PrintMay 15, 2007
More NYT double standards (updated)
Serge Schmemann writes something called an "editorial observer" piece for the New York Times, an essay obviously intended to portray new French president Nicolas Sarkozy in an unfavorable light.
The piece is titled, "The New French President's Roots are Worth Remembering." Exactly why becomes clear toward the end: because they offer a chance to engage in snark. Schmemann went to the Hungarian village that was home to Sarko's father, and notes the rusting gate where the family's manor (they were minor nobility) once stood. It is all a pretext to berate Sarko for his condemnation of criminal "youths" whose violent car burning rampages are attempting to intimidate the French.
His father, Paul Sarkozy, had left Hungary in 1948 and followed a typically complicated émigré's odyssey that ended up in Paris. There he married a woman of Greek Jewish origins, whom he left with their three sons when Nicolas was a small boy. So Nicolas was raised with no direct contact with Hungarian language or culture. When a woman of North African heritage questioned him about his roots during the campaign, he retorted: "You are not Algerian, but French. And I am not Hungarian." [....]... when Mr. [isn't his proper title "President"?] Sarkozy campaigns to keep Turkey out of Europe, or calls frustrated North African youths scum, or tightens France's borders against African immigrants, he should be reminded that he would not be where he is if France had not once let in a displaced nobleman from Hungary or a Sephardic Jew from Greece.
Just for a moment imagine a similar treatment being meted out to Barack Obama and his "shepherd"/Harvard student/government official father, about whom the candidate has written so much. And how about a reporting trip to Hawaii to interview his mother's family (who are so curiously absent in public attention to Obama, despite having raised him)? How about, "When Mr. [not Senator] Obama parades his Kenyan father as a shepherd, he should be reminded that it was his white mother and grandparents who raised him and sent him to the most elite private school in Hawaii"?
It will never happen. Unimaginable, in fact.
.
Hat tip: Ed Lasky
Update: Richard Baehr adds: Sarkozy's parents came to France to work and achieve better lives, not to burn cars, and, overthrow the republic and establish sharia law for its new residents, which would be mandatory for those in the country before them as well
Update: Richard Baehr adds: Sarkozy's parents came to France to work and achieve better lives, not to burn cars, and, overthrow the republic and establish sharia law for its new residents, which would be mandatory for those in the country before them as well
