DON'T CALL THEM "RIOTS"

French Prime Minister (and prominent Boney-phile) Dominique de Villepin went on CNN to try to re-define what happened in the banlieues. He's been reading too many PR manuals:

[Christiane] Amanpour: You know, many people, after hurricane Katrina struck the United States said, that it exposed the poverty and racism that exist in the United States. Many people in France said that ... around the world said it. Many people also said that the riots in the ghettos if you like... in the suburbs ...

De Villepin: I am not sure you can call them riots. It's very different from the situation you have known in 1992 in L.A. for example. You had at that time 54 people that died, and you had 2,000 people wounded. In France during the 2 weeks period of unrest, nobody died in France. So, I think you can't compare this social unrest with any kind of riots.

Amanpour: What do you call it then?

De Villepin: Social unrest, you have to understand also, there were no guns in the streets. No adults; mostly young people between 12 and 20 ... so it is very special movement.

(Via Loïc le Meur, who thinks de Villepin is simply responding to US media overkill. Some of his commenters disagree - one says France is reaping the results of its own over-hyped coverage of America's social problems. Could be...)

UPDATE: The French ambassador to the US has been pushing the same line as his PM.

Comments

[Knucklehead]

It is interesting that de Villepin says "nobody died". I guess the one guy we know about, being over 60 years old, doesn't count. Dead seniors don't count in France - not even when thousands of them die from a simple little heat wave.

Re: the French fascination with forever downplaying their own problems by comparing them to something which happened in the US, the LA riots were then, the French riots are "now". And they are in France, not LA. De Villepin, and all the other French, should start worrying about their nation and stop wasting their time worrying about ours.

[Kimberly]

Hey, what's one dead senior citizen when there's a US riot to drag up, as though the two are directly comparable?

I should point out that the death toll in LA was probably higher because the police and citizens had GUNS with which to defend themselves and others. If I had to choose, I'd rather be in that situation than in the "non-riot" where I had to stand by helplessly and watch my new Renault burn up.

We know that what Cruella de Villepin means is that none of the French RIOTERS died. Oh, yeah, that's such an improvement on the LA situation.

[California Conservative]

As we reported earlier, the French believe "riot" may be too strong of a word...
http://www.californiaconservative.org/?p=1553

[sonicfrog]

This reminds me of an original cast SNL skit with Dan Aykroyd doing his Jimmy Carter bit. He tries to tell a gang leader that gangs are bad, where the gang leader, Jim Belushi, replies: "Hey! We're not a gang! We're a club!!".

[JeanneB]

This is getting frighteningly close to Michael Dukakis territory...couldn't condemn a man who'd raped his wife.

These people haven't learned a thing since the 70's.

[TIm]

In response to JeanneB, I must say that no man ever raped Michael Dukakis's wife. The hypothetical situation described by the moderator was imaginary.

[Mad Minerva]

The de Villepin interview was so silly I couldn't help writing up a satire on it:

"France's de Villepin Denies that Riots Occurred or that His Poetry Sucks"

http://madminsatires.blogspot.com/2005/12/frances-de-villepin-denies-that-riots.html

[ManlyDad]

Actually, not so different from Los Angeles 1992, which some of the liberal persuasion referred to as the rebellion or uprising. Meaning it was totally justified from the rioters point of view.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_1999_Jan_25/ai_53593178