World is a high-quality Christian newsmagazine published from an Evangelical Protestant perspective. It's not an obscure or unpolished publication by any means. Yet how often do you see it on newsstands and in libraries? True, bookstores and libraries can't subscribe to every magazine out there, but if you're like me, you find a dearth of magazines, religious and political, published from a conservative point of view. I remember visiting the magazine rack at the Borders in downtown Washington DC a few years ago, and finding a multiplicity -- 15 or 20 -- of arcane New Age and left-wing religious titles, but on First Things and Crisis from the orthodox side. You cannot tell me that there's no market in Washington for First Things and Crisis (which is published there), but there is for The Vegetarian Zoroastrian Glue-Sniffer Review (OK, I made that up, but it's not far off the mark).

Since then, I've paid attention to this on my travels, and I find the same thing in chain bookstores all over the country. Anyway, this is what happened when World's Joel Belz went to his well-stocked local library, and asked the people in charge standards were used to decide which magazines belong on the shelves there.

I'd like to write about this phenomenon, both regarding libraries and bookstore magazine racks. Anybody have any experience like Belz's? Write me at rdreher@nationalreview.com.

There was a classic obituary in the Daily Telegraph some weeks ago of Colonel Michael Singleton, “infantryman, spin-bowler and pipe-smoker who ran a prep school with disregard for normal procedure.” In England, a ‘prep school’ is a private school for children aged between 8-13. Traditionally these were boarding schools, and traditionally they could be highly eccentric. Colonel Singleton’s establishment (which he ran between 1948 and 1973) was obviously no exception.

Here’s an extract too good not to repeat:

“What central heating there existed was not always effective, or even switched on. Boys were permitted to capture owls and keep them in the fives court, provided they caught enough sparrows to feed them. One boy recalls being given the task of rearing a lamb to which he developed some emotional attachment [note that marvelous ‘some’ – this was pre-Diana, the old England now lost]. The animal, called Lottie, disappeared shortly before the school’s Christmas feast, and the boy realized what had happened only when he was the first to be summoned for second helpings.”

Old school, indeed.

On a different note, there was yet another tremendous movie on TCM this morning – Each Dawn I Die. Best moment, George Raft, as (surprise!) a gangster sneering as he points out the members of his gang to the framed reporter’s (Jimmy Cagney) nice but naïve girlfriend:

“Look at Johnnie, the weasel with the punk cigar…”

And, no, this isn’t a reference to the French or the Germans.

Tony Blair and his wife, New Age enthusiast Cherie, have been to see the Pope. At least part of the reason for the visit seems to have been to convince the pontiff of the merits of the case for war. Why this is necessary, important or even desirable escapes me. There is either a moral case for war or there is not. A papal endorsement of an invasion should make little difference in that respect, but the more Bush and Blair try to secure it, the more it will seem that such a sign-off really does matter.

Ironically, as noted before on the Corner, the people most likely to be affected by such an endorsement are those in the Muslim world all too ready to see a war against Iraq as the latest installment in some supposed Christian crusade against Islam. As such, it would actually be counter-productive.

No more pilgrimages, please.

Mugabe, apparently. Here’s what Zimbabwe’s dictator said yesterday:

“All I can say is that all the European Union should behave like France.”

Mentioned in passing earlier this week in The Corner, here’s a good round-up of the New Europe’s press response to Chirac’s insults.

This comment from Latvia stands out:

“All right, Monsieur Chirac, perhaps we are poor, perhaps we were not raised properly - but we do not repay those who have helped us and who continue to help us with ingratitude.”

And there’s more here on East Europe’s response. An extract: "America speaks with passion for democracy which is something that you miss in Europe," said Linas Linkevicius, Lithuania's foreign minister, whose office decor includes a blue baseball cap with "Mr Nato" emblazoned above its peak."

He’s right.

So is Chirac now set on excluding much of the New Europe from the EU? Not yet, it seems, but an interesting article in the latest Economist (link requires subscription) includes the following:

“Alain Duhamel, an influential pro-European commentator, gave an insight into the French establishment's thinking in a recent article in the left-leaning newspaper Libération headlined “Europe: stop enlargement”. He gave warning that the dreams of those who want a “European Europe” are in danger of being swamped by new arrivals “fascinated” by the United States: “the Europe of Brussels is encircled by the Europe of Washington.” Mr Duhamel urged the French parliament to refuse to ratify enlargement.”

