> Yikes! I'd hate to find myself on the same side as her on just about
> any topic.
My favorite bit is this:
> If you want to be revolted by a national mindset proudly on display in
> the Gallic nation, look no further than this hideous nugget penned by
> social commentator Sophie de Menthon. A woman.
>
> Frenchmen of all political stripes and social castes, she wrote, have
> "stood there aghast," confronted with images of DSK, as he's
> affectionately known, handcuffed and under arrest in New York. She
> went further.
>
> "It creates feelings and reactions which go far beyond what is,
> essentially, after all just another minor alleged crime."
>
> Minor. Alleged. Crime.
>
> Good Lord.
>
Peyser is the victim of a hilariously botched translation. I looked up the article this refers to. The author, Menthon, sought to explain why France will be forever changed by what is "after all only a fait divers." Apparently Peyser's source translated "fait divers" as "minor alleged crime," but it's just a journalistic term that means "crime story." Nothing in it implies that the crime is minor. If someone is murdered in the subway, the resulting newspaper article is a "fait divers."
That's aside from the fact that Menthon isn't a "social commentator," she's the owner of a big French management consultancy. And that Menthon's article, which appeared on a right-wing news website, was doing the opposite of excusing the crime - it was taking almost exactly the same point of view as Peyser! ("It's almost as if all of France feels guilty, torn between its commitment to respect for privacy and its culpable tolerance.")
My guess is that Peyser (1) came across a bad translation of Menthon's piece on some right-wing US website, (2) decided to write a crazier version of the piece for her column, and then (3) decided to use a mistranslated line from the article as evidence of the odious mentality that the article itself was critiquing.
SA