As many of you know from my past blog posts here over the years, due largely to my own wide-ranging pursuits, interests and inclinations, I've been watching Sky News andFrance 24'sEnglish and French language service for many, many years and have been watching them again since
this terror attack happened in Paris yesterday.
(And SVT,SVT Play, TV4 and TV4 Play in Sweden, too, of course. Especailly the morning news shows like SVT's Gomorron Sverigeand TV4's Nyhetsmorgonboth of which I watch when I can and whose daily newsletters I receive, just as I receive Channel 4 News' daily Snowmail. I'll even admit to a bit of a crush on TV4 presenter Tilde de Paula Eby! Then again, over the past five years or so, I've gotten VERY frustrated with BBC America's mediocre programming lineup that for so long has featured StarTrek-TNG episodes instead of the sorts of engaging and compelling news shows and documentaries that have recently aired back in Great Britain, which I'd much rather be watching.)
The news coverage of yesterday's Paris terror attack at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo remindsus of what we've complained about for years: inferior news coverage of foreign news on U.S. TV networks. Save yourself the aggravation of watching PC MSM newscasts in USA that sanitize news and start watching Sky News and France 24's English service if you really want to know what's going on in France right now
I strongly encourage you to check these tow news outlets out so you can see and hear the facts
for yourself and not be forced to wonder, as so many do, why the highly-edited and highly-sanitized
versions of reality seen on US. network evening newscasts, especially important news in foreign countries, seem to leave out so many important and salient facts after they are edited out in London:
NY Times headline on this day in 1939, negotiations with Hitler: "Berlin thinks door is open for peaceful solution." pic.twitter.com/8iPv6az8HH
— Strobe Talbott (@strobetalbott) August 29, 2014
History rhymes? In 1939 UK & France urged Poland not to provoke Germany by mobilizing, later chided Poles for not preparing for invasion.
— Strobe Talbott (@strobetalbott) August 29, 2014
OfficialRegalMovies video: Les Misérables, starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried, and is directed by Oscar-winner Tom Hooper (The King's Speech). Opens at Christmas. Uploaded September 20, 2012. http://youtu.be/wwgQjfg0hZw
Stupendous times ten! Tom Hooper's 'Les Misérables' looks absolutely, ridiculously AMAZING! Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway & Amanda Seyfried musical opens at Christmas, and seems to be a veritable license to print money; Baz Luhrmannn's 'The Great Gatsby' opening is pushed back to May 2013; @LesMiserables
LesMiserablesFilm video: Les Misérables (teaser) Uploaded May 31, 2012. http://youtu.be/2TRU1vt8o7o Frankly, after looking at how rapturous Les Misérables looks, as much as I love Baz Luhrmannn's genius and inventiveness and was looking forward to seeing his production of The Great Gatsby at Christmas, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and the always-amazing Carey Mulligan, now that word has come this morning -below- that the film has been moved to May 10th, I can't help but wonder what Loopper would've done with Fitzgerald'sGatsby. I say this after having seen the Gatsby teasers online and then the most recent trailer for it a few weeks back, something I meant to mention here in this space. Seriously, when I actually heard the rap music at the beginning of a film about Long Island in the 1920's, I positively cringed. Cringed! Can there be no end in sight to this trend of forcing inappropriate popular music on a subject just because you can get permission to use a song or the singer is a friend?
http://youtu.be/rARN6agiW7o Unfortunately, by the fifth time I watched it, I got the very strong sense that characterization and plot development would take a back-seat to over-the-top scenes of opulence, which almost every good director can do with a large enough budget. By the time I saw the trailer for the sixth time, a week after seeing it for the first time, I felt like I not only didn't want to see the film, I didn't want to even see another film at a multiplex that was right next to it. Being creative and magical with characters, giving movie-goers insight into their inner struggles or personality development, that's the thing I look for. It's what Luhrmann did so well with the ridiculously-talented Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge, in that despite all the visual and musical flourishes, her character just jumps out at you and makes you want to care about her.