More on this topic to come, doubtless.

[I]t's not true, as Univision claims, that Spanish-language TV is the best or only way to reach U.S. Latinos. On the contrary, most of them speak English well or very well. What's more, in contrast to what a growing chorus of Spanish-language marketers will tell you, much of the Hispanic population prefers English and English-language media. Yet thanks in part to companies such as Univision - which, like the marketers, has a stake in encouraging companies to spend on Spanish-language advertising - the myth that immigrants don't speak English is taking root across the land.

Well, I can't say I'm that familiar with the hedgehog's oeuvre. For those of you enjoying a certain it's-friday-and-it's just-me-and-my-male-cubicle-buddies espirit d'corps, you might find his official filmography amusing. That's where I found those particular titles. But, be warned, the titles I cited were PG compared to some of the stuff here.

The owner of New Jersey's famed Stone Pony nightclub was just on CNN saying that when the band Great White played his bar recently, they turned on the pyrotechnic display without informing the club management they were going to do that. "We were not happy," the owner said. Last night on TV, Jack Russell, the lead singer of the band, said he had gotten permission from the Station's manager to use the pyrotechnics. But that club's sound man, who survived the fire, said he was stunned to see the pyrotechnics, because nobody had told him they were going to be used. This is why he didn't have a fire extinguisher close at hand, he said.

It sounds to me like that band has a lot of explaining to do.

Thinking about the outrage against Gods and Generals, and how the current thinking seems to require Southern whites to repudiate their ancestors and feel nothing but shame over their culture (N.B., slavery and Jim Crow were despicable, and shameful -- but that's not all there was to the South) reminded me of something Walker Percy wrote in 1957. He was addressing Northern liberals chastising the South over segregation. Percy agreed with them that segregation was evil, and had to end. But he said the absolutely wrong way to win followers among Southern moderates was to put them into the position of abjuring any affection, admiration or loyalty to their homeland and its culture. He wrote:

There is a Southern heritage, and it has nothing to do with the colonel in the whiskey ad. It has to do with the conservative tradition of a predominantly agrarian society, a tradition which at its best [Emphasis mine -- R.D.] enshrined the human aspects of living for rich and poor, black and white. It gave first place to a stable family life, sensitivity and good manners between men, chivalry toward women, an honor code, and individual integrity. If one wishes to sneer at such values, let him; but I can't help wondering if the sneer does not conceal a contempt for all traditions.

The reviewer for the Village Voice, which is the parish newsletter of the Church of New York Liberalism, can't understand why there aren't protests against Gods and Generals:

If a Confederate flag flying in South Carolina is cause for uproar, how is this movie escaping into theaters without precipitating an NAACP press conference? Ballooning, jingoistic goat spoor, Maxwell's movie, with its relentless nationalism, mooning over the soldiers' steeliness of nerve, purity of heart, and evangelical self-justification, is all too relevant today. Unfortunately, in a nation where the word 'evildoers' is used by straight-faced adults, the film might end up being effective propaganda.

Yeah. Courage, virtue, patriotism, faith -- all right-wing garbage, back then and even now. Tell me again about the split between Blue America and Red America.

A reader writes:

"Making the accurate observation that France's freedom was
bought with the blood of young Americans and THEREFORE France needs to
rubber stamp Washington's position regardless of its objections amounts
to saying: 'Because you saved my life last year by pulling me,
unconscious, from a burning building, I have to let you drive home drunk
tonight.'"

I think he has a point. I bow to no one (well, except to Jonah) in my ire at the French over their cynical behavior towards us over Iraq. However, it really is unfair to think that France, or any other nation liberated by America, owes us total fealty in all foreign policy matters, forever.

