It does seem overwhelming, Jérôme. They just pick up the same pile of crap and run with it. OTOH, this is now at the level of self-caricature. How long have we been saying that the media message on this one is May '68, romantic-but-feckless French doing their thing with élan, flair, and panache, but incapable of seeing what losers they are. And selfish, too. I mean, just look at all the harm the French are doing to the rest of the world, unlike... Unlike who? Who?

Yes, I'm really getting pissed off with this incessant propaganda. Because this is not just laziness and incompetence on the part of journalists, this is journalists writing the received word, the acceptable meme, the message they should keep banging home (failure to do so, or -- horror, shudder! -- an attempt to try to work out what is really going on, will not be good for career prospects or "access" or one's comfortable position as pundit...)

I also find it impossible to read these pieces and not see that there really is an attempt, by the neoliberal forces that control the media, to disqualify France by portraying it as an anti-model (reactionary attitudes to necessary "reforms", subsequent economic failure). This has little to do with the refusal to join the Iraq "coalition" (as per Welshman's DKos diary), and everything to do with promoting the spread of liberalisation, deregulation, globalisation within the European Union.

Those who are tempted to think that Jérôme a Paris is a fiery Gallic defender of his nation and maybe just a bit paranoid around the edges, which leads him into unfortunate UK-and-US-bashing excesses, should read these three articles and realize that the great noise machine of the English-language media really is engaged in constant French-bashing, French-discrediting, French-demolishing, and that resisting it is an ideological fight that has nothing to do with misplaced nationalism.