France's "The Puppets of Information"

and most of that also applies to any healthy 5-year-old - speaking your mind, being direct and "inobscure". all that is due to the fact that the man does not possess an extensive vocabulary, again, much like a 5-ear-old... hello! but then again, who is Blair that we're going to respect what HE has to say. he's nothing but a puppet himself. and now onto something completely different, as the monty pythoners like to say...:

I spent the fall semester in Paris with my wife and teenage daughter. One night in December a group met at a friend's apartment before going out to dinner. My friend's sons were busy playing a Star Wars video game on the computer when we arrived, but the younger one, a 7-year-old, shortly joined the adults and announced that he had a question for les americains.
"Vous etes en faveur de la guerre en Iraq?" ("Are you in favor of the war in Iraq?") When I told him no, he asked, "Vous etes Americains vraiment?" (?Are you truly Americans??)

This seemed a little much for a 7-year-old. But the typical Western European high school student has a more sophisticated understanding of social and foreign policy issues than most members of Congress, so perhaps it's not surprising that the little ones are interested too. Of course this understanding is still partial, and often based on media images that highlight fundamental differences between our societies.

For instance, my 7-year-old friend's primary data source is the satirical television program Les Guignols d'Info (The Puppets of Information). A ten-minute show on every weeknight, it is watched by millions of French. A puppet anchorman interviews life-like puppets representing the major figures in French politics and society. Although some of the intricacies of French politics were lost on us, we still watched it regularly, and wished for something similar in the United States.

Once or twice a week Bush is on Les Guignols, always accompanied by Sylvester Stallone. Stallone does most of the talking and is dressed either in a General's uniform or a banker's three-piece suit, representing what the French see as the three elements of American "hyperpower": Hollywood, the military and finance capital. Bush plays with his toy boat, cracks jokes and responds to questions on almost any issue with "bomb Iraq."

This parody of Bush was no more vicious than those of Jacques Chirac or his ministers. But whereas Chirac is ridiculed for his pomposity, it is Bush's seeming ignorance of basic historical facts that we expect college freshman to have that makes the French both laugh and scratch their hands. In France's elitist system of preparation for civil service and government, it is impossible for someone of Bush's apparently limited abilities to become president. Many Americans support Bush because they believe he is a "good man." This concept is mostly lost on the French, who accepted that both Mitterand's wife and mistress appeared at his funeral. Chirac came in first in both rounds of presidential voting last year despite general agreement that he is financially corrupt.

And yet the French, like most continental Europeans, admire the United States. In a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 68 percent of those polled in France said they have a positive image of the United States. France was the only country in Western Europe in which the image of the U.S. has not deteriorated in the lst year. The vast majority of the people we met admired the energy and innovative aspects of American culture. American movies and especially music are tremendously popular. We found no overt anti-Americanism at all.
A portrayal of George Bush in Mickey Mouse ears on France's famous television program, Guignols d'Info. "All set?" the text reads. "We're going to war?"

In a recent issue of the New York Review of Books (Feb.13), Timothy Garton Ash documents America's, and especially the American political right's increasing anti-Europeanism. Indeed, since our return, we have found much more hostility toward Europe here than we found toward the United States in Europe.

Of course there are aspects of American society that Europeans find repulsive. A favorite game at Paris cafes is "spot the Americans," which is too easy as their wide bodies and sloppy dress give them away. My daughter's friends were stunned when she told them that South Kingstown students have twenty minutes for lunch. Initially she thought they were appalled because this left so little time for socializing but what really bothered the French students was what this means for the digestive system, a typically French concern. And the French teens were shocked by the scene in the movie Erin Brockovich where the heroine is unable to take her sick children to the doctor because she lacked health insurance. They took this as a sign of barbarism.

But mostly they hate Bush and the kind of America for which he stands. The White House refusal to accept the international criminal court, its opposition to concerted action on global environmental problems, and now its seeming pursuit of war no matter what, have given the United States the image of a rogue state. Bush's cowboy rhetoric, his "axis of evil" speech and his constant references to God make him seem as fundamentalist as Osama to secularized Europeans.

The French, German and Russian governments' response to the White House war campaign has been somewhat more sophisticated, but it finds deep support across Europe because of the loathing of Bush. 82 percent of the people in the European Union oppose a war with Iraq that is not sanctioned by the United Nations. Even in Central and Eastern Europe this figure is 75 percent (Le Monde, Feb.12).

The French government has made two simple points. First, unlike 1991, Iraq has not attacked anyone and shows no signs of doing so. Second, the White House has given no indication that it understands the negative consequences of such a war in the Arab world nor does it have a believable plan for postwar Iraq. The latter is especially troubling in that the United States has not followed up on its promises to provide aid and security to post-Taliban Afghanistan. Whatever one thinks of these arguments, they find overwhelming support in Europe. From Paris (or London, or Berlin), the U.S. government looks increasingly like an out-of-control bully bent on having its own way no matter the cost in human life or to its country's reputation.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Richard McIntyre is a Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island.

funny, huh?