Le Pen is Mightier Than the Media Whores
James Versluys
"This election is not entertainment. This election is serious business," says European Commission vice president Neil Kinnock.
Wrong you are, Neil my boy. Entertainment is precisely what this election is about.
Anyone who wants confirmation that the press is a creature of habit and ideology need look no further than the election results of Sunday’s pre-runoff presidential elections in France. National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen took the second place spot, ousting chandala socialist Lionel Jospin, advancing to the final round of voting with Gaullist Jacque Chirac and making great fun for all students of politics. The European press could not have been more seared with frustration and convulsed in near grand mal seizures of rationalization over the tragedy, and the press could not have been more universally damning if it had tried.
"Non!" cries the lefty paper Liberation in a hugely gratifying display of shock. Honest, this is better than drugs. Some drugs, anyway. Well, aspirin for sure. Every excuse in the book poured out within seconds of Le Pen’s win. Seconds! The media just shrieked. I distinctly saw far more anger and indignation in the European media than I ever did on September 11th. After all, that was only the mass murder of Americans by Muslim fanatics, whereas this is potentially embarrassing for the EU. Zee French must keep zee perspective, no?
A nasty gun crime committed against a French provincial town government was blamed for the result. Recent Muslim burnings of synagogues must have been the reason. Unemployment ticked up, so it's not real. The underlying message is the exact same in every left explanation of any right wing election success: the Right didn't really earn it. It was just because the Left didn't get its message out. Or the nascent campaigns weren't slick enough. Or unemployment has been ticking up lately. Or the left was fragmented. The whole spectacle rather reminded me of John Belushi on his knees begging for his life from Carrie Fisher.
Never the slightest suggestion that the Right could win because it won a war of ideas. Could Monsieur Le Pen have won simply because he got more votes than the other guy in a fair election? Why, no, now that you ask. That reason is exclusively reserved for those wonderful times when the Left wins. "How could it happen?" whines some hack from UK Independent. Clearly not because they were preferred by the electorate. Non! I must admit that the near total mistrust and loathing of the European upper classes for expressions of democracy is heartening for an aristocratist like myself. Monarchy must still have a chance in a system where the first, middle, and last instinct of the putative ruling class is to shunt the will of the people as far away from the possibility of success as can be mustered without a coup.
Seasoned observers of both foreign and domestic American journalism will experience a rolling flash of recognition at the coverage. It's the same set of explanations used to explain away every election victory, every gain by the enemy on the Right. It would make a good research project for a young conservative fellow wishing to show some potential to go through the laundry list of reasons trotted out for every right-wing gain in the polls and compare them to the explanations given to left-wing victories. After 10 years of observing elections, I have never once failed to have some leftist explain to me that election results bringing rightist victories are not true expressions of the popular will because "not everyone voted."
The non-voters are thus always tallied with the assumption they were turned off leftists. Le Pen's victory was no different. Eleven out of 12 of the first articles I read noted the "historic low" turnout of 72 percent among the French electorate. This time it was a mild low, but the process is the same in rightist elections without especially low turnouts. I have yet to read of a mainstream press analysis that didn't mention how few voters actually came out in an American election where Republicans won, although all US elections have consistently low turnout. Rightists voted into office are never voted in by the 'real majority.' Le Pen's victory in this election certainly triggered the same series of explanations used during the 1994 congressional elections that turned control of both houses of congress over to the Republicans. That wasn't real either.
Mainstream press coverage of rightist electoral victories always and invariably boils down to one incredibly trite and boring word: fear: fear of muslims, fear of unemployment, fear of brown people. This is an interesting analysis of the moment, with the French and European establishments wetting themselves like surprised Pomeranians. Wait, I forgot myself for a moment. I speak of the Left, so it's not fear, it's concern bordering on heart palpitations. Or, as a Liberation article put it, 'Je me sauve, je ne veux pas voir ça!'. And how, buddy.
At the time, I'd been waiting for the election results near my computer, highly annoyed at the time interval difference that forced me to do it in the middle of my ill-timed work schedule. The entire Continental press was busily not predicting a Le Pen win, and were routinely giving pronunciamentos assuring the world of a boring Chirac-Jospin runoff. The prediction amounted to a force of will on the part of the press and establishment, because none of the pre-election activity supported that theory. Considering Le Pen's close campaign and the distracting fact that French voters are notorious and inveterate liars when it comes to polling questions, more people should have seen this coming. Le Pen has shown lower poll support than he actually got in every election since he began running, when he scored less than one percent in pre-runoff elections. There was no reason to think this election was different than all the other times Le Pen had his polling scores low-balled. It's improbable that every last intelligent person in France had been killed off in 1789, so the Jospin-Chirac theory must be something more akin aggressive wishful thinking on the part of the establishment-media complex than honest prediction. I don't want to call the mainstream European press a vast pack of jackals and liars, but...I don't know how to finish that sentence.
Le Pen partisans knew the score. "I am very pleased. It will finally change things. It shows that the French are tired of being taken for idiots," said Dominique Galles, a Le Pen voter.
Immediately after hearing the results I called an academic leftist friend of mine to tell him the news. We both speak about European elections often, so I gloated, and in a moment of mischievousness told him that Le Pen had won the election of president. In his agony he forgot about the two-step winnowing process and let out the most viscerally satisfying moan of horror I have ever been blessed to experience. After milking the moment for all it was worth, I told him of the intense unlikelihood of a Le Pen presidency. He was brought up in spirits again, only to fall into despair a second time when he did some math with the votes, with all 16 candidates. He could tell the Le Pen vote was still a serious blow to the Left, and he could see it was just one part of a trend that could possibly envelope the entirety of Western Europe before next year is finished. For such a talkative bastard, he sure was quiet a lot.
So no, Neil. This election might not be entertainment for you, but it sure is to a lot of other people.
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