Thursday, May 11, 2006

Popular mobs making shallow assumptions

Le Monde features a portfolio celebrating the election victory of the Le Front populaire 70 years ago. They were coalition of leftists with admiration for a variety of types of cruelty, they were what one could later characterize as the Labour/TUC complex which ran the UK into the ground from a post-war to the ‘70s. Mercifully the election of the late Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher ended the misery of endless striking, electricity cuts, and animal-farm-like politics despite the fact that their terms were more like a meaningful interregnum between socialist trends.

Le Monde manages to get weepy over strikers, of course. Seize the nap!


Odder still is the further dwelling on the America that they think they know, and sure to provide an ceremonious aggreeing nod from the readership: the world of the Native American. They even managed to work George Bush and an absurd theory that reduces history to “cowboys and Indians” and a screed about WASPs and “bonesmen”. The missing artifact? Geronimo’s missing scalp. Surely it’s “the Bush crime family’s” fault...
Mais où est donc le crâne de Geronimo ?

Cette dernière hypothèse suscite régulièrement, depuis une vingtaine d'années, la polémique. Parmi les jeunes universitaires soupçonnés d'avoir volé le crâne du chef indien, figure en effet Prescott Bush, père de George H. et grand-père de George W. , respectivement 41e et 43e président des Etats-Unis, tous deux membres du même club que leur ancêtre.

Just where is Geronimo’s Head?

Is it in the “Tomb”, a vault in the middle of the campus of Yale University, seat of very mysterious Skull and Bones society (Cranium and bone) which attracts the richest and well born of the university? This latest assumption repeated regularly for the past polemical decade is that the young academics are suspected to have stolen the Indian chief’s head. Indeed it appears Prescott Bush, father of George H. and grandfather of George W., respectively 41st and 43rd Presidents of the United States, were both members of this club.
The inference is surely enough to launch a thousand screeds. At least they didn’t call him “Georges” again.

The fuse is lit!

No comments: