Saturday, February 2, 2013

Which Paragraph D’ya Read?

In the heyday of the end-of-column filler, The New Yorker  used to have a great little featurette, titled “Which Newspaper D’ya Read?”  It would feature, side by side, headlines from two different newspapers, putting opposite spins on the exact same events.  (Things like, “General Widget’s sales soar 15%” and “General Widget once again fails to meet Wall Street expectations”.)

A more delicate dance is to spin things one way, then another, in the exact same day’s edition of a single newspaper, sometimes within the very same article.  Examples below, simply from the first two newspapers I looked at this morning, and both of them considered journalistic paragons.  The first is on the subject of combat roles for women (in French, poetically, "Les femmes au feu"); the second, on France's sudden intervention in Azawad.

(1) Gender-norming

(For our earlier essay on this topic, click here: )

One of the things I hate about the hypocrisy associated with Political Correctness (or with any other  empirically shaky but vigorously inburrowing ideology) is that it leads to such lousy journalism, an attempt to assimilate which may damage your synaptic connections.

Here is some happytalk from the opening paragraph of a featured article in this morning’s New York Times.


By ELISABETH BUMILLER
How many pull-ups does it take to make a female Marine?
The answer, starting next January: a minimum of three, the same number required of male Marines.
If anyone thought the military’s decision to allow women into combat units would lead to exceptions for women when it came to fitness and physical strength, this is one service’s “gender neutral” answer.

The smug and smarmy tone  is typical of the genre;  and yet this paragraph does apparently contain an actual numerical hard fact, one which brought me up short.  So:  Instead of expanding gender-norming, the services -- beginning with the Marines, no less -- will actually be rolling it back?!   This is indeed big news.

Only … if you read on past the gurgling prose, you come eventually to this, several column-inches later:

But even for the pull-ups, the Marines are still making some exceptions. To get a perfect grade, women will have to do only 8, compared with the 20 required for men.

Huh?
In other words, the New York Times is throwing fairy-dust in our faces --  Who knows how this all will eventually play out.

(2)  O Azawad, our Azawad

We earlier scoffed at some happytalk from a well-bearded academic, concerning the rainbow paradise that was growing up in MNLA-controlled  -- no wait, MNLA cum Ansar Din-controlled -- no wait, AQIM-controlled, with a roiling sprinkling of other groups -- northern Mali:

Then, when it became obvious to all what a mess things were up there, the talk was all of a heroic multi-national African army striding in and setting things right.   Preparations are under way … real soon now … any time now …  Finally the French had to go in alone and do the job themselves, with what one journalist called the “shambolic” Malian army trailing in the rear, to perform looting duties and ethnic cleansing.

And now, during a (purely temporary, I assure you) pause in the fighting (which mostly actually didn’t happen;  the jihadis prudently withdrew, to fight another day), Francois Hollande is having his own “Mission Accomplished” moment, jetting in to Bamako along with three of his mistresses (er, ministers) for a photo op.

In my inbox this morning were the following three headlines from Le Figaro.   Each one read separately, could cause the head to nod.  Read together, they cause cognitive dissonance (don’t worry, there’s a pill for that):

François Hollande va prêcher la concorde à Bamako
Après trois semaines d'une guerre éclair, l'avenir du Mali dépend du dialogue entre Noirs et Touaregs. Le chef de l'État français est arrivé sur place

François Hollande est désormais «l'ami intime du Mali»
Les habitants de Bamako sont enthousiastes à l'idée d'accueillir celui qu'ils appellent leur « libérateur ».

