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Week 27, 2004
THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Song of the week: The Star-Spangled Banner [Suite au texte de la semaine dernière, et à l'honneur de la fête nat américaine le 4 juillet.]
B) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Penguin Dossiers: The Magic of Manchester United [Profil de la célèbre équipe de Manchester.]
C) CNN/Global Office: Delivering teamwork onf the pitch [DHL utilise le foot comme outil de développement de l'esprit d'équipe.]
D) The New York Times/The Ethicist: Mistaken Ashes [Conseils sur l'éthique et la déontologie : Je pense avoir pris les mauvais cendres après la crémation de mon père. / Quand je loue un appartement moins cher que mes moyens me permettrait, prive-je quelqu'un de moins fortuné d'un logement ?]
E) Slate/Dear Prudence: All in the family [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Ma nouvelle belle famille continue à inviter l'ex de mon mari aux fêtes familiales. / J'ai confié un secret à une commère. / Une bonne amie n'arrête pas de critiquer moi et ma famille. / J'ai 15 ans et je ne sais pas comment dire à ma mère que je suis gay.]
F) Washington Post/Miss Manners: The Classless Socialite [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Je viens d'être victime du comportement grossier de quelqu'un a priori très bien elevé. / Comment écrire à de jeunes garçon et de filles ?]
G) NPR Morning Edition/Present at the Creation: Scrabble [Topo sur la création du jeu Scrabble ; vous pouvez écouter le reportage en entier, ainsi qu'accéder à d'autre liens sur le sujet, sur le site indiqué.]

The Star-Spangled Banner
—Francis Scott Key, 1814

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

-*-*-
On Sept. 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key visited the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes, who had been captured after the burning of Washington, DC. The release was secured, but Key was detained on ship overnight during the shelling of Fort McHenry, one of the forts defending Baltimore. In the morning, he was so delighted to see the American flag still flying over the fort that he began a poem to commemorate the occasion. First published under the title “Defense of Fort M'Henry,” the poem soon attained wide popularity as sung to the tune “To Anacreon in Heaven.” The origin of this tune is obscure, but it may have been written by John Stafford Smith, a British composer born in 1750. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially made the national anthem by Congress in 1931, although it already had been adopted as such by the army and the navy.

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B) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Penguin Dossiers: The Magic of Manchester United [Profil de la célèbre équipe de Manchester.]
http://www.penguindossiers.com/archive_frameset.asp?ArticleId=71

The Magic of Manchester United

Manchester United - there is magic in that name. They have always been one of the most famous teams in world football. Now, they are one of the richest and most successful. They’ve been English champions six times in the last eight seasons! In 1999, they were the first English team in history to win the FA Cup, the English Championship and the European Champions’ Cup – all in one season! Who can forget that night in June 1999 when United won against Bayern Munich with two goals in the last minute! And who can forget the smile on the face of their proud manager, Alex Ferguson, when he lifted the European Champions’ Cup?

What is the secret of Sir Alex’s success? Firstly, he is an excellent judge of young players. He found and trained some of the best in the country. Many of them – Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary and Philip Neville – have become international stars. And don’t forget David Beckham. A thin, shy boy from London when Ferguson first saw him, he’s now the captain of England and one of the biggest stars in the world!

Ferguson is also a strong man, not afraid to make difficult decisions. When he first arrived at the club fifteen years ago, United were an ordinary team. Teams like Liverpool, Leeds and Arsenal were more successful. He sold many famous players. “They were lazy and didn’t try hard enough,” Ferguson says. United didn’t win anything for his first four years. Ferguson nearly lost his job, but he was patient.

Many of the players joke about Sir Alex’s famous Scottish temper. They call him the “hair dryer” because he shouts in your face when he’s angry with you. Sometimes, perhaps, he can be too angry. This summer, one player - Dutch international Jaap Stam - wrote bad things about the manager and some of the players in a book. Ferguson immediately sold Stam to Lazio in Italy. Was this a mistake by Ferguson?

Ferguson doesn’t think so. He has bought many top foreign stars - Fabien Barthez, the French international goalkeeper, Ruud Van Nistelrooy of Holland and Juan Sebastian Veron of Argentina. With his British players - and, of course, his wonderful captain, Irishman Roy Keane - Ferguson thinks that he now has the best Manchester United team ever.

This is Sir Alex’s last season as manager. If Manchester United can become European champions one more time, it will be the perfect ending for him. But, win or lose in Europe, Sir Alex Ferguson will always be remembered. There will always be magic in his name!

