… Clive Davis is right. Most specifically, when he says about Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me Stupid that “the Dean Martin romp is in a class of its own.” It’s a knockout film.

Time will tell whether he’s also right in applying the brakes regarding the “rush-to-judgment commentary” around the blogosphere on the French riots. Some of his thoughts:

I’m really disturbed by some of the coverage I’ve seen on other blogs. People seem determined to make everything fit into some neat ideological box, regardless of the few facts available so far. As for some of the anti-Muslim comments that have been posted (not here, but elsewhere) well, they’re frankly racist, and stupid. “Deport them…” seems to be one common response. Where to? The rioters are French citizens. OK, the French can’t complain if Americans want to indulge in a certain amount of Schadenfreude, especially after all the gloating coverage of Katrina. But let’s stay grown-up about this. France has an underclass problem, America has an underclass problem. So does Britain. Religion complicates things enormously in Europe, yes, but we’re not yet in a clash of civilisations. I don’t want to sound Pollyanna-ish. At the same time, there’s no point being apocalyptic either, even if it does give us a nice, warm glow inside.

He goes on to emphasize that he doesn’t mean to downplay the seriousness of the riots, but makes the point that “we don’t know enough yet, do we?”

There’s a lot to be said for waiting till you really know what’s going on. For one thing, the surely very real and growing problem of militant Islamist tentacles in Europe ought to be recognized, and it would be a shame if some of those sounding the alarm about it were to be discredited by crying wolf in a case that turned out to have very little to do with Islamism.

Clive himself, however, links to this typically powerful piece by Mark Steyn today, where he jumps in with both feet and with both barrels blazing.

Ever since 9/11, I’ve been gloomily predicting the European powder keg’s about to go up. ”By 2010 we’ll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,” I wrote in Canada’s Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday’s edition of the Guardian reported in London: ”French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.”

”French youths,” huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the “youths” are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn’t take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ”French”: They’re young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you’re likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ”Arab street,” but it’s in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Definitely read it all.

For me, the quote of the day is from a French police spokesman. Ten policemen in a suburb south of Paris were were injured by apparent shotgun fire, with two being hospitalized with wounds. The police spokesman was asked whether the rioters could have killed someone, and responded: “Probably not at this distance, but they could have caused bad injuries, or turn one of the officers blind.”

When police officers are fired upon, and a police spokesman minimizes the act, something quite strange is going on. My main familiarity would be with the NYPD and, well, let’s just say they would have handled the whole thing rather differently.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• World Gone Wrong
• Not Dark Yet
• Pepe