Paul Greenberg: He's the Toast of Paris (That's what John F'n Kerry is!)

Jewish World Review ^ | March 12, 2003 | Paul Greenberg [Tribune Media Services]

[quidnunc]

It wasn't exactly a stroke of genius. It was more a stroke of stupidity when John F. Kerry, the presidential nominee presumptive, told a fund-raiser that foreign leaders are pulling for him. He actually seems to believe this is an argument for his election. Listen:

"I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly but, boy, they look at you and say, 'You gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that."

Naturally these foreign leaders didn't identify themselves. They might look as if they were meddling. Because they would be.

Just who are these people? John Kerry won't say, but his critics in the GOP are only too glad to speculate: North Korea's Kim Jong-Il? Iran's mullahs?

Those guesses sound a little heavy-handed. I'd nominate the leaders of Old Europe. Like France's Jacques Chirac or Germany's Gerhard Schroeder. Not Tony Blair, for sure. He's stood with us. And paid the price. He's been about as popular with the BBC as George W. Bush is on NPR.

Of course it doesn't have to be a government leader who's been whispering into John Kerry's ear. How about an insufferably smug editor like Jean-Marie Colombani of Le Monde, France's snootiest journal? The French press really hasn't changed all that much since the capital of France was Vichy. And that country's leading newspaper still tends to favor appeasing the threat du jour. As the French say, plus ca change… . The more things change, the more, alas, they remain the same.

M. Colombani has been visiting America, and every time he sneers at George W. Bush and cheers for John F. Kerry, he might as well be on the Republican National Committee's payroll, considering the effect he has on the American public. Americans haven't much cottoned to foreigners telling us what to do since at least 1776.

-snip-

[Right_in_Virginia]

Paul Greenberg: He's the Toast of Paris (That's what John F'n Kerry is!)

I wonder how they feel about Miss Kerry in Madrid.

[Norman Conquest]

French toast with no syrup? What kind of barbarian is this man?

[texasflower]

I've never seen a picture of him where his eyes weren't blue. I don't know if they are contacts or not.

[Salman]

French toast with no syrup? What kind of barbarian is this man?

Pain perdu avec syrup, is too damn American for Kerry.