Paris s'inquiète des exactions maliennes

If you are looking forward to the kumbaya fruits of that “dialogue”, or are puzzled by the reference of that word “exactions” (note:  It’s an etymologico-semantic “faux ami”; the meaning is much harsher in French than in English), check this out, again from this morning’s news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/world/africa/timbuktu-endured-terror-under-harsh-shariah-law.html?ref=global-home

Even here, the headline-writer is busy spinning, to deflect attention from the real story.   Yes, things really sucked up north in Gao, Kidal, and Timbuctu, under the rule of the takfiri carpetbaggers, an episode that was abundantly covered in the press, over many months, as the world waxed indignant over the destruction of clay tombs.   But the new story will find the press rather more light-shy at the lack of clear delineation between good guys and bad guys:  the looting and killings on the horizon (as yet no bigger than a man’s mailed fist), that the article squeamishly alludes to, are not those of al-Qaeda and friends, who are mostly off somewhere in the cave-pocked Ifoghas mountains  northwest of Kidal,  licking their wounds and regrouping, but are conducted by southern, black Malians, targeting the light-skinned:

Zahby Ould Ibrahim’s general store was looted to the studs this week. The horde that descended upon it took not just the shop’s stock of pots, pans and bedding but the electric sockets, the light bulbs and the doorframe, too.
A few shops away, Mahamane Dguitteye’s grocery store, its shelves lined with packets of spaghetti, bottles of olive oil and bars of soap, was completely untouched.
The main difference between the men? Mr. Ibrahim is an Arab. Mr. Dguitteye is a black African of the Songhai ethnic group.

[Update 13 March 2013]  Les exactions de l'armee malienne  continuent:
http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2013/03/12/des-soldats-maliens-a-nouveau-accuses-d-exactions_1846584_3212.html
Ethnic cleansing in the north, directed against Tuaregs, Moors, and Fulani (peuls), courtesy of the blacks from Bamako.  (And these, mind you, are supposedly the good guys.  -- You really need a scorecard to keep track...)
~

Footnote -- Department of Vox Populi.
Whenever I am depressed at journalistic standards (and we’re talking about the best here, not freaking Fox News), it is reassuring to go over the Readers Comments, and see that they have not been fooled.    The New York Times, cravenly, often does not permit commentary, but Le Figaro always does.   Here are some samples:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/02/01/01003-20130201ARTFIG00609-francois-hollande-va-precher-la-concorde-a-bamako.php?m_i=UhTUmd41VEEJVkpcZQv4yZK8nd15d5wVDSoHIDL_1mjqHvKUo

Quelle mascarade!!!! pendant la guerre contre Kahdafi n'oublions pas que les maliens nous huaient, mais aujoud'hui "grâce à l'armée malienne" on nou cesse de nous le repéter le Mali est libre!!! on attend de voir la suite!!!
---
Hollande qui va se glorifier au mali en nous faisant croire que cette guerre est presque terminé , c est pitoyable ! Hollande fait feu de tout bois , pour remonter dans les sondages! Si on a un peu de jugeote , on sait parfaitement que les terroristes ne lâcheront rien , contrairement à ce que dit hollande cette guerre est loin d être terminer!
--
Le Club Med en goguette... Hollande ne représente que lui-même...
---
Moi président est allée chercher de la popularité au Mali. Il ferait mieux de chasser les islamistes de France. Le Mali est majoritairement musulman. Que font les autres pays musulmans pour leur venir en aide ?
---
Il prêche la concorde à Bamako et sème la discorde en France! triste sire que ce président d'une partie des français.
--
Le Nord Mali sera-t'il le prochain Fort Saganne pour François II le Normal ...?


*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série noire
en argot authentique d’Amérique :

*
[Update, afternoon]  Good Lord, it gets worse.  Glurge alert!  The French President  goes groveling  before the fratricidal chaos of Africa.   If he needs a good whipping, why can't he go get it at Madame Sévère’s Bondage Basement, instead of dragging all France into his fantasies?

François Hollande a déclaré aujourd'hui à Bamako que l'intervention de la France au Mali représentait une dette à payer. "Nous payons aujourd'hui notre dette à votre égard", a-t-il lancé place de l'Indépendance. "Je n'oublie pas que lorsque la France a été attaquée, lorsqu'elle cherchait des soutiens, qui est venu, c’est l’Afrique, c'est le Mali, merci le Mali", a expliqué le président de la République.

