Commentary

Becoming nice

The Canadian assimilation of a girl from Prague.


People rarely travel on foot in the sprawling suburbs of Ottawa, unless they’re newly arrived immigrants, who don’t own a car.

It takes a lot to put the people of Ottawa into a bad mood. They shovel driveways in temperatures well below freezing, and they don’t mind. If an ice storm tears down the power lines, they cheerily start up their emergency generators and go right back to doing whatever had occupied them before. After enduring a long, dreary winter in the nondescript Canadian capital, when most of the snow has melted, locals rejoice, don shorts over goose-pimpled, raw-pink flesh and celebrate the advent of spring. If the temperature happens to dip into the low 30s a few more times, no one complains.

Because in Ottawa people are nice. That was one of the first things I noticed upon my arrival 15 years ago with my family from Czechoslovakia.

The second thing I noticed was that Ottawa didn’t have any skyscrapers. The huddle of 10-story governmental buildings and the empty, immaculately clean streets that made up Ottawa’s downtown proved sorely disappointing for someone expecting the bustle of a New York or Chicago. I was hungry for all the American clichés: soft drinks, wide, busy streets, oversized cars and greasy hamburgers. What I got was a watered down Canadian broth.

On the other hand, the people were so nice and cheerful, I wondered if they were trying to compensate for the blandness of their hometown. Unlike Czech parents, Canadians don’t spank their kids when they throw tantrums in the middle of the street. And shopkeepers don’t scowl the way cashiers in Prague’s supermarkets usually do. Instead, they bare their shiny white teeth, give each customer a highly personalized smile and say something kind like “have a good one” or “please come again.” Of course, having virtually no knowledge of English, I didn’t understand any of these courteous phrases or anything else that was being said around me, for that matter. Words melted into one another, and sentences sounded like mystical incantations, sing-songy and drawn out, unlike the harsher tones of my native language.

At nine, I hardly shared my mother’s thrill about leaving the then-still-communist Czechoslovakia for a democratic country. Where she saw clean sidewalks, well-stocked shops and tidy rows of cute, identical suburban houses, I saw only disappointment.    

I initially consoled myself with the belief that this was all just temporary. We had come for a two-month visit to see my father, who had spent the past year working as a visiting professor at the local psychiatric hospital.

A week later my mother asked me what I would think if we were to stay in Ottawa forever. I said I wouldn’t like it.

The parliament building, which houses Canada’s federal government, is the city’s main tourist attraction. It was one of the first places we visited in Ottawa.

Fake vacation

At first, I found our vacation only mildly depressing. It had stopped raining, and the weather became warmer, but the trees that lined the city’s tidy boulevards remained bare.

Eventually, we moved into a newly-built apartment in one of the city’s suburbs. The beige wall-to-wall carpet smelled antiseptic like my grandfather’s Russian car. The walls were bare and blinding white. My fears were momentarily lulled by the newness of it all but I began to panic when I realized that it was official: we were staying. Temporary had become forever.

Only several years later did I learn that the vacation had been just a pretext for gaining permission to leave Czechoslovakia. Our home country was still in the throes of the communist regime — this was 1989, six months before the Velvet Revolution — and emigration was illegal.

Casually, as though they were telling me that I could no longer spread butter on my toast, my parents informed me that we might not see our friends and relatives for a very long time. No one knew when — if ever –— we’d be allowed to return to Prague.

In any case, I had more pressing matters to worry about: English, above all else. The closer it came to the beginning of the school year, the shorter my nails got. I tried to approach the situation rationally. I knew for a fact that I would never learn to speak the language, so I tried my best to mentally prepare myself for a life spent in mute isolation, surrounded by well-meaning, forever-smiling Canadians.

Nice girls don’t punch

Why did those Canadians have to smile so much, anyway? At school kids smiled at teachers, and teachers smiled at kids. They all smiled at me. I answered by giving them a by-now-well-practiced look meant to convey confusion or at least to spare me the effort of trying to piece together a semi-coherent response.

Some cultural differences proved harder to comprehend than others. Take the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for instance. It took me months just to wrap my mind around the concept of eating spongy white bread smeared with a mixture of salty brown goo and sweet pink jelly. Or cereal. What was the trick to eating it quickly enough so that the flakes wouldn’t become soggy? All the food tasted quite strange, in fact. And for a while, my normally ravenous appetite left me altogether.

