ossobuco wrote:I have to repeat that from reading the Kramer article in the New Yorker that I linked earlier in the thread, I came out with some lack of enthusiasm for her
I wanted to respond to that article before already, but properly, and I havent had time for that. Personally, I think it was a surprisngly subpar effort for a normally outstanding magazine.
IMO, it was a lazy article, one that would have been fine as a day-to-day piece for the WaPo or LAT or whatever, but really didnt meet the New Yorker's standard. It should definitely not be used as one's main orientation guide or anything.
I did type out one random example about its lacking merits somewhere else, so I can paste that in here, at least.
Elsewhere, nimh wrote:To understand both the particular strength of Sarkozy's "law, order and morality" appeal right now, and the visceral fear & loathing he evokes in the impoverished, multicultural suburbs, the riots of 2005 are an essential piece of background.
But the New Yorker article devotes all of two sentences to those event - which claim to explain what "the problem" was as follows:
In the fall of 2005, thousands of young men from those projects .. took to the streets for a month of unabated rioting, to protest the lack of jobs, and even the prospect of jobs, in the land of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." (Part of the problem is education; the rest is simply French xenophobia and racism.)
Thats it. Pleasing though this 'explanation' would be to my liberal ears, this must be the most ridiculously simplistic analysis I've read in any article longer than two paragraphs.
OK, wait, so let me expand after all now that I started. Another sign of laziness that immediately comes to mind about the article is its thoughtless parroting of neoliberal cliches when it briefly characterises the "state of the nation". I'm sure no particular ideological argument was intended by the author - it's just the kind of shorthand that journalists resort to when they have to pull together an article hastily. Let me deep-analyse a sentence or two to make clear what I mean. Emphases here all mine:
Quote:[France's] protectionist policies are disastrously out of touch with the global reality, let alone with the realities of the European Union [..] Sarkozy has been the only candidate willing to admit that the country will have to [..] reduce a massive public sector that eats up nearly forty-five per cent of the national budget. [..]
I added the emphases to highlight how she almost thoughtlessly inserts these kind of emotive descriptions, without offering an underlying argument about it. Almost as if she's not aware that there even
is, or should be, an underlying argument. Like, thats just how it is - public sector bad, globalisation good, and any country's attempt to steer a divergent path from the spiralling path of privatisation and liberalisation just means that it's "out of touch".
You encounter this kind of casual regurgitation of what are substantially ideological framings a lot in the US and UK media - but the New Yorker is generally not in the business of unquestioningly regurgitating anything. It
questions - it digs deeper than the news industry's superficial characterisations.
And I mean, some of this doesnt even make sense. France's policies are "disastrously" out of touch - OK, thats a point of view, though surely somewhat of a lazy hyperbole. (I mean,
disaster? The French economy is growing too slowly, for sure, but it
is still growing - so, mediocre, perhaps, subpar, but "disastrously"?) But then she continues, "disastrously out of touch with the global reality,
let alone with the realities of the European Union". Because, what, the EU is a lot more liberalised and globalised still than the world in general? Doesnt compute.
It's interesting to see Kramer, a page later, unquestioningly quote Bayrou saying:
Quote:"I went to a tiny lycée in a tiny town in the Pyrenees, and I had the same good education I would have had at the best lycée in Paris," he told me. "That is not possible anymore."
The irony apparently escapes her: first decrying how the "massive" public sector should be slashed because it "eats up" too much of the national budget, and then sadly noting that nationwide quality education, well, is just "not possible anymore". That there might be a relation between the two things - the relentless pressure on the state to cut its public sector spending, and the emerging realisation that nationwide quality education is somehow suddenly just "not possible anymore" - it remains beyond the grasp of consciousness.
What you see here is what you see in much current deadline journalism - the now-dominant neoliberal dogmas are embraced subconsciously, as "just how it is", without regret or even awareness of it happening. In her turn, Kramer chooses to conclude by quoting journalist Christine Ockrent:
Instead of any argument for further "marketisation", Ockrent's quote again only brings the nonsequitor that well, that's just "the real world", and those who dissent therefore just dont "want to join the real world". Drives me barking mad, that. Kramer doesn't question Ockrent's words, and doesn't quote the opposing perspective.
With such submerged ideological bias, it's no wonder that the article reads like a 9-page defense of Bayrou, and take-down of Segolene Royal.
But it's not even just the ideology behind the piece that bothers me. It's also its sheer sloppiness. Dominique Strauss-Kahn is "considered to have been his party's best finance minister", she says, without saying by whom. He was ignonimously defeated by Royal in the primaries, so apparently not by his own party's rank and file.
At least for Bernard Kouchner, when she introduces him as "arguably its best health minister", she substantiates it by noting that he "still tops the annual polls for France's most popular politician". But Kouchner in turn is the husband of Ockrent, underlining how the article neatly circles around a limited political set - the market-oriented wing of the Parti Socialiste, basically.
There's more lack of questioning when Kramer quotes Sarkozy:
Kramer omits to factcheck the claim. She doesnt note that, although Sarkozy may be first in the polls
nationally, he was roundly trounced in the first round by "the voters there", in the neighbourhoods that Kramer brought up. For example, in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the 2005 riots first erupted, Sarkozy got just 24,5% - against 41,6% for Royal.
Basically, this must have been one of the two or three least convincing New Yorker articles I've read.
