Since my primary topic on this blog is media coverage of events and pseudo-events, I am well aware of the fact that Bush’s trip to the Middle East has gotten almost no media and/or blogospheric play. Everyone would rather do horse-race coverage of an election campaign that has been under way for a year and still has almost a year to go—because it’s way more entertaining.
However, the silence from the usual suspects (that is: all pundits) about Bush’s trip to a part of the world that is perpetually on fire has been astonishing even for me.
Now Matthew Yglesias hints at something that may be going on in PunditWorldTM. He would love to rip Bush on Israel-Palestine, he says [e.a.],
but I’ve been convinced by people active in these issues that it’s important to provide positive reenforcement. Bush is moving in the right direction and deserves to secure some credit for his troubles.
Enquiring minds want to know all about this conspiracy of silence suggested by an unnamed cabal that has had such a powerful influence on young Mr. Yglesias.
In the past, he has not been so shy with his opinions. Why, he knew it all!
Were Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians resolved, other challenges like Hezbollah would soon melt away. The idea of firing rockets into Israeli towns would appear absurd. Iran and Syria would have nothing to gain from supporting groups that behaved in that manner. Arab public opinion would no longer applaud the firing of rockets at random into Israeli cities.
Who is offering the advice to young Mr. Yglesias to say nothing if he hasn’t anything nice to say? Do they believe in the same fairy tales that he believes in?
Sarkozy loses it, or abandons himself to the moment—take your pick. A tabloid tale made in heaven, courtesy of the Daily Mail:
Sarkozy’s fiancee ‘pregnant’ as ex Cecilia delivers blistering attack on couple
Sarkozy is “ridiculous, badly behaved and not fit to be president” Cecilia Sarkozy says in a new book, adding for good measure that the women in his life are just a “bunch of slappers” (or des petasses fardees, as the French would have it).
Even the president’s female political colleagues do not escape her barbed tongue: they are just “boring wallflowers, and now that there is no First Lady, he needs to surround himself with pretty young things dressed in Dior”.
It has taken just a few short weeks for the revenge of Cecilia to begin.
Sarkozy, 52, began dating Bruni, 40, just one month after his divorce from Cecilia following a 12-year marriage and his election last May as France’s new president.
Now it is Carla who stays with the president at the Elysee Palace and has been given a £10,000 ring - embarrassingly similar to one he once bought Cecilia.
Very juicy and totally sensationalistic as told by the Mail.
In the New York Times this past week, Sarkozy himself suggested that he’s being very 21st-century:
Sarkozy Says Press Is Free to Ignore His Personal Life
“I didn’t want to lie,” Mr. Sarkozy said of his romance with Ms. Bruni. “And I am breaking with a deplorable tradition in our political life — that of hypocrisy, that of lies.” …
“Really, truly, and it is very satisfying for me, France is moving forward,” he said, his words tumbling out in incomplete sentences. “What was hidden under a mantle of secrecy for one of my predecessors — whom I will not judge — everyone must live as he sees fit.”
It’s nutty, but I’m gonna have to go with Sarkozy here, because of his real defense, which he said just after “everyone must live as he sees fit”:
“Life is so difficult and so painful.”
Indeed, and he wants to feel good. He’s got the right to do it. However, as the much more sensationalistic but also more informative Daily Mail piece tell us, Sarkozy’s behavior affects not only his popularity at home but also France’s relations abroad:
Aside from any pregnancy, a speedy wedding would also mark the end of headaches for protocol planners in foreign countries Sarkozy plans to visit, though he might still be a bachelor when he goes to Saudi Arabia and India later this month.
Dominique Moisin, of the French Institute of International Relations, szaid: “The sooner they marry, the sooner the presidency’s dignity will be restored. …
Sarkozy was disappointed that the Pope declined to receive him with his new girlfriend. Under Vatican protocol it was deemed “inappropriate” for a head of state to meet the pontiff on an official visit, accompanied by a girlfriend.
Meanwhile, the Indian government, which is receiving Sarkozy as a guest of honour at the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi on January 24, has released a half-hearted statement, saying: “It is for the French to decide whether Miss Bruni should be treated as First Lady or not”.
It will be fascinating to see what happens when Sarkozy arrives in Britain for the state visit in March. Since the Entente Cordiale - the end of centuries of war between Britain and France - was signed in 1904 every French leader on a state visit has been accompanied by a First Lady.
So, yeah. He’s got a right to personal happiness, but we’ll see if he manages to hold on to the respect that a politician with his global ambitions needs in order to effect his agenda.
Or perhaps that time has passed into oblivion.
We do live in interesting times, don’t we?
Chavez praises the terrorist group FARC, which has been holding hostages in the jungles of Colombia for more than a decade:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Colombia’s biggest guerrilla group, identified by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, is an “army” with political goals that is worthy of the world’s respect.
“They’re a real army that occupies territory in Colombia, they’re not terrorists,” Chavez said today in his annual state of the nation address to the National Assembly. “They have a political goal and we have to recognize that.”
Chavez, who yesterday helped negotiate the release of two hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also said the rebels production of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, is a viable “economic and social system.” His unambiguous support for the group is likely to ratchet up tensions with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who has made military gains against the guerrillas in the past five years.
Everybody’s got their eye on the Middle East. I wonder if Obama, Clinton, Giuliani, Romney, and McCain (the candidates who, as of this writing, still seem to have a chance at the nomination of their respective parties) have a policy regarding South America, because we’re gonna need one.
