Jay Leno and French History

[Flagg]

Jay Leno and French History, September 2004

"Well, there’s nothing funnier to me than the French. The French Resistance is probably the biggest mythical joke that ever existed. There were four guys in the French Resistance. They couldn’t hand over the Jewish people fast enough. Oh, please, don’t tell me about the French. The French have all sorts of secret deals with Saddam and everybody else for two cents a liter. It’s an easy target." - James Douglas Muir Leno,

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/43/deadline-finke.php


On behalf of my grandparents and their friends hanged by the nazis in Tulles in 1944.

Fuck you Mr Leno.

[loveable liberal]

1. leno's a lantern jawed clown....

Pay no attention to him...he's a fraud, knuckle dragging chickenhawk, reich wing stooge and whats more, he's not funny!!!

[wtmusic]

2. And without the French Navy

he'd still be a colonist. I agree, fuck Leno.

[RobertSeattle]

3. Leno should apologize for the Resistance "joke"

We wouldn't be a country if it weren't for the French. And they sent an entire Division to Gulf War I - something the right wing never wants to recognize.

[LisaM]

4. Well you need to tell him that

It sounds as if he could be somewhat receptive.

[Sequoia]

5. Le' Bastard!

Let's tar and feather him and run him out of the country. I am really sick of this French bashing. I wish they'd tell Chimp and the rest of the NeoCons to kiss off. So Jay, you don't think 6 million people who were slaughtered by your "relatives" is a big deal?

[loveable liberal]

13. there wasnt an army on the planet that could have stopped the germans.

no one wants to remember that at the time hitler had the greatest, most well equipped army on the planet. The United States couldnt have stopped them in 1939, hell it took 3 years for the u.s. to enter the war and get industry converted to the production of arms. France has nothing to be ashamed of.

[Bridget Burke]

6. On behalf of my father.....

Shot down over France in 1943 & saved from a German POW camp by the French Resistance, another hearty FY to Leno.

[seventhson]

7. My father worked with the French Resistance, They were heroic. However

the French, like the Germans, (and like Americans today) rolled over for fascism en masse.

They WERE a joke in many respects and sold out for practically nothing (altho I guess saving Paris might have been worthe something).

Look at the horrible French intelligence murders of the Greenpeace anti-nuke boat avtivists - the Rainbow Warrior. Their colonialism was likewise horrific. Just like us.

But my father lost friends and colleagues - including the French Resistance leader Jean Moulin (Martel, aka max) tortured to death by Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyons, and possibly sold out by Nazi spooks in OUR intel services (Dulles et al).

The village of Le Chambon (Google) saved many many Jews by disguising them as Christian family members , and they suffered some horrible deaths at the hands of the Nazis. I have a Jewish friend who was born there (see le chambon websites) and the doctor who delibered him was killed by the gestapo weeks later.

I am sorry for your loss and understand you being pissed off.

But I also understand some of the truth underlying Leno's propaganda: the French "resistance" was a joke in many respects and tens of thousands of Jews were deported and killed from France (and anti-semitism remains a huge problem there).

Youyr family members were more than likely sold out by other French collaborators.

But Leno is also abosultely wrong to say it was only four people. There were thousands who resisted, joined the Maquis (the partisan guerillas) and many many were killed.

I recommend a book by Lion Feuchtwanger, a famous German Jewish writer locked up by the French and held for the Nazis : it is called "The Devil in France"

He too was a friend of my father who did his work with the underground in France.

I am writing a book about it (but sp[end too much damn time here to get it finished)

[skygazer]

18. Things to remember, however

France was bled white in WWI and they'd fought Germany in the Franco-Prussian war as well. I don't think "rolled over" is a particularly correct term - no one in Europe was able to stand up to the Germans and France had no one but themselves to try to hold them back. When the Brits booked out of Dunkirk, the French were left relatively helpless. After losing so many men in the first World War, there was precious little desire to do it again, especially alone.

It's easy for Americans, with our wide oceans and friendly neighbors, to deride the French. But it's hardly fair when you really look at history and see the big picture.