No matter what else you want to convey to an audience, that's especially got to be the case in a film based on a book I've read dozens of times. Not just the most-American novel of the past 100 years, the best one. It seems that tens of thousands of other film fans around the world who have seen the Gatsby trailer have come to the same conclusion regarding the rap music, since it's typically the first thing that comes up in a conversation or email: How could they? As presently constructed, based on the outlines we've seen thru teasers and trailers, I have serious doubts about the film's ability to draw-in movie-goers over age 35.
TheWrap
'The Great Gatsby' Release Date Moved to May 2013
By Tim Kenneally & Brent Lang
Published: September 20, 2012 @ 9:59 am
"The Great Gatsby" will kick off the summer season for Warner Bros. on May 10, 2013, the studio said Friday.
The Baz Luhrmann-directed film will be released internationally the following week.
There's no substitute for serendipity, breakaway speed, Bloomington, Indianain the Fall, letting the facts speak for themselves, lasagna and... perfect cotton candy pink lips!
Some recent Paris Match articles and photo archives of Brigette Bardot:
The last Daphne your faithful blogger concerned himself with was also from Holland, die Nederlands, mid-1980's University of Miami ace diver Daphne Jongejans.
This 2011 film, currently the second most-popular French film of all-time, attendance-wise, is only playing in two theaters in South Florida right now, one in Ft. Lauderdale and one in Miami Beach, so you have to seek it out.
New York Observer
One Leg At a Time: The Intouchables Is a Story of Strength and Resolve
Sign of The Times this morning, the day after le second tour de l'élection présidentielle: Left-hand turn ahead, prepare to pay increased toll to appease the professional proletariat class and their laundry list of demands & grievances.
But we'll always have Paris, right?
Yes, mes amis, but some of it will be moving to London soon to wait out the coming economic déluge.
France24english video: Debate, Part 1 of 2. President Hollande: Can "Mr. Normal" lead France in times of crisis? May 7, 2012. http://youtu.be/7MpB7IM_b1g
France24 Debate show host François Picard and his guests discuss what important decisions lies ahead for president-elect François Hollande, using clips from his acceptance speech in Tulle: what factors he may weigh in selecting a Prime Minister, what that choice might suggest about Hollande's future priorities or signals to party faithful; concerns about his economic policies, and how he will deal with Angela Merkel's Germany on the Eurozone debt crisis and why German financial institutions won't like what they hear from his govt., et al.
Guests: Steven Erlanger, Paris bureau chief of the N.Y. Times; Ulrike Koltermann, former Paris bureau chief, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA); James Shields, French political expert and Head of French Studies, Aston University http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/staff/shieldsjg/
Patrick Vignal, Senior correspondent, Reuters/France.
For me, the best takeaway comment was that of Jim Shields, who says, more or less, the Europe and France of 2012 is very different from the one that Socialist François Mitterand strode onto, chiefly because there is more that is beyond the reasonable human control of the Élysée Palace, therefore expect incrementalism, not the transformational changes that his oldest and youngest supporters long for.
France24english video: Debate, Part 2 of 2. President Hollande: Can "Mr. Normal" lead France in times of crisis? May 7, 2012.http://youtu.be/76ZEBgYxCVE
Not Breaking News: U.S. cablenets stay with taped programs rather than go LIVE from Paris as official results of 2012 French Presidential election are announced; watch election commentary LIVE from Paris at France24 or BFMTV
Final Ipsos poll via France24 at 8 p.m. in Paris: François Hollande 51.9 %, Nicolas Sarkozy 48.1%.
France24: Overall, 20.1 percent of French voters abstained from casting their ballots. BFMTV says it was 81% participation.
Here's what the U.S. cable networks ran instead:
CNN - The Next List MSNBC - Meet the Press (encore of NBC's telecast), which featured Tom Brokaw raising the complaint of voters that U.S. reporters are more than a bit full of themselves, and, that their being so keen on reporting on what George Clooney thinks at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, rather than DO THEIR JOBS, is one of the reasons. Yes, the thin wall between serious news and Entertainment Tonight Fox News Channel - Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace (encore telecast)
Yes, with all the technology available to them, this is what we get from the Mainstream Media: nothing. C'est la vie!
Once you click the arrow, it'll work, but there's so much demand on the line now that every few minutes it slows down and requires refreshing, just like the LIVE blog.