At school, being something of a curiosity, I got plenty of attention from my classmates, so my visions of isolation didn’t materialize. But the attention I received as a foreigner didn’t keep me from feeling isolated, as when my teacher assigned me a reader one grade level below. The cover of the ugly green book depicted clowns tossing around inflated balloons. Compared to the other kids’ readers, it looked impossibly childish, and, limited English proficiency notwithstanding, I was disgusted.

But it didn’t matter because most of my English lessons took place outside the classroom anyway.

I learned the language by appropriating new phrases, just mimicking the sound of other people’s speech without distinguishing between the different words. I roughly knew what each new phrase meant, such as one of the first sentences I learned: “Have a nice weekend.”

But it took me a while to adapt to the culture of niceness. During school yard games, for instance, when I kicked a boy in the shin after he destroyed a sandcastle that I had built with the other kids, a few of the girls took me aside and explained that this was bad. It wasn’t nice to kick boys in their shins. Not having the linguistic skills to argue, I just nodded dumbly.

Mute agreement soon became the way I dealt with most situations. During school lunch break, when no one wanted to be left turning the end of the skipping rope, I would do it, mostly because I couldn’t argue my way out, but also because it was the nice thing to do.

Being nice was becoming addictive. It meant you didn’t have to explain anything, people approved of you, and they generally left you alone.

Eventually, the language situation improved, and the culture gap shrank. By the end of the year, my family and I were beginning to feel settled, and I was promoted from the green clown reader to a far more sophisticated looking one with a black and white cover. Yet even though I no longer relied on niceness as a protection mechanism, somehow, it stuck.

I learned to add the tag “How are you?” after every greeting. And when boys destroyed our sandcastles, I didn’t punch anyone. Instead, I ran away screaming with all the other girls.

In short, I had become nice.

Ottawa’s ByWard Market is by far the most colorful part of the city.

You can take the girl out of Canada …

It would be four years before we returned to Prague for a visit. Friends and relatives had been sending us excited letters about the first free elections, about shopping at Tesco and not having to wait in line for shopping carts, about buying oranges and bananas every day of the week. We saw photographs and postcards of Prague — the same cobble-stoned streets lined with crumbling historical buildings, but now those buildings were covered with colorful ads for cereal and hamburgers and dishwashing detergent. It looked cheerful, I thought — even reminiscent of North America. But it didn’t look like home.

We went to Prague in early June when everything looked fresh and new. The grass in parks, the billboards lining the streets, the shelves in supermarkets — they all formed a colorful, albeit confusing, collage. But after a four-year absence, I couldn’t find my way around the city. Even more confusingly, although I spoke Czech fluently, I was finding it difficult to communicate with Czechs. When, for instance, after paying, I would tell shopkeepers to have a nice day, they regarded me with uncomprehending suspicion. I was distraught by this at first and began to feel that maybe, just maybe, I had become too nice for my own good.

I spent the two-month visit counting the days until my return to Ottawa. But then, back in Ottawa, oddly enough, I found myself nostalgic for the rude shopkeepers and the harsh, careless drawl of the Prague accent.
.
Over the next few years, I traveled back and forth — physically and mentally — between the two cities. In Ottawa, I sometimes felt like a Czech tourist, considering the friendly manner of the locals to be annoying and insincere. In Prague, meanwhile, I was pegged as the perpetually-smiling Canadian.

There is a Czech saying: however many languages you speak, that’s how many times you are a person. Sometimes I wonder if, instead of being about Czech appreciation of multilingualism, the saying is actually a warning about fragmentation. Since I left Ottawa, at age 19, I haven’t been back since. It takes a long time to recover from niceness.  Sometimes, I still have a relapse.

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Political Prose

Anti-imperialism at the laundromat

This afternoon I was walking to the laudromat when I ran smack into a social movement — or make that several. Parisians were out on the street today in the tens of thousands to voice their opposition to the European Con…


This afternoon I was walking to the laudromat when I ran smack into a social movement — or make that several. Parisians were out on the street today in the tens of thousands to voice their opposition to the European Constitution, which will be voted on in a country-wide referendum on May 29 (as described in a previous post).