[foo_bar]

8. the part about Jews isn't really an exaggeration

On 16 July 1942, French police arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,501 children and 5,802 women, in Paris during what became known as La Grande Rafle ('the big round-up'). Most were temporarily interned in a sports stadium, in conditions witnessed by a Paris lawyer, Georges Wellers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/jewish_deportation_03.shtml

Plus ça change...

[seventhson]

9. On the other hand, there is this incredible story: (please read)

a message from the Chambon Foundation (www.chambon.org)

(Reprinted at DU with permission of the author)

NOTE: Oddly enough after posting about Le Chambon earlier today on this thread this email came. I have not had an email from the author in months. Synchronicity???


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


France and Antisemitism

Le Chambon's Challenge Today!

by Pierre Sauvage

As the Holocaust loomed, a few Jews made their way to the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the mountains of south-central France, 350 miles south of Paris. And the peasants and villagers took in the Jews who came. And the Jews kept coming. And the people kept taking them in. In this one speck of France that never ceased to be free, 5,000 Jews found shelter, at one time or another—among 5,000 Christians.

It was thus in Le Chambon that French President Jacques Chirac chose recently to deliver a major address calling upon the French to react against the rising antisemitism and intolerance in their country. His starting point was this “place steeped in history and emotion.”

“Here,” Chirac said, “in adversity, the soul of the nation manifested itself. Here was the embodiment of our country's conscience. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a place of memory. A place of resistance. A place symbolizing a France true to her principles, faithful to her heritage, true to her genius.

“On this high plateau, with its harsh winters, in solitude, sometimes in poverty, often in adversity, women and men have long upheld the values that unite us. In what was one of the most deprived areas of our country, standing up to all the dangers, they chose courage, generosity and dignity. They chose tolerance, solidarity and fraternity. They chose the humanist principles that unite our national community and serve as the basis of our collective destiny—the principles that make France what she is.”

I am a Jew born and sheltered in Le Chambon during the Nazi occupation. As the president of the Los Angeles-based Chambon Foundation, I have long been seeking French support to establish a museum in Le Chambon dedicated to the area’s conspiracy of goodness. I was thus gratified by a French president’s belated tribute to Le Chambon. But I was also disturbed by it: it now seems like the challenge of Le Chambon’s history to France risks being buried under praise instead of neglect.

The area of Le Chambon was an old Huguenot stronghold in historically Catholic (and now largely secular) France. Once, Protestant temples had been destroyed, the people's rights abolished, men deported to slave on galleys, women interned in towers where they scraped messages for future generations: “Resist.” Once, itinerant preachers had risked their lives reading psalms from the Old Testament and identifying with the biblical journey to the Promised Land.

During World War II, the collaborationist Vichy government willingly joined in Nazi policies, ultimately contributing to the Final Solution more than 75,000 Jews, including 10,000 children. For the people of Le Chambon, nothing that occurred then had seemed entirely unfamiliar; in every challenge there had been an echo of their forefathers' struggle and faith in the face of religious intolerance.

In France today, it is “humanist principles” and “the values of the Republic” that are nearly sanctified. Communautarisme—which roughly translates as ethnocentrism—is widely viewed as challenging the very essence of French national identity. French officials focus on upholding the militant French-style secularism known as laïcité, responding to the Islamic threat by banning conspicuous religious symbols in French public schools.

In his speech in Le Chambon, Chirac thus made no reference to the Hebrew Bible or to the New Testament, to faith or the power of religious convictions. He touched only lightly on the “Protestant Mountain’s” once determined particularism. Instead, he urged his compatriots “always to carry heritage with pride.” But had the people of Le Chambon not been motivated to resist the Holocaust by more than mere Frenchness?

If this issue matters to me, it’s in part because I was raised without any “narrow” sense of community. My parents, ardent secularists, went so far as to hide from me until I was 18 that they were Jewish—that I was Jewish. Instead, although my mother was in reality a Polish Jew and my father had been born of immigrant Jews, they successfully transmitted to me their love of French culture and, for a long time, their deeply anti-communautariste and vigorously anti-religious sentiments.