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LONDON, England -- With Euro 2004 in full swing in Portugal, the working days of football fans from Athens to Riga will be disrupted by thoughts on tactical dilemmas, daydreams of national sporting glory and the depression of hopes quashed.

But for the employees of one European company, the winners of the year's biggest tournament have already been decided. For more than 20 years express courier DHL have been using football as a way of bringing their network of international employees together. The DHL EuroCup, which started in 1982 as a friendly kickabout in a backyard in Amsterdam, is now an annual fixture in the company's calendar, featuring more than 40 teams and over 2,500 people.

Staged this year over a weekend at the end of May, at the Center Parcs holiday resort near DHL's headquarters in Brussels, the tournament provides a perfect opportunity for bonding between employer and employees, with everyone, from chief executive to courier, lodged in non-hierarchical chalets. And with each team supported by its own troupe of cheerleaders (who have their own competition), musicians, and face paint-daubed supporters, the action on the field is merely a backdrop to the colorful party on the sidelines.

"The biggest benefit is the motivation and excitement for those who are participating," says DHL chief executive Peter Kruse. "The company just provides the opportunity and everything else, training and so forth, is based on their individual efforts in their private time. People are talking about this through the whole year. Sharing a mutual spirit and working towards a mutual goal -- that's what we do in our professional life and it's what people are experiencing here in a different way. And that contributes to the spirit of the DHL family."

Personal contact

As the head of an international business, Kruse emphasizes the importance of fostering personal contact between employees, and says that football has proved an effective way of bringing together a global workforce. Following the expansion of the European Union, this year's tournament featured teams from Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia for the first time. "I think more or less everybody is interested in sports," says Kruse. "So really the organization overall takes part in this event. People need to deal with international colleagues and if you know an individual and you can remember his face during a telephone discussion, that's a useful side effect."

Since DHL's integration with Deutsche Post World Net in 2002, Kruse says the tournament has helped forge closer links across the expanded company. "Two years ago we started the big integration process within Deutsche Post World Net," explains Kruse. "That means that these days at DHL we also have companies operating under a different brand in the past. The organization has expanded a great deal. Today DHL globally consists of 170,000 employees with more than 90,000 in Europe alone. When people meet here they are not only playing but they are also discussing all kinds of things with each other, about individual issues they have in their respective areas. This very much helps to improve mutual understanding."

But while the DHL EuroCup may be mostly about networking, there is also a trophy -- and national pride -- at stake. And while Germany's national team at Euro 2004 may no longer be the heavyweight of past tournaments, their DHL counterpart still proved capable of bringing home the silverware, beating Italy 1-0 in the final.

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E) Slate/Dear Prudence: All in the family [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court : Ma nouvelle belle famille continue à inviter l'ex de mon mari aux fêtes familiales. / J'ai confié un secret à une commère. / Une bonne amie n'arrête pas de critiquer moi et ma famille. / J'ai 15 ans et je ne sais pas comment dire à ma mère que je suis gay.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102004/
dear prudence: All in the Family
When your in-laws are too cozy with your mate's ex.
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004, at 6:10 AM PT

Dear Prudence,
My husband and I have been together for two years, and he's been apart from his ex for the past four years. They have two children together. Some of my husband's sisters and sisters-in-law still invite his ex-wife to family gatherings (i.e., Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, etc.). Many of my husband's other sisters and brothers have ex-spouses, but they are not invited to family events. His family has made me feel very welcome when we are face to face, but inviting his ex to these gatherings makes me feel uncomfortable and awkward. I understand that some of the family may still have a friendship with her, but I do not think it needs be displayed at family events. How can my husband and I handle this situation? We do not want to "boycott" the events because family is very important to us, and we want our children to know and enjoy all of his family. We do, however, want his family to know this is uncomfortable for us without starting World War III.

Thank you,
—Part of the Family Now

Dear Part,
The wild card in your situation is that your husband's children are young, and it is usually difficult to have two little kids come to a family function without their mother. Your only hope is your husband picking up the kids and bringing them to these gatherings. Voilá! No mother necessary. Without making a big to-do, perhaps your husband could point out to his relatives that since no other exes are included, you'd both be more comfortable if your situation conformed. Offering to bring his kids himself would leave no excuse on the table. Should the various family members balk, then suggest that they see what's-her-name on their own time because not everyone is comfortable with former partners waltzing around family parties. Stick to your guns and hope for détente.