It was quite a spectacle. There were enough flags to arm several dozen color guards — from rainbow-colored ones calling for “Peace” to martial-red ones printed with Che Guevara’s mustachioed face. There were banners with slogans in angry capital letters, inevitably with a “Non” slipped in somewhere between big, scary words like “délocalisation” (outsourcing) and “impérialisme” (imperialism). And there was an endless procession of flatbed trucks, each with its own sound system, broadcasting anything from anti-Chirac, anti-Bush chants to festive reggae music.

I waited nearly two hours — through pre-wash, wash, rinse, and dry — as the protesters filed by on Voltaire Boulevard. Every time I thought I could go back to folding my underwear there was another brigade of flags and banners, another eardrum-rattling chant, another left-wing group with a cause to publicize.

The CGT, a confederation of unions aligned with the French Communist Party (a relatively mainstream political faction here in France), seemed to have the largest delegation on the streets. The trade unionists were there mainly to protest the privatization of public services, which some believe will be imposed on France if it cedes more of its sovereignty to the European Union. There were also plenty of signs — some held by a group of Armenian activists — declaring that Turkey should be kept out of the European Union (another popular rallying cry for the anti-constitution crowd).

That said, a whole set of grievances unrelated to the coming referendum were also being aired. Workers were outraged at the cancellation of a national holiday. Students protested educational reforms proposed by the French government. Immigrants rallied for the rights of the undocumented. Hindu nationalists voiced their support for the Tamil Tigers, a pro-independence group responsible for terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. Communists hailing from “Turkey and northern Kurdistan” railed against the Iraq occupation. Expatriates from Togo decried the lack of attention being paid to their country, where violence has broken out since last week’s disputed presidential election (“After Rwanda, Togo,” said one sign).

There were plenty of unflattering references to American foreign policy. The majority of protesters stuck to the kind of anti-Bushisms one finds back in the States, but near the end of the procession I saw a truck drive by dragging a puppet on the ground behind it. It was Uncle Sam, wrapped in an American flag.

I suppose it should be expected that every lefty (and not-so-lefty) organization under the sun comes out for the big May Day march. As academics like to say, today’s media-savvy protesters often “shop around” for the best venue to get their message across. Still, I was surprised by how international the demonstration was, especially for one ostensibly about strictly European affairs. Many of these protesters dislike the globalization of markets, but they represent the globalization of protest: local issues become global, global issues become local.

The one sign I saw in English, as it turned out, mentioned someone I used to hear a lot about back in Philadelphia, near where I grew up. Nestled among the anti-neoliberals and anti-imperialists was a small group of protesters with a banner that read: “Free Mumia Now.”

[UPDATE, May 2, 2005, 1:33 p.m. GMT: Added mention of the May Day and Whit Monday themes of the protest.]  

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Political Prose

Voulez-vous coucher avec Le Pen?

In his new book on globalization, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the growing in…


In his new book on globalization, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman talks about how the growing integration of the world’s economies is overturning our conventional notions of political right and left. “Social conservatives from the right wing of the Republican party, who do not like globalization or closer integration with the world because it brings too many foreigners and foreign cultural mores into America, might align themselves with unions from the left wing of the Democratic Party, who don’t like globalization for the way it facilitates the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs,” he writes.

We can already see some evidence of this political reshuffling across the Atlantic. In France, left wingers and extreme rightists have joined together to say “Non” to the European Constitution (“joined together” is perhaps too strong a phrase given how much the two sides detest one another). The May 29 referendum is being closely watched across the continent. Polls show the No vote in the lead — with support in the low- to mid-50s, percentage-wise — and even a determined effort by French President Jacques Chirac to roll back those numbers has, so far, made little difference.

I won’t attempt a summary of the 60,000-word European Constitution (here is a rundown of the juicier details), but basically it strengthens the various institutions of the European Union, from the parliament to the presidency, and allows its member countries — representing a total of 450 million people — to speak with a more unified, potent voice on the international stage. Before its provisions will take effect, however, all 26 member countries need to ratify it. Most have chosen to do so through parliamentary votes, though ten countries, including France, are putting it to a vote of the people by next year.