Click the blue link in the bottom left marked Watch : FRANCE 24 live : SPECIAL
Already, less than an hour after the official results were announced, many of the Socialist members who have appeared on TV are talking about the victory as something much larger than it is, esp, considering since it was not a legislative election.
(Those elections are next month.)
They sort of remind me of many of the young female thirty-something Democratic/GOP consultants we see too much of on TV in the U.S. all the time, who you'd really like to know what they've ever actually accomplished besides getting the attention of the show's male producers, because the facts don't seem to ever get in the way of what they say. As becomes obvious when you listen.
Meanwhile, the Front National Le Pen supporters are crowing that they are the ones who really are responsible for Sarkozy's defeat and angling for more respect,
Sarkozy gave a very classy concession speech but at the beginning of it, one of the female reporters from France24 in Tulle, where Hollande supporters were celebrating, kept talking over Sarkozy for a bit before they killed her microphone. Hollande has still not spoken as of 3:15 Eastern U.S.
As many of you may already know, French law actually makes it illegal for the French news media to report any information regarding election results before the polls close at 8 p.m. Paris time. Similarly, because of this law, on almost every French news site you can think of, as well as popular blogs, there are representations of the blue Twitter icon that bears the following:
Présidentielle sur Afin de respecter la période de réserve avant l’annonce des résultats, les flux twitter sont désactivés jusqu’au dimanche 6 mai 20h. Merci de votre compréhension
This even applies to the Twitter accounts of both presidential candidates, which bear the same message as above. Which is to say that all Twitter feeds featuring news regarding the Presidential election are disabled until 8 p.m.
Election returns start at 8 p.m. Paris time, i.e C.E.S.T., which is GMT +2, so for those of us looking keenly towards Paris from the East Coast of the United States, that means 2 p.m.
is when you want to be near your computer to watch the action via France24.
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Over the past few months, as the French presidential election was fast approaching with the spectacle of the European Union making like Humpty Dumpty over the most promiscuous spenders being in hock, I've been spending more and more time on the French TV, public policy and news websites than usual.
Which has necessarily meant getting used to seeing our old pals at France24, Vanessa Burggraff and Stéphanie Antoine, all over again after all these months apart, which is no problem. They're very smart and very watchable.
As always, and just as was the case when I was closely following the 2007 election between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, you get a real immediate sense of the difference in how party politics is played in France compared to the U.S. when you read the nuances on how and why the various left and Right alliances are assembled from one election to another.
Sometimes, it seems more like a national convention of Favorite Son candidacies or an American Idolor Swedish Idol try-out in a large city like Atlanta or Göteborg that's going to be televised.
The TV producers and show judges know in advance that just as in the U.S., some political parties are held together by commonly-held beliefs on issues that their most reliable supporters will support, regardless of the actual nominee, others will only support it or watch it if there's an abundance of candidates who sing their own favorite genre: rock, pop, Indie, rap, et al. They actually want to be the choir who is sung to!
Too much of another genre or catering to one issue or sub-group, to the exclusion of their favorite, and it's both a tune-off and a tune-out, and nobody wins when that happens.
After the first round of the election where Socialist and PRG candidate François Hollande narrowly defeated President Sarkozy for first among the many candidates, I went back and looked at many of the French videos I've received at my YouTube Channel since Hollande received the nomination last Fall that I never got around to watching the first time around, so that I could see if there was something I was missing that could explain his popularity besides the straight-out anti-Sarko factor.
No, there really wasn't, which is why the specter of someone like Hollande winning so deeply concerns many of my friends living over there now, or who visit there often from other European countries, because they can't quite wrap their heads around the idea that France will take a giant step backwards after finally breaking with the past and getting someone with common sense pragmatism in French policy like Sarkozy, instead of soft leftist pretentions masquerading as serious public policy, policies that nobody outside of France respected or took seriously, but instead, just laughed at.
In short, they were tired of the sort of parochial economic policies that made France forever seem to them like it was the least dynamic nation in Europe, relative to its size, because it always had to indulge certain domestic interest groups and forces that acted like the 21st Century hadn't yet arrived in France -to say nothing of the 20th!