The anti-war demonstrations - reminiscent of the 1960s and heady, I am sure, for Americans enamored with democratic process - do not address the vitriolic anti-Americanism that caused Sept. 11. Nor do they take careful account of the peculiar dilemma of the Iraqi people and of Muslims all over the world.
It is disheartening to observe among Americans a form of anti-Americanism, of self-hate, that transforms into a nebulous, rude and uninformed rebellion against a president and an administration that has been called into power for such a time as this....
The Iraqi people are victims of Islamic government. There is no room for God, freedom of speech, thought, or worse, conscience in the Islamic political, social and cultural environment....
Freedom needs to be coupled with truth. Waving slogans and stripping naked does not set us free. The reality is that there is no Islamic constitution. Freedom as we understand it does not exist on Islamic soil....
The "white male majority," the Founding Fathers of America, not perfect men by any means, were inspired to write the unique American Constitution, according freedoms that must be defended at any cost. The civic institutions and character by which America became great militarily, commercially and culturally can be emulated. I'm no poet of Allen Ginsberg's stature to howl - but there is a time to speak.
The enemy is not American.

This picture says it all.

I wonder if non-New Yorkers can appreciate how it feels to look up in the sky and see a vast plume of black smoke billowing into the air. A friend of mine IM'd me from a few blocks away and said, "28,000 New Yorkers are now going back into therapy." It seems that it was just an industrial accident, but when I saw it, the first thing I thought of was a story a private pilot friend of mine in Louisiana told me right after 9/11.

He and his buddies were approached at their hangar in the week or two after the 9/11 attacks by a European (Austrian, as I recall) who asked them to take him up to photograph the refineries along the Mississippi River. It startled the men, because they all pilot ultralight aircraft, and not too many people know where their private hangar is. This Euro did. The pilots played dumb, and asked the guy to come back the next day and they'd take him up. Then they called the FBI. When the European returned the next day, the Feds arrested him.

I was later told via a local law enforcement source that this cat was on an international wanted list, but I couldn't confirm that. Point is, our enemies are watching our refineries. That's why the first thing I thought of when I saw the fire was: "Terrorism."

The G-File is in at NRHQ. I woke up at 6 this morning and wrote it before I took Cosmo out because Kathryn demanded I have it in early and all of you people were harrassing me about late-filings etc.

I'm going to try to go the whole day without once mentioning the big country south of our allies the British and North of our allies the Italians and the Spanish. I have nothing left to say.

Former CIA director Jim Woolsey provides a useful chastening in today's Wall Street Journal. He writes that we ought not be so quick to bash the French and the German people. He mentions two friends of his, the German Ewald von Kleist, who as a German army officer strapped explosives to himself in an aborted (by Hitler, who changed his plans) attempt to assassinate the Fuhrer; and Jeannie Clarens, a Frenchwoman who infiltrated the Nazi V-2 missile program, and provided the British with information that likely made D-Day possible, and won the war. Writes Woolsey:

It is appeasement of Saddam by Messrs. Chirac and Schroder that should draw our anger, and our satire -- not the people of these two countires and their cultures. To take only one case, Internet messages mocking French courage and denying that the French have ever successfully defended Paris should not only be beneath us but are quiet false -- the drafters of this nonsense should consult, among other things, the history of the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914. Gen. Gallieni's mobilization of the taxis of Paris to rush reinforcements ot the front and save the city is as famous in France as Washington's crossing the Delaware is to Americans. We diminish ourselves and our arguments by denying the noble side of these nations' history and slandering their national honor. Yes, the Germans had the Nazis and the French the Reign of Terror and Vichy. And we had slavery. We have both had our villains and our heroes -- we have had our Audie Murphys, they their Ewald von Kleists and Jeannie Clarenses.

Back in May, I received brickbats, whatever they are, for a column titled "Regressive Progressive?" in which I pointed out Dennis Kucinich's little-noticed 100 percent antichoice voting record and modestly suggested that if he wanted to run for President he would have to rethink his willingness to force pregnant women to give birth. A surprising number of readers felt pro-choicers should shut up about their silly little issue and embrace Kucinich in the interests of progressive unity. Fortunately, Kucinich is more sensible and less sexist than these benighted admirers. In recent abortion-related votes he has taken the pro-choice side and now, just in time for his announcement of his presidential bid, affirms Roe v. Wade on his website. National Review Online attributed this change of heart to "a tiny article" in The Nation (thanks a lot). I'd rather credit Kucinich's own instinct for what is right and fair in a pluralist society. Better late than never!

A black Chicago alderwoman is denouncing Jesse Jackson for hypocrisy, claiming he's doing his best to suck up to the families of the nightclub stampede tragedy to cover up for the fact that he ran interference for the club owner with city officials. Said Alderwoman Madeline Haithcock: "He's grandstanding. He does things right for the families, then he goes over on the other side ... with his friends. He's got to pick his sides--who he wants to be with. Be for the owners or the people. You're one or the other."