France’s vote in May is the focus of so much attention because it is the first binding referendum on the constitution: If it fails here, all 26 countries must go back to the bargaining table. The European Union will still exist, but its long and steady path toward further integration will suddenly be halted, perhaps permanently. What French voters decide is also important because France is home to one of the largest populations of “euroskeptics” on the continent. On the left, opponents of the constitution are using the vote as a way to express their disgust with Chirac’s government and their outrage at certain free market policies supported by EU officials, including recent proposals to open the services market to competition from Eastern European countries with laxer regulations. On the extreme right, nationalists fear the loss of French sovereignty as well as an increase in immigration — already a topic of heated debate in France, where immigrants are blamed for high levels of unemployment and strapped public services. (At the center of this right-wing backlash is Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, who shocked the nation with his second-place finish in the 2002 presidential elections.)

In a televised debate earlier this week, these strange bedfellows made a rare public appearance together, and soon enough unflattering comparisons were being made. Michel Barnier, Chirac’s foreign minister, remarked that the anti-constitution stance of the French communists had led them to the “same vote as Monsieur Le Pen.” Marie-George Buffet, the national secretary of the French Communist Party, loudly objected to Barnier’s “insult,” declaring that the French left was dedicated to fighting the “right and extreme right.” The only thing that all camps could agree upon was that they distrusted the United States. The communist decried the Chirac government as a “puppet of Bush;” the rightist declared that a No vote would lead to a weakened Europe vulnerable to the “influence of the United States.” And the right-wing extremist, Le Pen, declared that France itself was in danger. “If you believe in the nation and the homeland,” he said, “vote no.”

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Blog

63-0


Voicing their opinion in the starkest terms, the tribal council of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in America, which houses over 300,000 members, voted 63-0 last week in support of a bill that would ban gay marriage. Joe Shirley Jr., the tribal president, has previously opposed such a ban, and he remains undecided on how he will proceed with the issue. The bill was passed on Friday, April 22, and the tribal president must decide within the current 10-day window whether he will sign the bill.

In a parallel but related move, earlier this month Connecticut joined Vermont to be the second state to allow same sex civil unions.

—Mimi Hanaoka

  
  

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Commentary

Exposing themselves

Dr. James Dobson: Undercover agent of homosexual propaganda.


(Rich Tenorio)

The following is the transcript of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of the Homosexual Agenda (AAA-HA!), at the presentation of the Tinky-Winky Agenda Teamwork award, presented by RuPaul to Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family, in recognition of his outstanding service as an Undercover Agent of Homosexual Propaganda

[Cheers, applause]

[RuPaul] Thank you. Thank you.

Today I am honored to present Dr. James Dobson with the Tinky-Winky Agenda Teamwork award in recognition of his ongoing efforts to portray America’ s Homophobes as ludicrous, spiteful, clinically paranoid semi-morons. Soon, thanks to efforts like his, America’ s homophobes will have worked themselves up to such an absurd frenzy of paranoia that their antics will be the fodder for late-night comedy and reality TV alike.  

Imagine it: Homophobe Factor where buxom young homophobes face challenges like sitting through gay-friendly programming while wearing gender-inappropriate clothing! Watch them squirm will be a national pastime!

[Whooping, ebullient cries of “You go, girlfriend!”]

But before we continue with the award ceremony, I have been asked to make an announcement. Will the owner of the Fred Phelps inflatable doll that was found in the back room please reclaim it directly after the ceremony? Mr. Phelps could not be with us tonight, as he is busy furthering our Agenda by harassing schoolchildren and updating his godhatesfags.com website linking the tsunami tragedy to God’ s wrath over homosexuality. Mr. Phelps should be acknowledged for his tireless work at portraying Homophobic America as a bunch of spittle-spewing freaks. It is nice to know that he is here tonight in spirit-and evidently in latex-though, not in body.

Now, to the business at hand. Dr. Dobson, please come to the stage to accept your award.  

Dr. Dobson jogs onstage to the tune “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate.

