passively or silently by suspending their obligation to critique and to analyze happened. A good example from the Financial Times's Clive Crook:

Mr Obama’s campaign always exaggerated the difference he would make on foreign policy. His style could hardly be more different from the caricature of US supremacism projected by George W. Bush, but the underlying issues were unlikely to be any easier to deal with. So it has proved. In many areas of foreign and security policy, in contrast to the clear break he is attempting in domestic policy, Mr Obama is mostly rebranding Mr Bush’s approach.

The question then becomes whether the so-called post-racial society, which had to be created with the election of a multiracial president was the only change Journalists believed in because as Americans they believe that race is everything because minorities are so different in themselves that Obama, no matter what his policies were and no matter the fact his "yes, we can" simple meant "if you don't , you are not in," was going to be a different President than Bush II. If the only change we could believe in was simply racial, then Obama's election (not his years in power for we have to see where he will go from here)  reaffirms what Kipling and all of those happy and superior fools  believe, which is that race makes us who we are.

Appearance without presence

I guess it takes a Canadian, Rex Murphy, to make a pertinent observation about the American president:

And where is Barack Obama in all this. Well, Mr. Obama is acting curiously. He doesn't so much preside over the crisis as act like America's chosen master of ceremonies, who appears on stage to introduce its component segments. Good patter, well-chosen appearances. There's no centre to his performance. We hear as much about the First Dog (chosen, but yet to be installed) as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (installed, but yet to act).
Mr. Obama drops in to everyday events more than he actually manages them. He's very cool, as always, but he lacks affect. He doesn't seem to connect with the great swirl of events around him. He shows up. He doesn't act. He likes to tour, and visit happy places. He was, for example, on Jay Leno this week. If things get really bad, I expect he'd take the centre seat of that dread couch on The View. Chat up Joy and Whoopi. The President of the United States as permanent celebrity guest. And if things go completely berserk, there'll be a Barbara Walters special, the President emoting to Babs, sandwiched between teary featurettes on OctoMom and Lindsay Lohan.

It is fair to say, in my opinion, that Obama is everywhere, but that yet, his appearances don't have a presence, a meaning because he is without depth, he doesn't yet have a personality, except the one of the next big thing who is savy, sharp, knows how to campaign, to make great speeches, and to preach. Obama is great on TV, but the problem is that unlike great actors, he has to do more than to entertain and to push dust away from his shoulders. The big question is still the same as it was since he started his campaign: who is he and why does he want to do with power?

Meaningless television

I haven't watched the much talked about "confrontation" between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart. After skimming articles about it, I'm not planning to do it. I have stopped watching the Daily Show. I like Jon Stewart but I think his show is missing something which  is essential in these times when it is easy to be conventional and to be content with criticizing the media especially when you have become a part of it. The Daily show is great for people who don't watch the news and who still believe in everything that they read and see on TV, but for others, who expect better and more profound content, it is entertaining , but shallow just like a good old Disney family movie. To come back to the Cramer and Stewart showdown, it was meaningless television because it was petty, irrelevant and most of all a distraction. Jim Cramer isn't a journalist, neither for that matter Jon Stewart. It says a lot about the state of the America media and culture that two non-journalists are talking, bickering about its health, and the failure of its members to cover certain subjects because their biases and conflicts of interest.Where should we go for critical analysis of current events and of the news in America?

The thing called news

Informative points from Christiane Amanpour on Cable News, objectivity, and reality:

I stay away from commentary and I stay away from ideology. All this stuff that we have seen marching into the space of fact-based news over the last several years, the highly opinionated, highly ideological [demagoguery] that exists and masquerades as journalism. I draw a line and I stay in the fact-based reality. […] Objectivity is not treating each side equally, not drawing a false moral equivalence […] It's covering all sides, giving all sides a hearing but not necessarily drawing false conclusions because if you do that in these kinds of situations, in my view, you're an accomplice.

The death of newspapers

I wish I could disagree with Kenneth Anderson, my second favorite law professor, who is giving up his New York Times subscription because he founds its coverage bias, but I cannot. One of the most difficult things for me in recent years has been to find newspapers, written either in French or in English (it is harder in English), whose coverage of the news I can trust. What is scary is that bias coverage of news events is even worse on Television, which is why I have stopped watching cable news channels and caring about what journalists think because it is painfully obvious that their opinion is restricting their ability to make informed analysis. I found myself missing the nineties, which were a time where at least news wasn’t essentially about opinion, gossip, endless chatter, and entertainment. Boy, how have things changed! Sugary excerpt:

Back in the ’90s, the Times decided to try and become the national general newspaper for elites across the country. In other words, become in the general newspaper category what the Wall Street Journal had already become in the national business category. Costs of printing and distribution had fallen greatly, thanks to improving communications technologies, and so the costs of national distribution were not completely off those of the New York City metropolitan paper. Combined with a rising, affluent urban elite in American cities, the strategy was far from crazy. I thought it very smart at the time. I even used to own shares of the New York Times corporation.

But what these elites sought nationwide was not so much information as attitude. They wanted confirmation of who they were, not merely news of the day. The basic justification of a daily newspaper — “this happened today” — is the fundamental assertion that the daily news doesn’t need to justify itself apart from saying, “it happened.” This wasn’t good enough for the emerging elite audience of a national newspaper.

The Times saw its target audience and with its desire to put sensibility over sense decided that instead of a daily newspaper founded around the facts of what happened, it would instead offer its readers a daily magazine.

