The social media trajectory of Newsweek journalist Janine di Giovanni's recent France-bashing has been far more interesting than the article itself, which was basically a list of right-wing talking points disguised in a beret. Many otherwise liberal friends shared the piece on Facebook and Twitter, perhaps before reading it all the way though. A day later the French press reacted with predictably pedantic and humorless outrage. (Le Monde went so far as to explain the French etymology of the word "entrepreneur," having completely missed the gist of the cliché di Giovanni quoted.) Now the same friends who shared the article in the first place are sharing its rebuttals, having belatedly recognized the article's utter vacuity.
There are two jokes embedded in the kerfuffle surrounding di Giovanni's article. The first is that no one ever reads Newsweek. The second is that French people and expats living in France are utterly irrelevant to the agenda behind the piece, which would appear to be deregulation and further demonization of social security in the USA.
If we nonetheless get roped into the discussion, it's because, by golly, there does seem to be something fundamentally unworldly about contemporary French culture. A journalist like Janine di Giovanni can airily declare that France is prone to navel-gazing, and most expats here - myself included - will instinctively think, "Right on!," only later remembering to scan for rational argumentation, factual accuracy, journalistic scruples, etc. Partly this is what every foreigner living in a foreign land feels, because in traveling to said foreign land one has necessarily become a bit more worldly than its natives who stayed put. But partly this is the fault of self-congratulatory cultural institutions, among them the news outlets that laud restaurants like 11ème arrondissement quasi-gastro outpost Pierre Sang In Oberkampf.