RuPaul  We at AAA-HA! would like to present you with this Tinky-Winky Agenda Teamwork award in everlasting gratitude for your efforts on our behalf.  Let me point out that this is no sanitized Oscar. This Tinky-Winky replica is anatomically correct for your pleasure. We have gone the extra mile in creating this just for you-please note the removable pink feather boa which can make a stunning addition to anyone’ s wardrobe. The entire thing is machine-washable. We have done all this because we could not have asked for a better partner and look forward to a long and profitable future with you in our ongoing Compulsory Homosexuality for America’ s Next Generation (CHANG) program.

Dr. Dobson — by the way, I loooove the sequin pasties you’ re wearing! Did you wax your chest especially for us? Can I touch? Thank you.

Ahem. Excuse me; I’ m getting a little flushed. But, I’ m here to present this award, not fondle the honoree. So, Dr. Dobson, in presenting this award, we wish to acknowledge your important contribution to advancing the Homosexual Agenda by launching patently pernicious attacks on innocent cartoon characters in the tradition of Jerry Falwell’ s fabulous flap over Tinky-Winky, the “gay” Teletubby.  

Dr. Dobson reaches for the trophy, but RuPaul dangles it just out of reach

Before I give this to you, though, I have to ask the question that I am sure is on everyone’ s mind this evening: How did you know that SpongeBob would present such a ripe opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of our enemies, Traditional Families?

Dr. Dobson Well, RuPaul, as you know, I’ m a doctor. And I knew that when I singled out SpongBob Squarepants, who is of course a sponge, for trying to brainwash the nation’ s children into accepting the Homosexual Agenda, Mr. Squarepants’ hermaphrodism would ultimately come to light.  

RuPaul Of course! Everyone knows that sponges are hermaphrodites, and if Mr. Squarepants portrays hermaphrodism as a normal and acceptable lifestyle-how could you not speak out against the Hermaphroditic Agenda? How could you, church-going and morally-upright Heterosexual that you are, not denounce such a thing?  

Dobson Exactly! And when I saw that Mr. SquarePants would be participating in a children’ s video dancing with Clifford the Big Red Dog and Barney the Dinosaur to the to the tune, “We Are Family”, I immediately set about calling the video sinister, exhorting people to express their “shock and outrage” at the appalling message. And of course, everything went exactly according to plan.  Homophobes everywhere reached for their phones to make piously outraged calls denouncing the cartoon characters and their nefarious influence on children. It’ s only a matter of time before they start campaigning against the unnatural lifestyles of sponges! I hope to announce someday soon the nationwide homophobe boycott of dishwashing for its apparent link to aberrant sexual behavior.

RuPaul Well, you are just a genius, aren’ t you! But lest we forget how far we’ ve come, we should acknowledge that our alliance has not always been smooth sailing. Things didn’ t always go so neatly according to plan. Do you remember your idea to put anti-gay marriage initiatives on swing-state ballots?  

Dobson Yeah, we’ d have to say that backfired. The glorious irony of talking about family values “marriage promotion,” then turning around to outlaw gay marriage was too subtle for our enemies, Traditional Families. Unfortunately, they seemed almost eager to overlook that inconsistency, and rather than cowering in their homes, too embarrassed and confused by their own hypocrisy to show their homophobic faces in public, they turned out in droves to enact anti-gay initiatives.

RuPaul Still we must persist-and we will prevail! Of course we expect minor setbacks like these in a program as grand and far-reaching as CHANG. I know I speak for everyone here when I say how glad I am that even after the marriage debacle, we decided to give you the benefit of the doubt! People will be laughing about your SpongeBob brouhaha for years to come!

Dobson I appreciate that, but I’ d like to give credit where credit is due — I wasn’ t the first to suggest targeting Mr. Squarepants. Alan A. Sears, please stand up.  

[The crowd erupts in wolf whistles as Mr. Sears rises, clad in a studded leather dog collar and latex pants.]

RuPaul Of course! Mr. Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund [shouts of, “Yeah, baby!”] Mr. Sears was the first to see that Mr. Squarepants was a ripe target for our plot as early as last summer. Thank you, Mr. Sears. You make take your seat.  

Unfortunately for Mr. Sears —  and why you, Dr. Dobson, are onstage today accepting the Tinky Winky Agenda Teamwork award — the timing was not quite right. You — you somehow knew to wait until the We Are Family video came out.  What made the video such a good tool?  