Magazines are wonderful things. But there is a difference between them and daily newspapers. The newspaper says “this happened today,” and frankly that’s enough to justify the paper’s existence. The magazine, by definition, is an analysis and commentary on events — and for that reason, magazines are weekly or monthly events, not dailies. At their best, magazines are informed opinion — each of those a separate requirement. But they are always a matter of opinion. And that’s what the Times showcased on its front pages. A magazine of opinion.

Simple questions of bias and of competence

Alarming, but on point analysis from Michael Malone on the shameful inability of journalists do their jobs during this election cycle (hat tip: Jonathan Adler). The sad thing is that this American disease is spreading everywhere, which will cause in my opinion journalists to become irrelevant and journalism to become passé because it will no longer be they will no longer be able not only to provide the context, but also to analyze and explain it without falling in love with concepts. Sugary excerpt:

[…] for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

[…] Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

.

How to watch a presidential debate

The only way for me to watch a presidential debate this election is to watch it with the mute button on while watching episodes of Lost or Heroes on my computer or while simply writing. When it is over, I read the French press's reactions to it to see how enthusiastic it is about the performance of Obama. If its reactions are mixed then I watch the debate because the French press is so pro-Obama that if it manages to be something other than passionate about its praises for its candidate then I know that the debate was worth watching because something, not necessarily to Obama's disadvantage, happened. Why I am reading the French press's coverage instead of the American one? The French press, although it is biased, still has enough distance from this election that enables it to see what it is happening even though it is shamefully rooting for a particular outcome and has become a cheerleader for the candidate it believes will redeem the sins and the faults of America.

Anticlimactic

The word of the day is “anticlimactic.” It illustrates so many of the main events of this year especially Obama's announcement of its Vice-president, which as I said on Thursday everybody in DC with some political sense knew already. Nevertheless, his campaign and the press tried to build up the climax when they knew very well that there was little chance that the decision could live up to the hype given the fact that three months from now it won't make a difference except of course if there isn't a happy ending to just another pathetic episode. What a way to ruin people's weekend by forcing them to watch political pundits salivate and fall all of over themselves in a pitiful attempt to compete with the Olympics! I'm wondering what the answer is going when someone dares to ask the question what does Biden has that Hillary (I think it would have been a nightmare for her if she had been the choice because then she would have been blame for every single thing that will go wrong. But it was nevertheless a mistake of Obama not to as least act as if he wanted to choose her) doesn't? I know the answer and it is that he is more than “likable enough” not only to Obama, but also to the press and the new Democratic establishment. As the Brits would say: Wicked!

Sarkozyphilis and Americancentrism

If one needed the proof that Roger Cohen doesn’t understand France and suffers from both Americancentrism and from Sarkozyphilis, one can find it today on his column on Sarkozy’s France. In it, he describes  France as being on amphetamines (we all know that amphetamines are very healthy and never lead to abuse and addiction). Sugary excerpt:

Now I know there’s a view of Sarkozy as a Bonapartist Caligula, consumed with himself, brooking no dissent, petulant to the point of puerility and governing in such perpetual motion that he will only see the wall he’s condemned to hit when it’s too late.

True, Sarkozy is not Saint Augustine, Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. I don’t like his attempt to subjugate the media — Le Figaro now fawns to a point that’s cloying and his control-the-message TV machinations are shameful. I also think the president should open his mind to Turkish membership of the European Union.

But this man is a tonic to his country and the most important European leader of his time.

In the space of a year, he has transformed France’s relations with the United States, Israel, its North African neighbors and NATO. On the domestic front, he has got a Socialist leader to confess he’s also a liberal, a word long so taboo to the French left because of its free-market associations that embracing it was worse than admitting incest.

Let’s take international matters first. Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Union summit — a kind of Club Med Bastille Day bash — had its share of vapid ostentation, but was significant for several reasons.

It got the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in the same room, drew the latter out of isolation and signaled a new European awareness of how its identity has become inseparable from societies across the “mother sea” that have sent so many of their Muslim sons and daughters northward.

At a deeper level, here was the European Union taking the initiative in its neighborhood rather than in the familiar fallback reactive mode where critiquing the United States masquerades as policy. The Union for the Mediterranean is a near-empty shell but an important impulse for Europe to think big.

Roger Cohen likes Sarkozy because he doesn’t understand France and because Sarkozy isn’t his president. He likes Sarkozy because France as an old and archaic corporation on the verge of collapse which needs a CEO to energize it and to whip it into shape. The trouble of course is that France isn’t a corporate and that it is the way that it is in great part because the French and Francité. It is alarming that Roger Cohen can never get out of his way to see the whole picture and that in this case, he is never able to realize that not every country has to American light or Americalike. In other words, it is acceptable that Roger Cohen doesn’t understand France, but what is unacceptable and even offensive is his stubborn attempt to believe that he gets it because when he goes to the French capital, he is an American in Paris. The trouble with Sarkophilis and Americancentrism is precisely their egocentrism.

Newspapers and journalism

A good point about the decline of newspapers and journalism (hat tip: Roy Greensdale):

[…]the decline of newspapers has almost nothing to do with the lengthy moral failures of print journalism. And in case two, how do you explain growing newspaper circulation in countries like India? They must be practising a kind of super-journalism!
I could call it a tribute to journalism’s culture of self-flagellation - but it is actually a typical human response: seeking to explain events beyond our control by reference to ourselves.

Ze Interview

Here is most of the now famous or infamous Sarko interview. I had the strong urge to scream at Lesley Stahl while I was watching it to remind her of the obvious, that is that Sarkozy isn't Brad Pitt and that she would treat an American politician who had the ambition to change America so casually and almost dismissively as to say that only his person matters and that FRANCE doesn't.