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Stop Whining
From the Times Of London, registration required.Franceâs state-subsidised intellectual classes were stunned yesterday when a government minister told them to stop complaining and start winning Nobel prizes, like the Americans. The unfavourable comparison with the United States from Patrick Devedjian, Minister for Local Liberties, amounted to blasphemy for the guardians of the supremacy of Gallic thought. It demolished a parallel attempt by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, to calm the anger of writers, scientists, teachers and artists, who are accusing the Government of âwaging warâ on them. M Devedjian, an outspoken Gaullist, was responding to a petition from 20,000 penseurs and créateurs complaining that the conservative administration was starving them of subsidies and dumbing down France. Yeah, pull the dummy from their mouths and that will dumb them down everytime. Signatories included Jacques Derrida, the philosopher,? Bertrand Tavernier, the film director, and Danny Cohn-Bendit, leader of the 1968 student uprising. And you couldnât meet a dumber load of postmodernists, if you tried. M Devedjian said: âChez nous, the intellectuals have a habit of signing petitions while in the United States they have Nobel prizes. âBeing an intellectual should not be considered to be a protected status. Being an intellectual has demands and results are often expectedâ. . . Heresy M Raffarin sought to soothe les intellos yesterday with a letter published on the front page of Le Monde, the thinking personâs daily newspaper. âI understand the fears of a section of the creative and artistic world,â he said. âI know that the future of France depends on creation and innovation and not through banalisation and standardisation And then he had a laughing seizure. Posted by: tipper 2004-02-26 |
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