[DD]  Two words, RuPaul: “Tolerance and diversity.” I know, at first you weren’ t sure you wanted to unmask them for what they were, “buzzwords for homosexual advancement”, as I called them. You kept asking me, “Why should we risk exposing the truth?” But calling that phrase, so upright and innocent-sounding, “pernicious propaganda” was right-on in portraying the paranoia of Homophobic America. Thanks to our brave forbearers, the PC Police of the 1980s, “tolerance and diversity”are standards of American values as unassailable as mom and apple pie. When the homophobes come out frothing against those values, they appear loonier than the ’ toons they’ re attacking.

RuPaul Well, you know what they say, Dr. Dobson: “Just ’ cuz you’ re paranoid, doesn’ t mean they’ re not out to get you!”

[uproarious laughing from the audience]

In closing, I’ d just like to say it takes a special man to expose the Hypocrisy of the Homophobes as artfully as you, Dr. Dobson, have done. We may never fully understand the vision you had that Joseph Chambers lacked when he attacked beloved muppets, Burt and Ernie. Or why even the Tinky-Winky kerfuffle lacked the staying power of your Spongebob sputterings. Even Fred Phelps’  diabolical diatribes have failed where you succeeded most beautifully-though as far as I know there is not a line of Dr. Dobson inflatable dolls. But we’ ll work on that!

Until that time, Dr. Dobson, please accept this Tinky Winky Agenda Teamwork award.  You, above all, deserve it.

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Blog

“God’s Rottweiler”


“A law as profoundly iniquitous as this one is not an obligation; it cannot be an obligation … This is not a matter of choice.  All Christians … must be prepared to pay the highest price, including the loss of a job,” was the brutal response that Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo spat out regarding a proposal put forth in the Spanish parliament that would permit gay couples to marry and adopt children.

Cardinal Trujillo, who leads the Pontifical Council on the Family, was speaking to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and made clear his belief that anyone who is asked to perform a gay marriage should be a conscientious objector and refuse to do so.

If Cardinal Trujillo’s remarks are any hint, the 265th pope, Benedict XVI, will likely be uncompromisingly conservative; he has already made it clear that he condemns birth control and the ordination of women, and he asserts that Communion should be withheld from those who support the “grave sins” of abortion and euthanasia. Pope Benedict XVI’s unflinching — not to mention rabid — conservatism has already earned him the moniker “God’s Rottweiler.”

—Mimi Hanaoka

  
    

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Hibernation for humans


“Understanding the connections between random instances of seemingly miraculous, unexplained survival in so-called clinically dead humans and our ability to induce — and reverse — metabolic quiescence in model organisms could have dramatic implications for medical care.  In the end I suspect there will be clinical benefits and it will change the way medicine is practiced, because we will, in short, be able to buy patients time.”  

— Mark Roth, lead researcher in study “Buying Time Through ‘Hibernation on Demand.’”

Researchers at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have discovered a method for inducing a protracted hibernation-like state in mice.  If proven effective in all mammals, this method, termed “hibernation on demand,” could “buy time” for patients awaiting organ transplants and dramatically improve survival rates among cancer patients.  

—Toyin Adeyemi

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Blog

Berlusconi: sequel or re-run?


According to The Independent, Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has put together a new administration after resigning his post on Wednesday night. Reporter Peter Popham writes, “his new administration…may look remarkably like the old one. The policies of the new government may also not differ much.” Popham reports that the new cabinet is scheduled to be sworn into office tomorrow morning, the 23rd of April.

The results of Italy’s regional elections at the beginning of April led to Berlusconi’s resignation two days ago. Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi faced two options: he could request Berlusconi to form a new cabinet, or he would be forced to call a general election ahead of schedule.

Detractors of Berlusconi’s agenda are concerned that “current policies are skewed in favor of [Italy’s] more prosperous north,” although Berlusconi claims that the focus of the new government “will center on supporting businesses, defending families’ purchasing power and a concrete plan for the south to encourage the creation of new jobs.”

—Michaele Shapiro

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Political Prose

A Texas Ranger in Paris

For those who despair at the state of Franco-American relations, I have three words for you: Walker, Texas Ranger.Yes, flip on the tube in France and you might find yourself watching the exploits of T…


For those who despair at the state of Franco-American relations, I have three words for you: Walker, Texas Ranger.

