[indcons]

LOL......ironic, isn't it?

Remember the French ridicule and French commentary on "American racism" after Katrina?

[Semper Paratus]

Put some iced mousse on it.

[Boundless]

> By the end of last week, there was a collective sense
> of relief as the nightly toll ... rapidly diminished.

Is this even true?
This is the official French spin, after all.

[highlander_UW]

By the end of last week, there was a collective sense of relief as the nightly toll of burnt cars, and torched schools, nurseries, gyms, warehouses and small businesses rapidly diminished.

LOL...so the French are content to have just a few hundred cars torched per night and fewer schools, nurseries and businesses burned to the ground.

With the imposition of an unprecedented state of emergency authorising local authorities to slap curfews on unruly young people, hopes grew that the untamed youth of the suburbs would quietly return to their housing estates.

Classic burying one's head in the sand there France! Just hope the problem goes away...do ya think it'll stay away?

Many commentators on French television and the major newspapers whined about the gross exaggerations of the riots in the foreign media.

What gross exaggerations...the French have been providing torched car counts, there are muslim youths rioting in numerous French cities...where's the false part of the picture?

"This is not Chechnya," one angry resident of Clichy-sous-Bois, the isolated Paris immigrant suburb where the rioting began two weeks ago, angrily told The Australian at a memorial rally for the town's gym, burned down the evening before by a gleeful mob of pyromaniacs.

Of course it's not Chechnya...err...there are Russians in Chechnya and French in Clichy-sous-Bois...otherwise there is little difference.

[satchmodog9]

Coming from the ones who scream 'I mock you and I fart in your general direction'.

[GSlob]

Well, it's difficult to imagine a more deserving country. OTOH, if it would serve to deflate their "frenchity" so that they become less full of it - why, then it would be highly beneficial.

[winner3000]

(They are a proud people who are more accustomed to being being admired for their country's world-class cuisine, intellectual heritage and enviable lifestyle.)

Does anyone here admire the French for their intellectual heritage (socialism, the guillotine, the terror of the French Revolution) or envy their lifestyle (laziness, 50% are government jobs, frequent strikes, 10K neglected elderly cooked during one hot summer)?

[AZ_Cowboy]

Perhaps they should not be so anxious to criticize others, then.

What goes around comes around.

[Fenris6]

Via Belmont Club:

French Journalist: "Politics in France is heading to the right and I don’t want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service TCI, says. ... Hence Dassier’s channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, has decided not to show footage of burning cars. Dassier also criticised the “excessive” coverage of the riots by international (read: Anglo-Saxon) news networks. ... Early this week the public television station France 3 had already stopped broadcasting the daily number of torched cars, while other TV stations followed suit. "Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?"

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/

[Psycho_Bunny]

Seems like they're talking tougher over their reputation than the actual problem.

[Fenris6]

THE French have had enough of the riots that are sullying their international reputation

I'll have whatever the French are smoking.

[NonValueAdded]

Ooh la la!!!

[Caipirabob]

french Apartheid BUMP!

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The threats were not acted upon -- probably because of the overwhelming police presence in central Paris and a concerted public campaign by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The tough-talking presidential aspirant promised to impose the full force of republican law on any young agitators who dared take out their rage on the symbols of French glory and in full view of the foreign tourists

...Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy

[righttackle44]

Well let me add to their reason for railing.

The entire French national leadership acts [or doesn't act] like the local and state leadership of Louisiana before, during and after Katrina.

The whole country looks like a Pepe LePew cartoon.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I guess they can tolerate a few hundred cars burned up.
Now...how about that tourist money, eh ?

[jimbo123]

[DustyMoment]

Le French are humiliated by their own ineptness and inactivity in the face of civil unrest!?

Merde!!

[kingu]

Pick a riot in the United States. Virtually every single one not only made the networks in France, but was the highlight for days to come, with detailed video every step of the way. Even days after the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles, the French television stations were running the story of the riot with 'new details', implying that this was still going on.

Miami riots? To the top of the news broadcast.

The response in the United States to the French riots has been - there are riots? The coverage is so minimal that most people don't even know that it is not just in one city (if they know that much.)

Imagine the field day France would have had with riots across the United States. They'd show hours upon hours of video footage of that. But if the total exposure of the French riots on network news exceeds fifteen minutes in the last two weeks, I'd be shocked.

The questions that French journalists should be asking right now is not how to minimalize the coverage - it is already minimal. What they should be asking is 'Why doesn't anyone care?' Oh, sure, they care in Denmark who is having the same problem, but most of Europe is mum on it as well.

Riots in fifty towns affecting millions of people and it gets far less coverage than the Ditch (sounds like hitch.) If the French are supposedly the center of the world's culture, a cultural war in that country should be full coverage, everywhere. It isn't. And France should be deeply worried about that.

[andyk]

They had a memorial rally for the town's gym.

[kcvl]

They are a proud people who are more accustomed to being being admired for their country's world-class cuisine, intellectual heritage and enviable lifestyle.

I'm just green with envy. /sarcasm