-
Competing at The Cliburn
April 22, 2013 | 3 comments
-
They’ve Got Mail
April 8, 2013 | 1 comment
-
Were You Thinking What I Was Thinking?
August 17, 2012 | 43 comments
-
Mike Wallace: Cheesy or Riveting or Both?
April 16, 2012 | 68 comments
-
The NFL Goes Bounty Hunting
March 12, 2012 | 50 comments
Buy the Book
Nailing French Jell-O to the Wall
Spectator contributor Joseph Harriss collects some of his best articles and columns in an enlightening new book on France.
(Page 2 of 2)
France’s cultural heritage, the pride of the nation, is also a bit of a sham. “The Frenchman’s idea of a pleasant evening watching television is either an American serial like Desperate Housewives or a western, preferably with John Wayne,” Harris says.
My own late brother-in-law, also a fan of the western, used to refer to our wives as the Soeurs Dalton (the Dalton sisters).
Yet this book is not depressing. Living in France, one finds humor in the day-to-day and nothing escapes Joe Harriss. The battle of the sexes — and sex itself — is unavoidable. Previous Presidents François Mitterrand and Nicolas Sarkozy had messy love lives and current President François Hollande is no neater. All come in for perceptive jibes and detailed accounts of their problems.
There is more. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Harriss notes, probably would be president today if he had not got caught with his pants down in New York, then Washington, then Lille. He is today a joke even to the French. Just last week DSK told a French news weekly that he considers himself innocent of all the sexual adventure charges against him. “Lust is no crime,” he said. I could imagine him in a curly wig, à la Voltaire, prancing around in the nude with Belgian hookers. By day, he was director of the very starchy International Monetary Fund. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Harriss displays his reporter’s chops best in his longer investigative, analytical pieces on big subjects. This book includes two of his exceptionally solid exposes — one on the dim future of NATO, the other on UNESCO’s murky functioning. He is fearless in his criticism, as a good journalist must always be, and relished the opportunity in this book to reproduce the UNESCO response and his own response to the response.
I asked Joe in an email if he was running out of ideas. “I’ll surely hang it up one of these days, but, as Saint Augustine prayed about chastity, not yet, oh Lord.”
I, for one, hope he never hangs it up.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (6) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Michael Johnson
More Articles From Buy the Book
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/16/nailing-french-jell-o-to-the-w
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Frog in Uniform | 10.16.12 @ 10:22AM
Monsieur Harriss' articles are very enjoyable, really witty and full of insights about what makes France tick. However I beg to differ re the origins of the "bad case of chronic socialism". They are not even closely related to the Popular Front, but to 1) centuries of centralized government and a taxation system that goes back to the Dark Ages well before the Joan of Arc era, harshly criticized by most but gladly endorsed then maintained as is by the Republic, 2) the French Revolution of 1789 with all the senseless genocidal bloodbath that followed, apparently planned by the FreeMasons with the help of England who managed to cripple a rival for the decades to come, and whose influence can still be felt everytime you talk to a French government employee whatever his department happens to be.
That influence was obvious in the way we dealt with our neighbors and with our colonies, a socialist freemason (in France it borders on pleonasm) feels so much more enlightened than anybody else that he will have the strong tendency to push his views with the help of violence if necessary. .
Will| 10.16.12 @ 1:15PM
It also comes from the circumstances of the revolution. France was deeply decentralised at the time, and half the population didn't even speak French. Furthermore, pretty much every monarchy in Europe declared war on the revolutionary government at the same time, meaning the French were immediately thrust into a fight to preserve the revolution. To unite the country and fight the war a massive degree of centralisation was created, making France totally unitary and top-down. Thus, when socialist governments got in, there wasn't much to stop them pulling the levers of the state to achieve their objectives.
Also, the PCF was very powerful after WW2, so moderately rightwing politicians like De Gaulle felt it necessary to introduce centre-left measures to spike the communist threat.
Frog in Uniform | 10.16.12 @ 10:22AM
continued
The dreadful mindset is taught and perpetuated through our public school system and our media: The Government is always right and any private property is probably stolen and needs to be restituted to the people. Our Socialists don't hate money as they claim, they spend and tax a lot of it and feel usually no guilt whatsoever about being very wealthy themselves (because they can, they are the good guys right?).
If you want to understand a French Socialist, although I couldn't imagine a hobby more pointless than that, just closely watch a Democrat of yours and all becomes clear.
james wilson| 10.16.12 @ 1:29PM
A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him. The government of the old regime had already taken away from the French any possibility, or desire, of helping one another. When the Revolution happened, one would have searched most of France in vain for ten men who had the habit of acting in common…
Tocqueville
nathan| 10.16.12 @ 3:08PM
Their complicity in the Holocaust? We don't really want to talk about that right? The French mostly Catholic and perhaps all too willing to indulge the doctrine of deicide to its finality (the doctrine not being formally abolished until after war) had no problem herding the Jews onto those cars bound for Auschwitz.
To be sure with the exception of Denmark no one one ourselves included (shielding war criminals from justice, how did we justify that?) looked all that good (read Under His Very Walls for what may be the best account of the Pope's actions) but failure to ignore this element of French history does them no favors either.
PolishKnight| 10.16.12 @ 4:24PM
Nathan, there's a joke called "Godwin's Law" that once the word Nazi is introduced to a discussion, reasonable discourse ceases and it's largely true. That being said, here's my opinion:
Denmark looked "good" because they were under favorable terms and later were able to easily hide the few number of Jews or send them off to safety. Poles faced death sentences from the beginning for hiding Jews and yet hid several thousand of them. Poland also fought ferociously throughout the conflict while other nations went into occupation under favorable terms.
It's also useful to put The Holocaust into context: The USSR engaged in ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians and Tartars among others with the approval of marxists in New York. The genocide of Armenians also was said to have inspired Hitler. So it was really First they came for the Armenians, then they came for the Ukrainians...