—Prudie, pragmatically

-*-*-*-
Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend and I spend a lot of time with another couple in our circle. The woman tends to be gossipy, and I have tried to keep things to myself that I didn't want broadcast all over our small town. She often tells me things about other people that I know she shouldn't. Recently she chose to confide in me about being in love with a man who is not her boyfriend. It was a big deal to her, and there was a lot of crying and desperation. I told her I would never tell anyone about it, and I have kept this promise. Now comes the interesting part. I stupidly, stupidly confided something about my own attraction to another person who is not my boyfriend and asked her to show the same discretion I had shown with her secret. She even said to me, "Don't worry, with the dirt you have on me, I could never tell a soul." I have just discovered that she blabbed everything I told her, and I think there's a good chance it will get back to my boyfriend, and I will have a bit of a mess here. My question is: Since she showed no discretion with my secret, am I obligated to keep hers? Part of me wants to take the high road, and part of me really wants her to pay for her gossipy, hurtful behavior. What should I do?

—Kicking Myself

Dear Kick,
Prudie recommends that you take the high road—but with one little detour. Just as two wrongs do not make a right, two big mouths will not do much for your state of affairs. You would not feel good about repeating the behavior you think so little of. Perhaps you can "pay her back" by telling her that you have no plans to respond in kind because YOU know how to keep a confidence, but you would be interested in why she felt the need to double-cross you. Now here's where the detour may come in. If your boyfriend confronts you with your confessed attraction, simply say that after her confession, Miss Motormouth pressed you to come up with a fantasy hunk of your own. You just picked a name out of thin air. And don't act guilty.

—Prudie, tutorially

-*-*-*-
Dear Prudie,
I have recently become close friends with a woman who perplexes me. She is an attentive friend who has been there for me several times when I have needed her, and I know she means well. The problem is that this woman is highly critical of EVERY aspect of my life, from the way I raise my kids to my husband's weight. She makes rather snippy and inappropriate comments in everyday conversation, and when confronted about their offensive nature, she always says she "didn't mean it that way" or that I "take things too personally." I have repeated some of these comments to my other girlfriends, and they've confirmed that they are way out of line. Do I continue to put up with the comments under the assumption that nobody's perfect, or should I discontinue the friendship? Good friends are hard to find.

—Conflicted Friend

Dear Con,
With apologies to Bill Clinton, it depends on what your definition of "good" is. This woman sounds bossy and insensitive—like maybe numb. When you hear from a friend that your husband is fat and your mothering skills leave a lot to be desired—without your having asked for an opinion—there is no way to take such remarks BUT personally. Prudie's father often said that we all need protection from those who "mean well." As for this woman being continually critical, some people are just wired that way, often because they were never given compliments and were criticized themselves. Your mentioning "snippy" and "inappropriate" would incline Prudie to undo from this woman and let her shower her wisdom on someone else. Her mouth is a WMD.

—Prudie, resolutely

-*-*-*-
Dear Prudie,
I am 15 years old, and, well, I'm gay. I'm not 100 percent sure how to tell my mother. I have tried to tell her many times, but when I get to telling her, I lose my cool, and my wording, and I end up not telling her. I've tried writing letters to her but have never given them to her. I feel like if I don't tell her, I am going to be in the closet my whole life with her. But I want to tell her so that I can be happier. I know you may get letters like this all the time, but I really need help trying to find the words to tell her without being scared.

—Hopefully Coming Out

Dear Hope,
Actually, Prudie does not get letters like yours all the time, so these ideas are just for you. It is hard to know the nature of the relationship between you and your mother, but your desire to tell her means that you should. You're probably having trouble with the words because of feelings of shame, as well as the fear of disappointing her. This might be useful for you to know: Prudie has a lady friend who knew before her son told her, and her response was, "What took you so long to talk about it?" So there's a chance your declaration may be easier than you imagine. In any case, just say your own version of, "Mom, there is something very important to me that I want to discuss." Then go for it. You are not announcing you're a Republican, after all. (Kidding.) Closets are, as you know, dark places, so come on out and know that the world is becoming more enlightened every day.

—Prudie, encouragingly

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F) Washington Post/Miss Manners: The Classless Socialite [Conseils sur les bonnes manières : Je viens d'être victime du comportement grossier de quelqu'un a priori très bien elevé. / Comment écrire à de jeunes garçon et de filles ?]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62458-2004Jun22.html
The Classless Socialite
By Judith Martin
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page C09

Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

Recently I rented a vacation house with some friends. I've known him for several years but do not know his wife well. She is purportedly a former debutante from an old moneyed family. Her sister and I were to share a room.

