Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sciolino's Farewell
Elaine Sciolino is leaving her post as Times Paris bureau chief. Her swan song reminds us why she will not be missed. For our national newspaper's chief correspondent, France means above all sexy underwear, friendly butchers, nasty haberdashers, handkissing, and other quaintnesses. La grande Nation is a dotty old aunt best captured in droll anecdotes. To be sure, the French can sometimes write about America with similar superficiality: we are obese, arrogant, uncouth, fanatically religious, and of course puritanical, and our idea of a restaurant is McDonald's. Let us hope that the next Paris correspondent will be cut of a different cloth.
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6 comments:
Sciolino may not be to blame for the Pollyana level of Paris coverage in the Times. The Grey Lady tends to leave the hard political and economic news to specialists. Sciolino's "Lady's Home Journal-meets-Inquirer tone" is exactly the stuff the current Times editors demand.
Many of the Times's current arts critics have been chastised by insiders for churning out similar pabulum. But the Times editors are happy serving blancmange day after day. She was probably only doing her master's bidding.
Agreed. I also note that Madame Sciolino lives in the 7th. Could there be a more dreary, less useful spot for understanding modern France? Perhaps her choice of home also helps explain her limitless appetite for cliche.
Living in Paris, and in the 7th of all places, certainly doesn't help. Ms. Sciolino mentions French friends -- I wonder how many of them are not Americano-philic Parisians (from the ouest parisien of course). And yes, the editors may very well demand such crap. Mais quand bien même ! I clicked over the link to her last piece fully expecting it to be bad, but it was beyond cringe-inducing! I honestly don't think I've ever seen such cliché-riddled writing. (Though there are others -- I recall an article in the Times on the strikes last fall that had them going around in the Marais trying to get a sense of public opinion)
Art said it best, so I won't say much more. And yes, there are certainly French journalists who write just as bad. But then again, who would take seriously a journalist who went to live in a chic Manhatten neighborhood, went shopping and somehow called his/her yammerings about that kind of life a sketch of American life.
Oh, and the bit about the jogging-suit was priceless. If one walks around in a ritzy neighborhood in the U.S., dressed for a track meat, covered in flour and holding a kilo of butter, a little laughter is the very least one can expect.
I don't want to make this personal -- Ms. Sciolino may have written good articles on other topics. But for someone who writes with such vapidity about France to be the NYT France correspondent just beggars belief. Corine Lesnes is far from perfect, but her articles on the U.S. are very far removed from this pablum.
Perhaps, but I will tell you that at least in the ritzy suburbs of Boston, many people go out of their way to be seen in running gear!
Ha, touché! I guess that shows you how chic I/ am!
The 7th is also this very conservative district where at a UMP meeting for Rachida Dati a fervent UMP backer said, ON the record, "here in the 7th we'd vote for a hamster if he wore the UMP colors, but SHE's really too dark."
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