As we know, though, Jesse picked sides a long time ago.

Interesting email:

Every French soldier who was in Indo-China volunteered to be Indo-China. So every last Frenchman at Dien Bien Phu was a volunteer who knew that they were volunteering for combat. They were untypical examples of the French (or anyone else's) military. The reason that all of Vietnam was not handed over to Ho Chi Minh in 1954 was that the French threatened to get serious and send non-volunteers there so that there would finally be sufficient troops to fight his forces. This information is available in Bernard Fall's histories which were widely available in the 1960's. "Hell In a Very Small Space" deals with Dien Bien Phu. She should be ashamed not to have read Mr. Fall's books during the Vietnam era.

She said one thing accurately, but by it was by mistake. She said "The trouble we could have saved ourselves if we had only paid attention to Dien Bien Phu." Had Eisenhower supported the French requests to use our bombers based in the Philippines to bomb around Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chi Minh may have not been able to form a government. To his shame, Eisenhower refused to do it unless he had support from all the Congressional leaders, and Lyndon Johnson (to his greater shame) did not support it.

I have to apologize. In my zeal to defend my own positions I rolled right pass an absolutely outrageous and actually quite disgusting comment in Ivins' column. She writes:

For those of you who have not read Paris 1919, I recommend it highly. Roosevelt was anti-colonialist. That system was a great evil, a greater horror even than Nazism or Stalinism.

The contra-factual stuff about Roosevelt is just boring. But the suggestion that colonialism was a greater horror than Nazism or Stalinism is so stupid and so repugnant it really must be addressed. Does she know what she's saying? Doesn't she know how many tens of thousands of brave colonial troops fought side by side with the British against the Germans and the Japanese? And whereas there are many defenders of British colonialism - and other colonial regimes - I think she will have to look under a lot of rocks to find defenders of the death camps of the Holocaust. Considering that Nazism and Stalinism represented the very worst kind of colonialism, one wonders what it was about the Raj that Ivins considers worse than Stalin's collectivization or the rape of Poland.

When you re-read her column it becomes clear that she just likes pointing out she read some books and saw some movies, it's far less clear that she understood them.

From one of my regular reader correspondents:

As a black person with a sense of humor, that "commercial" is very funny. Though I do wish the person or persons who coined the term "ebonics" and advocated it, would be shot and their bodies dragged through the center of their respective towns. Damn fools had to give an name for poor english and embarass themselves and our community by advocating for that crap.

I be wishing day got der asses kick for that sh*t.

Can you have a person declared non-black (other than for being a registered republican or "out" conservative)?

I don't always have the nicest things to say about Slate, but I must say this is a really good feature and I wish we'd done it first. Slate asked a bunch of people where they come down on war. Some interesting answers. For example, Paul Glastris of the Washington Monthly favors war and Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute opposes it. Charles Murray, author of "What it Means to be a Libertarian" favors war based on the Bush administration's say-so.

I'm pretty sure I posted this a long time ago, but the ebonic Delta commercial remains a classic.

Over the last few months several readers have queried me on what they see as an inconsistency on my part. As longtime readers know, I am a champion of what I like to call "inactivism." Inactivism can be summarized by Calvin Coolidge's observation that "When you see ten problems rolling down the road, if you don't do anything, nine of them will roll into a ditch before they get to you."

These readers also note that I am in favor of an activist foreign policy when it comes to Iraq -- and a few other places as well -- and they accuse me of hypocrisy. It's a fair point as far as it goes in that I've never made a distinction between foreign and domestic policy when it comes to inactivism. But there is an important distinction here. In a decent, democratic, society individuals and associations of individuals can be trusted to regulate themselves and each other with minimal governmental -- especially minimal federal -- interference. Businesses solve their own problems without Washington, property owners protect their own property, communities devise ways to protect their citizens. Etc.

In the international arena these rules do not apply. Here, a state of nature exists. Here, states, peoples, nations and faiths often vie in a zero-sum environment. And these actors must act on their interests to regulate the "global community." In America, we can count on the fact that most individuals share common values, common understandings of self-interest and common agreement upon the rules of settling disputes. Such a regime doesn't exist outside our borders, except perhaps among a few allies or on a few subjects like trade. Many regimes and movements would gladly destroy or at minimum harm America if they had the means. It is up to our government to make sure that doesn't happen. There is no conflict with inactivism because the global arena is a libertarian environment and therefore we must take it upon ourselves to deal with criminal actors -- not rely on some global superstate to fix problems.