On the second day, I returned from an outing and discovered that the wife had exchanged their room for ours because she liked it better. I know it's not a big deal, but this really got me steamed. Had I been asked I would have offered my room. I acted as though nothing had happened so as not to put a damper on the holiday.

Did I do the right thing, or was I too complacent? Is this typical deb behavior? My impoverished and illiterate grandparents had an innate graciousness and I can't imagine them acting in a similar fashion.

A:
You were so gracious in letting this brazenly rude act pass that Miss Manners hates to deprive you of the comfort of class warfare.

But as your grandparents might have been able to attest, false associations of money and manners can cut both ways. The usual way is to disparage the poor, on the incorrect assumption that what counts is not graciousness but particular knowledge of esoteric manners they have no occasion to use.

The lady was rude. Why should you want to give her the excuse of attributing it to an overprivileged childhood?

-*-*-*-
Q:
Dear Miss Manners:

I work for the office of a U.S. senator, where I am often in the position of writing letters to children. While it seems natural to address a little girl as "Miss Harris," it seems strange to address a little boy as "Mr. Johnson." The appellation "Master Johnson" appears to have fallen out of use in this country. We use the boy's first name in the body of the letter ("Dear Tommy"), but how should we address the envelope?

A:
Would there be anything wrong with allowing youngsters to feel that they have a dignified senator who treats them with serious respect? "Master" is still used, although rarely, and perfectly appropriate. Alternatively, "mister," which seems strange to you in this context, may seem thrilling to the young master.

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G) NPR Morning Edition/Present at the Creation: Scrabble [Topo sur la création du jeu Scrabble ; vous pouvez écouter le reportage en entier, ainsi qu'accéder à d'autre liens sur le sujet, sur le site indiqué.]
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_060404_lies.html

Aug. 19, 2002 -- It's one of the most popular games in history. It sells around 3 million sets worldwide each year in 23 different languages.

An old TV commercial calls it "Winters by the fire, and summers by the sea. It's holidays and family." And while many players may find the game to be reasonably illustrated in images of "cocoa," "kids," and "rainy weekends you hope will never end," those who take Scrabble seriously take it very, very seriously. At this week's National Scrabble Championships in San Diego, more than 700 tile-jockeys are vying for the grand prize: a check for $25,000.

To those weaned on a less intense Scrabble, the primary challenge may be getting rid of that Q before the game runs out (Hint: try QANAT*). But to die-hard competitors, it's a game that combines elements of luck, skill and preparation in equal measure. Well, maybe not equal. Training for major events like the National Championships can hijack years of the best players' lives, countless hours devoted to memorizing thousands of words they might never be able to use in a sentence.

Stefan Fatsis has lived this obsession. Five years ago he dived into a sea of Scrabble and has barely emerged to take a breath since. Fatsis' account of his experiences can be found in his book Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. For NPR's ongoing series, Present at the Creation, he chronicles the creation of the game by Alfred Mosher Butts.

The story of Scrabble has much in common with the game's appeal to its most ardent supporters. It involves a germ of inspiration, an architect's facility with geometry, a whole lot of dedicated tinkering and a bit of luck.

Scrabble might not have existed had Butts not come upon hard times during the Great Depression. In 1931, Butts was laid off from his job at New York architecture firm Holden McLaughlin and Associates. Looking back in 1986, at a Tenafly, N.J., Young Inventors' Club meeting, he was surprisingly good-natured about the experience.

"Well, I wasn't doing anything," Butts remembered. "That's the trouble. I didn't have anything to do; I didn't have a job. So I thought I'd invent a game."

Following this urge, Butts scanned the field. As he saw it, most games fit into one of three types: numbers-based games like cards or dice, board games like chess, and games based on letters. Noting the relative dearth of the last category, he decided to focus on words.

First, Butts produced Lexiko, in which players tried to construct words from nine randomly drawn lettered tiles. In order to ensure that players weren't forced to deal with the prospect of a rack full of Xs, Butts methodically charted the frequency of letters in the English language, using words chosen from the pages of The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and the Saturday Evening Post as well as dictionaries. But when he submitted the finished product, game manufacturers including Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley replied with rejection letters. He sold a few sets himself, but lost money.