Everything changed when I returned to Le Chambon in 1982 with a film crew to gather the last testimony of the village’s righteous in what became my documentary film, Weapons of the Spirit. Until then, I had viewed religion as a source of conflict and ignorance, religious people as by definition bigoted and fundamentally stupid. It was only in editing my footage, as a result of watching the rescuers’ testimony again and again, that I began to decipher the explosive content of what they had to say. It did not make me religious, but it made my children Jews.

When I pressed Henri and Emma Héritier with regard to the risks they had taken in sheltering Jews, Madame Héritier would provide only a short, definitive response coupled with an eloquent shrug of her shoulder: “We were used to it.” Georgette Barraud had mainly this to say: “It happened so naturally. We can’t understand the fuss.”

As I recounted to Bill Moyers in an interview that followed the broadcasts of Weapons of the Spirit on PBS., I was once visiting Le Chambon with an American cousin when we ran into Marie Brottes, who for her part had helped the Jews in large measure because they were “the people of God.” Barely after being introduced, the two women hugged each other like sisters meeting after years of separation. My cousin later explained why the tears had come to her eyes: “It was like hugging a tree.”

What gave these people such solidity? What was it specifically that these peasants were so used to? And how could their actions have seemed so natural to them when the area of Le Chambon is one of only two communities in all of Nazi-occupied Europe to have been honored collectively as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust?

Given the very purpose of Chirac’s call to arms against intolerance, why wasn’t it imperative to begin acknowledging—especially in Le Chambon—the good that can be derived too from religious faith and identity? Couldn’t a better understanding of religion’s successes help in confronting its excesses? As paradoxical as it may seem to some, might there not be buried in Europe's Christian roots a needed antidote to contemporary antisemitism? If we are to become like trees ourselves, do we not need roots? Even if we are no longer religious, is it not a source of strength to identify and accept what remains in us of our ancestors? Does not France—and the world—still have much to learn from the story of Le Chambon?

It may be understandable that on the eve of Bastille Day, Chirac chose to end his address in Le Chambon by recalling that France has inscribed on the front of her public edifices the historic call to Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. But it was not the motto of the Republic that the President could read on the Protestant temple, across the street, that he declined to visit. It was a religious admonition: “Love One Another.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Sauvage is president of the Los Angeles-based Chambon Foundation (www.chambon.org). He directed Weapons of the Spirit and the upcoming And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille.

© Chambon Foundation, 2004. This article has been published (with variations) in the Paris daily Le Figaro and in the Jewish newspaper the Forward, and is available for further publication. The article is available online (also in a longer version) on the Chambon Foundation's website, which also contains more information on President Chirac's visit.

[foo_bar]

12. Le Chambon:Europe::Denmark:The Milky Way

It reassures me that people do the right thing when lightning strikes twice. Mais je comprends pas comment le capital philosophique du monde philosophique pourrait oublier philosophie.

[shelley806]

14. Viva le Chambon!

What a wonderful, inspiring, and beautifully written article. I really needed that at this point in time, and you've made me want to read about the French Resistence. And I will definitely read Pierre Sauvage. I wandered onto this spot quite by "chance" and found just what I needed. Synchronicity rocks.

[seventhson]

16. Look for his film "Weapons of the Spirit" about Chambon AND Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers interview with Sauvage is included in the video

[shelley806]

17. Thank You I will...more synchronicity!

The day before yesterday, I happened upon the following article, linked from this site:

"Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Hussein Siphon Billions from UN Oil-for-Food Program" By Jason Leopold

I've been following the Halliburton cover-up, as this is the most egregious example of what is not being addressed by CNN, MSNBC, and the other major media networks where most people get their news. I'm not familiar with this online journal, Scoops, but I noticed an article by Bill Moyers, whom I so admire, and clicked on it, and what does he discuss but the very real and frightening current state of media news in corporate conglomerate, and the dangers this imposes upon our freedoms. It's quite a lengthy article, amusing and seriously reflective. Some snipets follow, if you're interested. I would love to hear what Moyers has to say about Sinclair's recent decision. (I don't know why the copied link is not showing up as a highlighted link. Sorry.)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0410/S00120.htm