Yes, flip on the tube in France and you might find yourself watching the exploits of Texas Ranger Cordell Walker — “one of the last old-fashioned heroes of the West” — played by martial artist Chuck Norris. (This is French network TV, mind you — I don’t have cable here in Paris.) You can also catch the X-Files, watch the French version of The Bachelor, and see Andie MacDowell hawking makeup and speaking perfect (dubbed) French. From my scientific analysis of two weeks of French TV, I’d say that — oh — 26.7 percent of their shows and televised movies are French-dubbed American programming.

France and America have had a love/hate relationship for centuries, with highs during the Revolutionary War (French save Americans) and World War II (Americans save French), and lows … at all other times. Things got particularly bad in the run-up to the Iraq War, when French politicians declared their vehement opposition to an American invasion and U.S. lawmakers retaliated in kind, replacing “French fries” with “Freedom fries” in government cafeterias. (Did any of their aides point out that French fries originated in Belgium?) Since then, relations have remained sour. For the documentary Does Europe Hate Us?, which recently aired on the Discovery Channel, Thomas Friedman toured France and other European countries and found plenty of reasons for dislike, ranging from mere disgust with George and Dick’s Not-So-Excellent Adventures Abroad (“We miss the America that made us dream,” one woman put it) to professed admiration for Osama bin Laden. I didn’t see the documentary — did I mention I don’t have cable? — but here’s a nice summary by The Link:

In it you will see young Germans comparing the current state of America to 1930s Germany, French political science students sitting around a large table in McDonald’s intelligently asserting their positions, anti-war activists calling Iraqi police “collaborators” (and implying justification for insurgents targeting them) and French Muslim youth extolling the virtues of Osama bin Laden. While most of those interviewed were critical of the U.S., they also exhibited a hopeful tone. They seemed to really want to like America.

I’ve only just arrived in France, but I’ll let you know if I spot any America-Haters (which, I’m told, can be distinguished from Blame-America-Firsters with a trained eye). In the meantime, I am encouraged by the knowledge that American and French viewers enjoy the same TV garbage. If anyone can bring together these two cultures, it is Cordell Walker.

In a time when legends are scarce, Texas Ranger Cordell Walker (Chuck Norris) is one of the last old-fashioned heroes of the West. Drawing on the customs of his Native American ancestors and the rugged traditions of the Old West, Walker is on a relentless crusade for truth and honor …

Bon courage, Walker!

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Pope Benedict XVI: “What you see is what you get”


White smoke today signaled the election of a new pope at 5:50 p.m. (shortly before noon EDT), Vatican time. German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 78, will now be known as Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger won with a two-thirds majority vote, backed by 77 of 115 voting cardinals. The International Herald Tribune reports Ratzinger is the “first Germanic pope in roughly 1,000 years.”

Lucetta Scaraffia, a professor of history at Rome’s University of La Sapienza, remarked on Ratzinger’s consistency in his espousal to pro-Orthodoxy values. “His speech was rather unusually straightforward. Usually, just before a conclave, cardinals try to present themselves as a mediator. That’s not Ratzinger. You might say it was courageous.”

An article today in the International Herald Tribune notes that some of the issues faced by Pope Benedict XVI will be “the need for dialogue with Islam, the divisions between the wealthy north and the poor south [of Italy], as well as problems with his own church,” which, in addition to recent sex scandals, include “a chronic shortage of priests and nuns in the West” and the fact that the church is losing a significant number of people who feel its teachings are no longer “relevant.”

In his article for the International Herald Tribune from April 12, Ian Fisher reported that Ratzinger views the relationship between Catholicism and Islam from a competitive standpoint, rather than from a view of tolerance and dialogue. While many cardinals share Pope John Paul’s “embrace of dialogue” between disparate religious faiths, Ratzinger, regarded as “one of the most conservative voices in the church,” does not.

Ratzinger’s public statement opposing the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union in Le Figaro was opposed by Venice Archibishop and Cardinal Angelo Scola:

“Just saying no doesn’t protect us from anything. A defensive attitude, often produced by fear, never pays.”

—Michaele Shapiro

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