Puis, il a ajouté : "La France est avec vous, la France est fière de vous, et moi je veux vous dire que je viens de vivre la journée la plus importante de ma vie politique."

Once again, the readers are less than impressed:

Il ne représente q'un français sur trois au grand maximum...!
Alors avant de raconter des salades, il devrait demander d'abord l'avis des deux autres.
--
On croit rêver en lisant cet article....Le jour le plus important pour le Président de la République Française !!!!!
---
La dette de la France vis à vis du Mali? il est vraiment prêt à raconter n'importe quoi. A quand les demandes d'indemnisation?
--
La repentance, il n'y a que ça de vrai pour un socialiste, Honni soit qui Mali pense.
---
Ben alors,si à présent on se met à payer les dettes ,les américains risquent de nous envoyer la facture.Quant aux pauvres africains,personne ne leur avait demandé de venir se battre pour la France, ils ont été enrôlés de force.

And actually, for the matter of that, it is not so much the payment of a ‘debt’ that Malians are demanding, but … ransom:



Note:  The Republican knuckleheads who have been accusing President Obama of “apologizing for America”   should check out the action in France  to see what serial apologizing really looks like.   More here:


They may have to read it in French, though;  so far as I can tell, this latest shameful episode in P.C. self-abasement  has not been reported in any English-language source.

An account of the visit, complete with Hollande's speech, may be heard here:
http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=5406733
For the connoisseur, one of Hollande's rhetorical flourishes was oddly reminiscent of Qaddafi's much-mocked speech, when his situation was hopeless, but he vowed to fight "hamlet by hamelt, lane by lane".  Hollande's version:  "ville par ville, village par village".


[Update, evening]  I was curious to see how this story would be handled in Le Monde, which is generally more squeamish about reporting embarrassing facts than is Le Figaro.    No word was breathed of Hollande’s abjectly truckling “debt-repayment” rhetoric, but they did touch upon the question of who has been doing the actual fighting.   This is of relevance, not so much for a matter of fairness (it is sometimes politic to give the credit to those who earned it not:  cf.  Argo), as because the world has been repeatedly told, over the past several months, that the African cavalry would be dashing in any hour now  to save the day.   And once again, there is a “Which paragraph do you read?” aspect to the reportage.
The article leads with a nod to the French and Malian forces -- or rather, Franco-Malian, presented as a unity, and sharing equally in the glory:

Les grandes villes du nord situées dans la bouche du Niger sont tombées aux mains des forces franco-maliennes.


Later, addressing the French troops who have just risked their lives for the sake of some Africans, President Hollande slips up, and nearly gives them credit; but quickly (politically-) corrects himself:

Le président évoque l'entrée dans la ville : "Vous (les Français) êtes entrés, ou plus exactement les Maliens sont entrés, dans la ville de Tombouctou.”

(Whew!  That was a close one.)

But if you read on, you eventually come to the following tidbit:

La prise de Kidal s'est faite par opération aéroportée et sans soldat malien.

…. Oh.
Never mind.


[Update 18 March 2013]  Although the Malian army has been worse than useless, the Chadians have truly stepped up to the plate:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/03/17/01003-20130317ARTFIG00122-l-appui-crucial-des-tchadiens-au-nord-du-mali.php?m_i=aPdaIuacU0VoiEfOnDOV2mGdsWviqRhrt5EIxcrP4pqnvNNG0
Mabruk, messieurs ! 

Une colonne des FATIM (Forces Armées Tchadienne en Intervention au Mali


[Update 10 April 2013] Toleja so:
 
Mali : les troupes de la Cédéao « totalement incapables », juge le Pentagone
Un haut responsable du Pentagone estime que les troupes engagées au Mali par les Etats africains ne sont pas « à la hauteur ». Et salue en revanche l'intervention française.

[Update 10 Dec 2013]  )* sigh *(   And yet again:




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