Groups that used the state's power as a weapon against coming to terms with reality and who don't want anything to do with a real competitive marketplace where consumers, not producers, make the choices over what is popular and profitable, not bureaucrats and manifestos.
France24 video: Campaign Chronicles: France in denial over the economy? April 3, 2012.
The thought of Hollande winning and creating hundreds of thousands of subsidized jobs only would further postpone France's coming day of reckoning, where the professional activists, professional misfits and professional students have to leave the warm embrace of Maman et l'étatand grow-up and make something of themselves. Time to take off the training-wheels, kids!
A country that is so full of so many well-educated people who produce or create nothing that anyone else wants is... well, the slippery slope. And when you throw in all the myriad problems associated with assimilation of overly-indulged immigrants who think nothing of throwing rocks at ambulances responding to emergency calls... and who expect the same kind of lifestyle as the well-educated without the hard work, well, c'est un déluge pour la France all around, n'est-ce pas? -----
Take that! The cut that sears the most: days before French runoff election, Jean-François Copé, Sarkozy's UMP Sec.-Gen., accuses François Hollande of not being a true intellectual. Election Sunday could be beginning of Francs rushing across the Channel to wait out the economic storm under Hollande
So, all that said, for me, the most genuinely interesting and only-in-France moment came this week when I read an interview in Metro where Jean-François Copé, Sarkozy's UMP Secretary.-General, accused Hollande of not being a true intellectual.
Jean-François Copé : "Hollande est une imposture intellectuelle", A quelques heures de la clôture de la campagne. Jean-François Copé a reçu "Metro" au siège de l'UMP. 03-05-2012 22:15
PARIS — François Hollande, the 57-year-old favored to be elected narrowly on Sunday as France’s president, is no revolutionary. He likes to talk of “harmony” and “pragmatism” and often quotes the poet and politician Aimé Césaire about “lucid hope.”
After watching the Sunday morning chat shows, I'm heading to the beach for a bit and then stop off and get some French wine and someLa vache qui rit and see what happens like the rest of you. And hope for the best -----
Above, the Tom the Turkey balloon in the flower section of the Publix grocery store on Hallandale Beach Boulevard & S.E. 14th Avenue, Hallandale Beach, FL. November 24, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
My prescience is priceless: In days, Americans will show their overwhelming disdain for Occupy Wall Street by leaving their families at home to get to stores by Midnight to buy Corporate America's must-haves.
Or, put another way, welcome to "A Very Vegan Thanksgiving in Ft. Lauderdale" -with French faux-Turkey recipes collected by Ron Gunzburger, noted Francophile and Vive-le-Jet-Set member! http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=34136590@N02&q=France
How the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel , the business/legal newspapers and all the local Miami-area TV stations have managed to hold off on doing articles, columns or news broadcast about his seeming hypocrisy on this issue, on the one hand, comporting himself every bit the Broward establishment figure from his position as a government attorney for the Broward County Appraiser's office, while at the same time, having been the very picture of the savvy PR flack for the Blame America First branch of the Democratic Party in Broward, that's so universally laudatory about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, is really quite something.
That "something" is called being asleep-at-the-wheel.
Seriously, is there anyone around in South Florida political life who more consistently imbues the average American's (outside of South Florida) mental image of the prototypical liberal, wine-sipping, self-loathing American Bohemian who must escape to France en vacances once in a while to get in touch with himself than Ron Gunzburger?
Mon dieu, non!
(Of course, once he's over there, he can see all over again what real pretentious hipsters are like first-hand by simply looking around, and trying not to be drawn into un-necessary internecine French political arguments over party purity or the merits of a fusion ticket.)
That Ron Gunzburger is well-known, gay and in a position to actually either compliment or scold well-known reporters, columnists and media personalities thru his popular political website, is, of course, only the liberal gravy if you will, speaking of upcoming Thanksgiving.
And yet because of one thing or another, even the thing I don't mention here, the local Miami and Ft. Lauderdale news media haven't even bothered to lift their fingers in an attempt to put him on the spot for a bit and have him try to explain himself, chiefly his seeming bi-polarity of both having his cake and eating it, too.
The local media haven't made any serious attempt to give South Florida residents an idea of why someone who is in many ways the very picture of a govt. bureaucrat -and image-conscious to boot- hasn't seen even a single negative news vibe since the whole Occupy PR machinery went into high gear? Not one.
