Ste. Genevieve is at work
Sorry to burst everyone's bubble but Paris isn't burning.
My Amer. friends and I have all gotten concerned calls and emails from friends and family. Apparently your television stations are at work as always blowing reality out of proportion. Things are fine and calm and normal in Paris. All the activity is taking place outside of the city. The disaffected youths are burning their own neighborhoods for the most part. Yes, there was one night cars burned in Place de la Republique a couple of nights ago, but otherwise, nothing is unusual in Paris. The only way in which we are affected here is that the RER B line stops at Gare du Nord and doesn't go to any stops north of the city. That's kind of intriguing, but beyond that, things are as normal as can be. I don't even hear people talking about the riots. No one cares. Not in any visceral urgent way.
I think it's generally acknowledged that the Arabs and Africans get unfair chances in France, quite hypocritical with France's claimed position to be the pays du droit de l'homme, the Nation of Human Rights. Hopefully the country will take some notice. On the other hand, a lot of these youths are simply suffering an identity crisis due to the fact that they don't fit in here and don't fit in with their parents' homelands. But contrary to the history of blacks in America, no one forced these immigrants to come to France. They chose it.
From my point of view, I see this. They are French and can legally work, but don't manage to fit into the culture. I have no legal rights in France, haven't worked for almost year, but I'm white. And that still means I win.
What a world.
p.s. Part 13 of the bike trip is coming very soon.
6 Comments:
Yeah, dude. You're totally being too sensitive.
I was trying to be humorous. Like you tried in that post you wrote to me. I don't know. Maybe I should feel patronized by that.
Or else, maybe I should have been a comedy writer for the last eight years to know the difference between humor and not.
Now, that was definitely patronizing. But luckily, I was being ironic and insincerely provocative.
Don't get all sensitive about my reference to where y'all get your news or my snappy headline. But the truth is that Paris is as cool as a cucumber, so I don't know where the lies are being spread. And the other truth is that there is something in human nature that loves a tragedy. Who wasn't slightly disappointed when the death toll in New Orleans was less than expected?
No, dude. Sincerely, I've gotten over the "I'm a comedy writer, I know what's funny." My saying that really was NOT sincere. I truly believe that a diversity of humor perception is possible and mine is just mine, not objectively better or worse. There is no better or worse. But, I was also playing with all y'all's expectation of me to say something arrogant, cause it's fun sometimes just to give people what they want whether it's actual truth or not.
Check it out. I can say something arrogant on demand. Like, "I have a much better perspective on American culture by living in France." Or, "What was my SAT score? That's right. So shut it."
Wow. Makes your skin crawl, doesn't it?
But seriously. I'm just FUCKING WITH YOUR HEAD.
And that's why the internet is dangerous. You can't read my tone when I say these things.
In other matters, a friend of a friend came in from the states yesterday. He brought some downloaded television shows.
I watched my first episodes of "The Family Guy". I also saw the premiere episode of "My Name is Earl". That show SUCKS. I almost threw up.
It's all in retaliation for that time we wrestled in show choir and you left me with a bloody nose.
I'm not trying to TOY with you. I'm just trying to CHALLENGE you cause I think you're living in a comfortable milieu where nobody's putting the pressure on. And by comfortable milieu, I mean law school, where you get to ignore the real issues and pretend that this phony institution called "law" has any kind of answers for the real debates and mysteries there are in life. I think law's too simple for you. It's beneath you. And you're better than that and you're more than that. And I just don't know if anyone else is keeping you on your toes. I've found lots of challenging things in the last few years to keep me on my toes and evolving and I worry that in your milieu, you may learn to become complacent. Like what if you ended up working for an oil company?
Plus, I still owe you a bloody nose.
Douche bags.
Yeah, douchebags. I too found this post a little ridiculous. Sure, "our" TV stations may dramatize things, but when England's Guardian reports 3000 burnt cars, 270 towns rioting, and hundreds of arrests, I hardly consider that no big deal. Shit is fucked up over there, regardless of your little community of Hemingway posers' perceptions. And if people in the city aren't talking about it, that's further proof that Paris is racist and segregated beyond belief. That ambivalence toward the outskirts of the city and minority problems are the source of the chaos. Not patronized, really. A little perplexed by your expatriate fantasy world of perceived perfection outside the states.
Yesssss. That's exactly my point. Paris is racist and segregated beyond belief. That's why the suburbs can be burning and no one in the city cares.
But I don't see the need for you to give me grief, when you're in the same situation. There are crises and violence and disasters around you, too, that you are shielded from in your educated, middle-class bubble. But you don't hear me calling you overeducated, pseudo-ironic-hipster sons of middle-class parents posers, do you?
Also, I don't know where you get this idea of me having a perception of fantasy perfect land outside the states. You haven't read my posts harping on France? Or else maybe you just haven't had a direct conversation with me in close to four years and base lots of things on guesses, rumors, hearsay, supposition, and maybe even projection.
But in a way that makes sense. Having worked so long in the field of reporting, it makes sense to come to conclusions through those means. For example, going back to the riots, I read an article today that said thousands of guards were set up around the Eiffel Tower yesterday. Later in the same article, it said thousands of guards were stationed at the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysees. Later again, towards the end of the same article, it was once again repeated, this time that thousands of guards had been deployed at the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysees, and train stations throughout Paris (of which there are over a hundred). I happened to pass by the Eiffel Tower yesterday, and I saw four guards. Now, I do believe they put more up once it got dark, but in the afternoon, you can see, it was totally calm.
Now, why I get taken to task for every word **I** write, I don't know. No, I do know. Several among you have difficulty accepting my choices in life or certain things you think you know about me. You turned my rectification of misleading journalism into an attack against my life style from several angles. Obviously, you have a lot of anger to get about that subject, so I'm going to create a post for you to vent it.
I don't have any particular need to call any of you an arrogant asshole, douchebag, presumptious, or any kind of poser like you have done me. But I guess you got stuff to get off your chest, so check out the new post.
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