Author Salman Rushdie would have gotten a lot more attention for his comments in today’s Washington Post, but for the fact that his piece lay side-by-side with a scathing indictment of European anti-Semitism by Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer’s piece was the hot item in the Blogosphere all day; of course Glenn Reynolds was all over it early in the day, and Tony Adragna of QuasiPundit ran with it too — but Rushdie’s comments deserve their time in the spotlight.
While Rushdie can’t help but take a few irrelevant and somewhat distracting sideswipes at Dubya and at Lady Thatcher, his skewering of the French is priceless — throwing Voltaire right in their faces! Rather than confront the rising tide of economic nationalists (or whatever the favored euphemism for “fascism” is now), they tend to their gardens, while insisting that fascism engages only the fringes and not the heart of French politics. And when anti-Semitism and fascism start percolating through their politics, why, who left those things lying around?
The voters blame the parties for not offering better choices; the incumbent Left blames the electorate for not being smart enough to continue voting for them. But in either case, the French have been far too busy casting judgment on the rest of the globe to take a critical look at themselves. Yes, Chirac will almost certainly beat Le Pen, but Rushdie is right to criticize the French, who for so long insisted that candidates like Le Pen only appealed to a tiny fringe element.