The next time you see a professional reporter or columnist or editor hereabouts skulking about at some news event or public meeting take a moment to walk up to him or her and ask them about that supreme and jaw-dropping lack of effort.
And if they actually respond civily, take the opportunity to ask who else is on that Untouchable list of theirs, write it down and let me know.
We'd all like to know, though some are givens, like all the Dem congresspeople from South Florida, who hardly need press secretaries given the job the local media does of playing stenographer.
Broward Clean Sweep video: How Broward reporters cover Broward politicians
For the record, I don't personally dislike Ron Gunzburger, I'm just genuinely mystified how and why in the year 2011, given what is known about him -his political sympathies, his various efforts locally, et al, plus, the ease of technology that makes it easier for the news media to do their job than ever before- that the South Florida news media is SO completely frozen in place that they are unable to see a NEWS STORY when it is staring right in front of their face waving a red cape like a matador.
Frankly, I don't doubt that he has wondered the same thing.
It's media myopia plus dollops of disconnectedness, a very bad combination for newspaper readers and TV news viewers if ever there were any, and that won't be helped any by Tryptophan Thursday, as next weekend's newspaper stories and columns are almost guaranteed to be the worst of the year, as happens every year like clockwork.
In fact, even as we speak, someone's column for next weekend is either being written or edited right now, so that column will on some large 'theme' instead of a particular news story.
Unfortunately, many of those columns will be written by the very same Mainstream Media folks like E.J. Dionne, Leonard Pitts, Jr. or Kathleen Parker -who can't help herself from mentioning Sarah Palin, even when nobody else is- all of whom, so consistently mis-fire and continually draw the wrong conclusions about what is actually happening in our country, good or bad, regardless of what the subject is, and, consequently always seem to prescribe a cure that may well hasten the demise of the system we enjoy, however imperfect and galling at times.
Yes, in the very same newspapers all over the country that have, does have and will have front page stories all week about the confounding trend of holiday consumerism intruding on family time together, and instead heading for Ye Olde Galleria or Target or Best Buy at Midnight, après le third NFL football game du jour is finit, to indulge in some consumer theory first-hand, are the very same people will say that the Occupy forces have really taught us all a valuable lesson.
Aand that their message will linger longer than anything the Tea Party does.
In my opinion, that conclusion, common in the blogosphere among self-styled 'progressives' is not only untrue, but unprovable, but that hardly seems to matter now, despite the fact that these same folks say the intentionally loose amalgam of people supporting the Tea Party's economic and limited government principles are the power within the GOP.
(How can it be both the power and a negligible force that will soon be eclipsed, they never quite explain.)
It's like saying if Don Shula had finally traded for an elite NFL running back, the Dolphins of the 1990's would've won a Super Bowl with Dan Marino at quarterback.
BOBBY KNIGHT OF INDIANA
A Profile by Frank Deford, January 28, 1981
Like if you gave former IU coach Bobby Knight control of North Carolina's perpetual mother-lode of crazy incoming talent that Dean Smith had all those years, and ask how many MORE NCAA basketball titles he would have won before Coach Smith finally won his first -years after Coach Knight had already won two titles at IU, including my sophomore year in Bloomington?
THE CHAMPS!
Hoosier Hero Isiah Thomas, April 4, 1981
That's speculation of the worst sort because in the end, you only end up chasing your tail.
But I've heard those very questions posed before.
Sometimes, all in the same long drive to South Florida from Bloomington at the holidays or Spring Break.
Imponderables.
Like what if political candidates said out-loud in a prologue before debates, forums and speeches, what particular reporters & columnists they sincerely believed were stupid, biased, incompetent or unethical -and had to give examples; would that be a positive to society to get it all out in the open and have some genuine transparency?
I say yes, but how can that be proven true unless everyone does it?
Stores that once closed their doors in deference to the holiday are now touting Turkey Day deals starting as early as 9 p.m. Workers who should be on vacation are answering office e-mails on their smartphones. And those who plan on celebrating with a traditional dinner are finding that the cost of a bird is near its 30-year high, according to government data.
