The New York Times's reporting on France

My French friend, who doubtless would prefer not to be named, finds the coverage of France by the New York Times insipid and infuriating. "Does the Times think we are children?" he asked me (I paraphrase from memory) back at the time of the election. "America's leading newspaper seems unaware there are serious issues of economics, politics, state policy, and all its Paris correspondent thinks about is making cliched comparisons between France and the United States about women, divorce, affairs by politicians. Does she know anything else? New York liberals think we are Disneyland. At least American conservatives want to talk about real things."

I was flattered that the "conservatives" he meant included me. I am highly francophilic, although I can't speak French - I have taken enough classes in order to be able to read Stendhal, Char, Cendrars, and Camus in the original with a dictionary, but that's more or less it - and this friend tells me that I am not so much a conservative as the American cognate of a center-right Gaullist, which is also highly flattering and in its way very astute. He describes himself as a center-left Gaullist - but what matters, he says, is the Gaullist part. French Gaullists and American Gaullists clash, he says, because what they share is that neither one is in the least bit apologetic for speaking for the interests of his country and, more importantly, its honor. He adds, still annoyed, that the "best way America and France could immediately improve relations would be for the Times to replace Elaine Sciolino with someone who understood more finance and less fashion." Banish her, he said, to where she really belongs, in the "Style section and Travel."

I doubt he has yet seen today's Week in Review in the Times, in which Sciolino has a major front page story on - the reform of the French economy? Non. The impending strike and its consequences? Non. Olivier Roy's new book on Islam and French secularism? Non. It is, instead, yet more cultural trivialities about Sarkozy and divorce - always the same shtick - the sophistication of the French versus the vulgarity and prudishness of the Americans. "L'Amour Has Little to Do With l'Etat." We might add that "L'Times's Coverage Has Little to Do with L'Real Issues of France But That L'Times Doesn't Seem to L'Notice or L'Care." The justification at the offices of the Times, I suppose, is that it has calculated, probably correctly, that this blather is what its Manhattan readership, and its cognates across American cities, want to read over Sunday brunch.

So when I quote Stendhal in the post below, "I crave leave to slander France," well, it's not me I'm talking about. I rarely jump onto the criticize-the-Times bandwagon; I have many close friends there, now and in the past (and, anyway, at some point I will think its stock price, even sans voting rights, will be low enough to warrant buying). When the Times wants to do something serious on Western Europe, it can always call on Christopher Caldwell or David Rieff, over at the NYT Magazine. But I thought my French friend should have some voice on what he regards as the thoughtless liberal American slander of France.

(Thanks, Glenn, for the Instalanche and welcome Instapunditeers!)

(ps. Continuing the Times's preference for trivialities regarding France, today's Week in Review, Sunday, November 4, 2007, has an article by someone or other on names of children in France. It mentions immigration issues and names, and tries to glue on something of weighty social significance of class and identity, but as the article itself says, there is a "lighter side" to French baby names, and the essay gives a good thousand words to it.)