JOURNALISM UNDER FIRE

This speech was given by Bill Moyers at a Society of Professional Journalists conference on Sept. 11, 2004.
By Bill Moyers


"If raging ideologies are difficult to penetrate, so is secrecy. Secrecy is hardly a new or surprising story. But we are witnessing new barriers imposed on public access to information and a rapid mutation of America's political culture in favor of the secret rule of government."

"But never has there been an administration like the one in power today so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and, in defiance of the Constitution, from their representatives in Congress. The litany is long: The president's chief of staff orders a review that leads to at least 6000 documents being pulled from government websites. The Defense Department bans photos of military caskets being returned to the U.S. To hide the influence of Kenneth Lay, Enron, and other energy moguls, the vice president stonewalls his energy task force records with the help of his duck-hunting pal on the Supreme Court. The CIA adds a new question to its standard employee polygraph exam, asking, "Do you have friends in the media?"

"Now we are buying into the very paradigm of a "war on terror" that our government with staggering banality, soaring hubris, and stunning bravado employs to elicit public acquiescence while offering no criterion of success or failure, no knowledge of the cost, and no measure of democratic accountability."

"That's why I have also become a nuisance, if not a fanatic, on the perils of media consolidation."

"Sure enough, as merger as followed merger, journalism has been driven further down the hierarchy of values in the huge conglomerates that dominate what we see, read and hear. And to feed the profit margins journalism has been directed to other priorities than "the news we need to know to keep our freedoms.""

"A profound transformation is happening here. The framers of our nation never envisioned these huge media giants; never imagined what could happen if big government, big publishing and big broadcasters ever saw eye to eye in putting the public's need for news second to their own interests and to the ideology of free-market economics. Nor could they have foreseen the rise of a quasi-official partisan press serving as a mighty megaphone for the regime in power. Stretching from Washington think tanks funded by corporations to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's far-flung empire of tabloid journalism to the nattering know- nothings of talk radio, a ceaseless conveyor belt often taking its cues from daily talking points supplied by the Republican National Committee moves mountains of the official party line into the public discourse. But that's not their only mission. They wage war on anyone who does not subscribe to the propaganda, heaping scorn on what they call "old-school journalism.""

"But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined."

"I believe democracy requires "a sacred contract" between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works."

[seventhson]

19. great piece. I saw Moyers at a conference on inequality

and poverty on Link TV the other day.

My God what a master of wordsmanship and so right about the dangers we face

[mitchum]

10. This Frenchman will kick the shit out of that unfunny freak

Bring it on, motorcycleboy

[genius]

11. Leno's been a patsy for the Republicans for years.

[BonjourUSA]

15. Just some history points recall

Population in 1940 : Germany more than 100 million, France 43 million.

WWII losses (Civilian + military) :
US : 298 000 (Europe + Pacific) ;
France : 540 000 (about 120 000 killed by allied forces - bombing) ;
Germany : 3.81 million civilians + 3,85 million military ;
Poland : 5.8 million = 14% of the population

[TexasSissy]

20. There were more than 4, of course. Not funny. Even if there were just

a few of them, it was a very brave endeavor nonetheless. I've seen more than a few documentaries, and I have learned that the French Resistance DID, in fact, save some British soldiers' lives.

Leno maybe doesn't understand. The French Resistance didn't battle the Nazis head-on to get them out of France. They worked secretly FOR the allies' efforts and AGAINST the interests of the Nazis. True, most French accepted their fate when Germany invaded instead of fighting like the Iraqis. They didn't like it, they didn't want it. But they had been invaded and apparently chose not to be suicide bombers (they couldn't win against the German army).

Even if there were only a few, that's an insulting remark.

[JP Belgium]

21. Please send this clown to Marseille, Foreign Legion HQ (n/t)