As Fatsis reports, Butts didn't give up there. The problem was the lack of a board, so he added one, then assigned point values to each letter based on their frequency. He reduced the number of tiles held at a time to seven, modified squares to double or triple the value of the letter or word placed on them, and tried various spots for the starting point, from the center to the upper left corner and in between. He named the new version Criss-Cross Words. Once again, game companies said they weren't interested.

Butts kept tinkering, and the game continued to sell in small quantities, trickling by word of mouth through the Northeast. Having been rehired by his old architectural firm, Butts wasn't looking to make his living in the game world anymore, and when James Brunot -- who had played the game while living in Washington, D.C. -- approached him in 1947 about handing over production, he agreed. Brunot gave Butts royalties and made a few adjustments: he added the 50-point rule for playing all seven tiles at once, made the center square a double word score, changed the colors of the board, and came up with a new name, Scrabble. (Brunot liked the sound of the word, which means to claw or grope frantically.)

Sales continued to lag for the first few years of Brunot's stewardship of the game, but lightning struck in 1952. Apparently miffed by the fact that his store didn't stock Scrabble, the chairman of Macy's placed a large order. And all of a sudden, popularity shot through the roof. The game sold more than a million sets in 1953, and 3.8 million the following year.

John Williams, the executive director of the National Scrabble Association, credits Butts' obsessive tinkering with the game's lasting popularity. "Think of how different baseball would be if the bases were 100 feet apart or 75 feet apart," he says. "It's kind of the same. Seven letters ended up being perfect. A grid of 15 squares ended up being just perfect."

Despite the popularity of his invention, Butts, who died in 1993, never made a fortune off Scrabble. But he'll always have the appreciation of word freaks the world over.

(*QANAT: An underground channel or tunnel)

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1) Slate: Unfairenheit 9/11 [Un intellectuel de gauche dénonce les mensonges de Michael Moore.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/
Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter-shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest) or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular Left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular Left—are strongly in favor of the regime-change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony, and indeed may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time, and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 Commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counter-terrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 911, except that—as you might expect—Mr. Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Mr. Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet-more contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boiler-plate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's Roll" and "Dead or Alive" remarks a month later) half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't, because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq; "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its non-compliance with important United Nations resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film-shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror-weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war-crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Munich and Rome. Baghdad was the safe-house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel (quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem). In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime, and threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally (though why should he not?). Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, the Saddam regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks, that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counter-terrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air-traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military HQ to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab-headdresses replacing top-hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer-regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shia Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line, because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 911 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the anti-draft (and very anti-black) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch-package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's Roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas," or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it, because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie-theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his "rapid response" rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's re-do Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So, I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view, and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem, and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody, and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984, and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party, and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid re-writing of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.

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4) Palm Beach (Florida) Post: Flap over mailbox birds finally migrates to court [Litige entre une association de propriétaires et un propriétaire qui veut mettre de petits oiseaux en plastique sur sa boîte à lettres.]
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/local_news/epaper/s1a_bird_0622.html
Flap over mailbox birds finally migrates to court
A suburban Boynton homeowners association wants them removed.

By Susan Spencer-Wendel
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 22, 2004

WEST PALM BEACH — Call it the flapping-bird flap: A homeowners association and a resident fighting in court over two 6-inch plastic birds with rotating wings perched on the resident's mailbox. Resident Steven Grossberg, 55, said the plastic birds keep the real birds from perching there and, ahem, soiling his mailbox. There you have Oakdale Townhomes Association II vs. Grossberg.

Oakdale Townhomes in suburban Boynton Beach asked Grossberg to remove the birds, citing association rules that require everyone to have the same mailbox. On Monday, almost three years after Grossberg put up the birds, the flap finally landed in the lap of senior County Judge Bernard Jaffe.

In closing arguments, Oakdale Townhomes Association attorney Gregory Scott asked the judge to forbid Grossberg from using the birds. Scott said while it may be trivial, it's important to send a message that if you live in the association, you must follow the mailbox rule. "If you permit these birds, then what's next? The floodgates are open," Scott said. The homeowners association sued Grossberg three years ago.

Grossberg's attorney, Cathy Lively, argued that Grossberg had not violated the written rules and that the small birds were more attractive than other mailboxes in the community that have bird poop all over them.

Jaffe could rule at any time.

