The French press has been fascinated by the GOP convention, especially the Sarah Palin part of it. Reader John Williamson sent along a link to the Financial Times press round-up. She’s very exotic to Europeans who are looking her up this very minute in the National encyclopédie des caricatures cou-rouge et stéréotypes américains, a standard reference work on every French journalist’s desk.
But my favorite is the profile of Palin in Le Point, just to watch Patrick Sabatier go through the long, difficult process of calling her a “hockey mom” in French — une maman fana de hockey sur glace — before going on to recycle a WSJ pillory of the snake-juggling, tongues-speaking stuff that the paper suspects just may go on behind the walls of that Assembly of God church Palin’s been known to attend. Does Palin herself speak in tongues? The Journal can’t quite say (although they try!). The lead:
At the Pentecostal church where Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin worshipped for more than two decades, congregants speak in tongues and are part of a faith that believes humanity is in its “end times” — the days preceding a world-ending cataclysm bringing Christian redemption and the second coming of Jesus.
The French eat this stuff up, which, if you know your French cuisine, isn’t surprising.
The Journal doesn’t tell us whether or not the congregants in Palin’s church ever speak the language of Jeremiah Wright. That would be a sign of something, I guess.