Also, keep in mind that even the inactivist recognizes that 1 in 10 problems are real problems in need of our attention. We are not considering waging war on 10% of the bad actors in the world.

Molly Ivins, fast approaching the "whatever happened to Molly Ivins?" stage of her career chastizes me in her latest column . In a sense this is progress since last time she wrote about me she pretended she hadn't heard of me. She called me "some juvenile jerk attacking Canadians as a bunch of wimpy wimps." I doubt she hadn't heard of me, but her schtick is to sound more important than she is, so fair's fair. Anyway, she mentions me by name today, and is less snarky about it, so I guess that's even more progress. As for the gist of her article, she likes France and she thinks they are very brave. She cites the 100,000 French soldiers who died defending France and she is surely right to call them brave. But what about the 37 divisions which surrendered en masse? She mentions the Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu -- and the Foreign Legion is most assuredly very, very brave. Alas, the Foreign Legion, historically speaking, was also mostly made up of foreigners. King Louis Philippe founded the Legion as a way to deal with poor immigrants and keep casualties among actual French soldiers to a minimum. I like the Foreign Legion and have long believed the US should have a version of it if we are going to use the military for humanitarian missions. But, citing Dien Bien Phu as a huge French sacrifice when many of the grunts were actually Germans and Brits isn't exactly a great point.

Anyway, I'm hardly shocked that Molly's sticking up for the French. That seems to be the enlightened liberal position these days. What's so funny about it is that the French remain colonialists in many respects and they have policies on such things as race that folks like Ms Ivins consider outrageously right-wing when proposed here. I wonder if she reveres the French policy of zero affirmative action and a complete ban on collecting racial data -- policies championed by Ward Connerly & Co. But that's a subject for another time. I'm just so delighted to have been mentioned by name by Ms. Ivins before she slips completely into the "whatever happened to..." category.

Chirac needs to check who he’s messing with when he takes on the New Europe. Look where the Latvian prime minister really comes from.

In response to G-File:

Very interesting observtion--giving one's successor the opportunity to achieve greatness. President Buchanan was considered the premier politico in America of the 1850s, just the kind of man who could find a political solution to prevent nation dissolution. He failed, of course. But Abraham Lincoln did not.

Terry Moran, ABC News: "Ari, on the U.N. resolution, a second U.N. resolution, one of the forces that's at work, it seems, is increasing rancor and nastiness within the Western alliance. You've got newspapers here showing France and Germany as weasels at the Security Council, people calling France ‘surrender monkeys.’ Then you've got a lot of anti-Americanism on the streets over in France."

Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary: "Are you asking me if I can be responsible for the American press?"

The Saudi-based Arab News is always a font of useful information. Today we learn that wife-beating is "widespread" in the Kingdom, in part because men are under the mistaken belief that Islam permits it. Not so! says the Arab News, but only conditionally:

It is certainly against Islam to beat a good wife. An erring wife should be warned first and advised. If that does not work, then the husband could give her a light beating, the purpose of that being to embarrass rather than inflict pain.

Opinion Journal linked to it first.

If you can play this mini-documentary on your computer, you really have got to set five minutes aside and check this out if you haven't already. If you've ever spent any time trying to debate fashionably angry protestors this won't surprise you, but you will find it quite amusing nonetheless. I don't know anything about the people who made it, but I think it's awesome.

Terrible writer's block has been conquered by your humble servant. Alas, it was an ugly victory. The column is in triage at NRHQ. This is what happens when you take a week off from writing.

I do not think all Todds are gay. But, a surprising number are and many who aren't should be. And no, Todd, I don't mean you.

announce that it's "Sweeping Generalization Wednesday" just to entice all of you guys in here. I could start declaring things like "I've never met a guy named Todd who wasn't gay" or "If you're still buying new Rolling Stones albums you probably smell like cabbage."

Stole my look.

A reader has tracked down more info on "Kadd." In this interview Kadd explains that he was born "Joshua Stephens" and that he doesn't think punk music holds a "monopoly on effective resistance." A few highlights:

Infoshop: How would you describe your style of music-making?