Outside court, Grossberg, holding the two plastic birds — a green flamingo and one resembling a woodpecker — emphasized that all mailboxes of the association's board members are covered with white droppings. He offered pictures he had brought to court as evidence. "This could be the most trite (case) that has ever come across a courtroom bench," Grossberg said. "I wanted that to happen, to show people, society, what's happening here in Florida. "There are not enough regulations to protect the homeowner or condo owner against reckless elderly people, these curmudgeons that want to keep things the way they want, regardless."

In 1999, the Indian Spring Maintenance Association, which oversees Oakdale, changed the age requirement of its communities to 55-plus, Grossberg said. He bought the Stonybrook Lane property in 1998 with money from a trust fund. The Indian Spring Maintenance Association filed for foreclosure against Grossberg a few months ago because he didn't pay $500 in association dues, Grossberg said.

When the TV trucks rolled into the well-manicured Oakdale community Monday, a few people came out of their homes to tell reporters about their rabble-rousing neighbor who has been antagonistic since moving in. Grossberg remains unfazed. "It's the other way around. Right after I moved in, they started bugging me," he said.

Staff researcher Krista Pegnetter and WPEC NEWS 12 contributed to this story.

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7) Naples (Florida) News: Oscar-nominated movie at center of NAA controversy [Amélie Poulain sème le trouble aux E-U.]
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/news/article/0,2071,NPDN_14940_2983238,00.html
Oscar-nominated movie at center of NAA controversy
By I.M. STACKEL, imstackel@naplesnews.com
June 23, 2004

One man's art is a protective mother's crime. An award-winning French movie showing a woman's bare breast and a man's naked backside is at the core of a Naples Art Association controversy that led to the resignation of the teacher who showed the film after a parent filed a police complaint.

The controversy once again shines a spotlight on the NAA. Responsible for hosting monthly art fairs in downtown Naples, the 50-year-old NAA has had its share of turmoil in the past six months. Half of the art group's board recently resigned over NAA expansion plans.

Tess Twiss, 11, was enrolled in a NAA summer camp program — called "Film for the Serious Minded" — to learn about the art of movie-making. The two-week class, which began June 14, was for children ages 11 to 16. In helping the students understand plot and character development, NAA Director Richard Sullivan, 42, showed a portion of the 2001 French hit "Amelie." French actress Audrey Tautou plays Amelie, an Ally McBeal-type character in her early 20s who is more comfortable with fantasy and observing others than living her own life.

Sullivan used portions of the movie in his class because Amelie discovers a box filled with 40-year-old photos and keepsakes, and decides to locate its owner. Sullivan wanted his students to understand how that one action could — and did — progress into a story. He planned to use it as a model to make eight short films "that we can tie together as a story" like "Amelie" director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Sullivan said.

Eight children were enrolled in the class, until Tess dropped out. Each one was supposed to help shoot a one-minute film, Sullivan said. Then, the eight different segments would be tied together as a movie, Sullivan explained Tuesday. But after the first day of class at the von Liebig Art Center in Old Naples, Tess went home and complained to her mother, Barbara Twiss, 35, that her class watched an R-rated movie containing explicit sexual acts, Twiss said Tuesday.

On June 15, Twiss filed a complaint against Sullivan with the Naples Police and Emergency Services Department for showing an adult film to children. Twiss told police her daughter was "shocked and embarrassed." Amelie is "more than just an R-rated movie," Twiss said Tuesday. "It's more explicit." A parent doesn't send a child to summer camp to see adults perform sexual intercourse, Twiss said.

At the very least, the art school should have sent home a request for her daughter to view an R-rated movie, Twiss said. If Tess was studying painting, someone should ask Twiss' permission before showing her child a Botticelli nude, Twiss said. "Whether I'm for or against it, it should be the parent's right" to be asked, Twiss said.

Sullivan said he also planned to show portions of "Finding Nemo" and some of the "Wallace & Gromit" series of animated shorts. Sullivan said he didn't show the whole movie, just portions of it. That it was not up on a big screen, but on a small 15-inch laptop computer screen, and half the time the movie was reduced to 7 inches. He said he skipped past the first few scenes in which there was nudity. Since Barbara Twiss wasn't in the room when the movie was shown to her daughter, and she later rented it and watched it in its entirety, it's impossible for Sullivan to say to what Twiss was objecting.

Police Detective Joe Whitehead reviewed the movie and found no criminal wrongdoing. Whitehead said he reviewed all of the applicable laws, and "Amelie" is neither pornographic nor obscene. Showing portions of the movie to the kids "never rose to the level of a criminal report," Whitehead said Monday.

