The reaction in Chicago
Posted on 11/08/2005 7:53:22 PM PST by nickcarraway
Washington - France's explosion of rioting has captivated Americans, who tend to view the French as smug, snooty and quick to point fingers at what\'s wrong with the United States.
Now it's payback time, and influential media outlets and analysts can barely conceal their gloating.
Conservative newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times are proclaiming a blow to European self- righteousness and the continent's welfare-state economies, which they say are partly to blame for immigrants' misery.
'Just two months ago, the French watched in horrified fascination at the anarchy of New Orleans, where members of America's underclass were seen looting stores and defying the police in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,' the New York Times reported from Paris.
'Every night for more than a week, the suburbs of Paris have been a showcase of Europe's failure to integrate its immigrants,' said the Wall Street Journal.
U.S. politicians have publicly remained mum on the riots that have spread from Paris to all across France, though the State Department has warned U.S. citizens to stay away from the worst flashpoints.
But U.S. television networks are showing nightly images of burning cars and riot police - which Fox News TV reporter Greg Palkot said 'looked like nothing short of Baghdad'.
There's a sense of vindication among conservative writers who like columnist Mark Steyn have darkly predicted 'burning buildings, street riots and assassinations' in Europe's major cities, with their African and Arab minorities.
For the U.S. right wing, it's no coincidence that the violence is erupting in the European nation with the largest Moslem minority. They have long claimed that Europe has underrated the explosiveness of an immigrant population they view as nearly impossible to integrate into society.
Others even charge that Europe has become a breeding ground for international terrorism, alluding to the Hamburg-al-Qaeda cell that helped carry out the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Many U.S. politicians across the spectrum share political scientist Samuel Huntington\'s theory of a \'clash of civilizations\' - or the view of British essayist Theodore Dalrymple that \'the sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced ... by the nightmare of permanent conflict\'.
Another reason cited in the U.S. for France\'s unrest is the economic system.
\'In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity,\' economist Joel Kotkin wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
He says the overregulated welfare state itself is an obstacle to integrating immigrants into France\'s society and economy.
Clearly, part of the problem is economic, said Stanford University political scientist Niall Ferguson. \'But the second problem is that Europeans do not try hard enough to make immigrants integrate culturally,\' he wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
Many commentators say that, at the very least, the French riots show that social problems and a bungled or aloof government response are not limited to the United States.
\'Yet until now, many in France assumed that what they regard as a superior \'social model\' protected them from the eruptions of lawlessness that in recent years have touched Los Angeles, Miami and New Orleans,\' said the Washington Post.
Some are also reminded of the argument that France\'s Moslem minority was a reason why Paris opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, a stand that infuriated the Bush administration and U.S. conservatives and led to a French-bashing orgy a few years ago.
'you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside Americans?' Steyn said in the Washington Times.
This isn't "thinly veiled," Laszlo baby;
I'm laughing my @ss off!
No gloating here as my sister is currently studying abroad in Paris. Her host family lives in the 16th district, the wealthiest part of Paris, and when she emailed a few days ago things were pretty calm in her area. I assume she's using common sense and so far not much of the rioting has happened in Paris proper. Still it's not an easy feeling.
Even if I didn't have the family connection, I wouldn't see this as something to be happy about. It's very depressing that a once great and proud civilization has become so weak and stuck on stupid. If this doesn't wake the French and the rest of Europe up, then nothing will. I pray this is a wake-up call but I'm not holding my breath.
I don't either, but at the same time I'm having a very hard time mustering up much sympathy for them. This insurgency has been going on for almost two weeks and has steadily escalated despite all the lies told by the media about how "things are starting to quiet down" (when they even bother to take notice). The French government and the media admit that 5,000 vehicles have been torched, which means that the actual number is probably closer to 50,000. God only knows how many people have actually been killed.
Where the hell are the French people while their country goes up in flames all around them? Why aren't they marching by the hundreds of thousands demanding their government actually do something to protect them and restore law and order?
Pay back time! YAHOOOO!
I Am Enjoying this... A few weeks ago, I purchased a couple of African Dwarf frogs for my aquariums. I named one of them Frenchie. I loathe the French.
Please, Monsieur Chirac, go ahead and educate us, s'il vous plait.
We have nothing to feel proud of as we are doing the exact thing.
Bears repeating.
France's explosion of rioting has captivated Americans
Thats funny i wasn't aware the American People knew anything about it as the MSM has done a pretty good job of shoveling so much shit over it !
"I won't gloat because of French snootiness."
Either will I because I think it's just a taste of what will happen around a good portion of the world. The vipers are amongest us.
Now that is one eerie picture.
I think I have a good idea what many French people are doing. They are quietly seething like they have been doing for decades. They'll defy the U.S. and Bush, but deep down they have been living with the same "problem" but won't admit it in any meaningful way.
Quiet seething won't stop this madness, though, and I hope they get with the program. We need them to get with it too, because any nation taken over by Islamist thugs is a danger to all of us. In other words, they need to join the WOT instead of being apologists. The whole sane world needs to be doing this.
The Katrina media hype was total BS. None of the violence that was reported was true.
While on the other hand, France is dealing with a mini civil war.
And it couldn't happen to nicer jerks.
The French have nukes. If the mullahs take over, we will be fighting there again to prevent that nuke from making its way here.
We don't need no f?*%#%ing thin veil!
I agree with you, and I am dismayed to see any gloating at all. It was the French news media, not the French people, who gloated when we were hit by hurricane Katrina. And it is the average French citizens, not the French government, whose cars and houses and factories are being torched. I dislike the French government very much but I hold no anger toward their people.
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