Kadd: Confessional. It’s probably going to sound really pretentious and silly, but I don’t really write songs – I confess into them. I say all the things I wish I’d said, or that I’m just too much of a coward to say, in real life. In fact, cowardice is kind of a resurfacing theme in my writing as of late – and I think some people have picked up on that and taken it as a form of finger pointing, but truthfully, I’m as guilty of the things I write about as anyone else is, and I think I write these things out of not feeling like there’s a space where we can all sit down and go “Yeah, we’re all fuck ups – so where do we go from here?”. Lately, songs have been a space in which I kind of indulge my rage about that – my anger that my own self-hatred often consumes me to the point of incapacitating me. And let’s face it, compared to say – an Afghani person right now, my life is a fucking cake-walk, and if my pathetic self-loathing and mourning of what hasn’t worked out in my life impedes me from acting on the institutions that perpetuate the suffering of those people, there’s really no excusing it. It’s probably the pinnacle of cowardice.

Infoshop: How did you get interested in anarchism?

Kadd: Well, when I was like 14 I started reading a lot of classical liberal and Enlightenment-era works – J.S. Mill, Hume, Voltaire, and then stuff like Thoreau. Obviously, going to school in the military community (and loathing it), I heard a lot of commie-bashing. So, I kind of figured Marx was someone worth checking out, seeing how he seemed to have pissed off all of my least favorite people. I found Socialism to be a relatively intuitive and reasonable vision for social organization, and began identifying with it more and more. One day, about 4 years ago, I picked up Graham Purchase’s book “Anarchism and Environmental Survival”, and it just summed up everything I’d been thinking for a few years, and kind of worked out some of the contradictions I was finding with the sort of Marxist vision of how social change happens, especially with regard to power. From there, I just pretty much read everything I could get my hands on, and began collaborating with other anarchists in the area – leading to the establishment of DC Food Not Bombs, and the early germination of a lot of the explicitly anarchist projects that are ongoing here, today.

This is really apropos of nothing. A friend sent me this because he thought I'd be amused by the fact that these guys operate a couple doors down from where I used to live. It's called the "Mintwood Media Collective." Read through these bios and tell me you don't want to smash their "collective" guitar against the wall of Delta House. Here's on of my favorite snippets:

Kadd Stephens.... later moved to DC, where his accelerated disillusionment with the military manifested distrust of systems of domination in general and led him to delay his pursuit of a degree in Justice, Law, and Society at American University and pursue resistance work full time.

Since 1995 he has been immersed in grassroots activism, anarchist projects in the DC area, and efforts involving non-violent direct action. Kadd was one of the founders of the National Conference on Civil Disobedience, an annual weekend of workshops held at American University which draws hundreds of activists from around the world, and as a planner/coordinator has seen exponential increases in attendance every year.

Known for his straighforwardness and disdain for popular mythologies, Kadd has from time to time slipped scathing critiques of the corporate system into features in such mainstream news sources as Washingtonpost.com and MTV. A passion for fact over convenience, a flair for the ironic, and an irreverance for the banal are central to Kadd's approach to injecting some semblance of honesty into popular culture. Working part-time as the Development assistant at Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Kadd contributes to the collective on projects regularly, working mostly on developing alternative media stratagies and press pitching.

A reader writes to suggest that Chirac's comments about the East Europeans might have been deliberately designed to provoke anti-EU sentiment in those countries, with the result that their electorates would be less likely to agree to join the Union.

Why would Chirac want to do that? Well, having only just regained their sovereignty, many of those Eastern European countries are likely to prove somewhat unwilling to give it up again in favor of an ever more federal EU, particularly one dominated by France and Germany. This might make them rather awkward members of the EU’s club, the sort of members that would vote against further encroachments by Brussels, the sort of members, in fact, that Chirac would prefer to do without. He, of course, couldn't admit to such feelings outright, so how convenient if, at the last minute, a number of those countries chose not to join the EU after all.

It’s an ingenious theory, but it’s a little reminiscent of the story told, I think, about our old friend Talleyrand. On hearing that some well-known diplomat had died, the ever-suspicious Talleyrand was said to have asked, “yes, but what did he mean by that”?

Best explanation for Chirac’s speech? He lost his temper.