Additionally, Sullivan meant to fast-forward past scenes containing partial nudity, and one inadvertently slipped by, and Twiss signed a waiver of prosecution after she withdrew her complaint, Whitehead said. Twiss on Tuesday said she dropped her complaint because there's nothing under the law with which Sullivan can be charged based on what police told her. If Blockbuster Video had rented an R-rated movie to her daughter "it would be a felony," because money changed hands, Twiss claimed.

NAA President Pat Scoville said Sullivan was saddened by the turn of events. He immediately resigned from teaching that class, which concludes Friday, Scoville said. NAA Director of Education Jim Daichendt has been teaching the class since last week. NAA past President Delores Sorey said Sullivan was shaken by the whole matter. "He was very contrite, and so are we," Sorey said Monday of the NAA board of directors. Sullivan said "Amelie" has been hailed by critics around the globe. The film received five Academy Award nominations and won several national and international film awards. "Roger Ebert called ("Amelie") the feel-good movie of the year," Sullivan said.

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HE HAS been in French politics for so long that he seems a permanent fixture. Jacques Chirac was first elected to parliament in 1967, when Tony Blair was just 13. He has been France’s president for almost ten years. Now, perhaps for the first time, comes the sense that he is isolated.

The latest knock came at the European Union summit. Mr Chirac did his best to sell the draft EU constitution as “good for France” but the final text was not the integrationist document he had wanted. It let the British keep a veto over taxation and social security. With the text greeted on the mainland as a triumph for Mr Blair, Mr Chirac did not conceal his dismay. “We are obliged to recognise that the ambitions that we could have had have been reduced,” he said, “by the non possumus very clearly and strongly expressed, essentially by the United Kingdom.”

Worse, the efforts by Mr Chirac and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder to install Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium’s prime minister, as European Commission president fell flat. This was a cruel reminder that, in an enlarged Europe of 25, the French and Germans can no longer steer matters alone. Mr Chirac must learn to build alliances with other countries, at a time when many new members remain suspicious of France, thanks to his high-handed behaviour over Iraq. Much of their hostility to France, says one Polish official, was caused by Mr Chirac’s bullying.

Isolation in Europe is compounded at home. The French are fed up with Mr Chirac and his government. At two recent polls — regional elections in March and European ones in June—voters rejected his ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), and swung left. Some 70% have no confidence in Jean-Pierre Raffarin, his prime minister. French tradition makes prime ministers the scapegoats in hard times, with the office of president rising above tawdry matters. Yet popular disaffection is increasingly directed at the president himself. Mr Chirac’s personal approval rating has sunk from 50% last August to just 35% today, according to TNS Sofres, a pollster.

Even within his party, Mr Chirac’s grip looks shaky. Founded to keep him in power, the UMP is in disarray. Last week, at the first round of a by-election in Paris, the official UMP candidate was trounced by a centre-right alternative, Bernard Debré, who talks of mounting a similar campaign for the Paris town hall. Several of Mr Chirac’s political friends in France’s overseas territories have also been evicted. Next month he loses his protégé, Alain Juppé, the UMP boss, who was convicted of political corruption in January.

Six months ago, la chiraquie — the president’s circle — was bent on finding a loyal successor to Mr Chirac, and, above all, on keeping out Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious finance minister. Today, fretful for their own survival, former loyalists on the UMP backbenches have begun to desert the president. Roselyne Bachelot, Mr Chirac’s spokesman for the 2002 presidential elections, says the party needs Mr Sarkozy. Alain Madelin, the former pro-market leader, has swung behind him. “Sarkozy’s the best chance we have,” says one UMP backbencher formerly in the Chirac camp.

Where does this leave Mr Chirac? He faces no more elections until 2007. But manoeuvring for his succession is under way. To restore his authority, he may replace Mr Raffarin, perhaps in the autumn, after a health-reform bill is passed. Given his distrust of Mr Sarkozy, Mr Chirac is unlikely to offer him the job. Instead, he may turn to Dominique de Villepin, former foreign minister. Since leaving the Quai d’Orsay to become interior minister, he has roughened his edges in the company of policemen and firemen. Aristocratic and urbane, Mr de Villepin lacks both a common touch and a popular mandate: he holds no elected office. Faced with the unpalatable rise of Mr Sarkozy, however, Mr Chirac may feel he has no alternative.

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