Very “JOOOOOO!!!!!”-y comments this week. I don’t even have to look…
We were told Parisians’ rapid return to their sidewalk cafés and like amusements was “a show of resilience.” So too, we heard, was Charlie Hebdo’s greatly anticipated first cover, post-attack: a dancing man riddled with bullet holes, and the caption “They have weapons. F—- them. We have champagne!”
“You know, you can have both, guys,” said the friend who posted the cover in my Facebook timeline. Indeed. See: well, Israel. “Rough men” and all that.
But again: Gavin McInnes reports that this elementary concept is utterly foreign to the supposedly formidable French mind, right wing or left.
Note bien: The same race that gave us the phrase “joie de vivre” also came up with “ennui.” When does the celebration of life become its sinister shadow—that is: decadence, with all that word’s etymology implies? I’d say, “Ask the denizens of any Weimar cabaret,” but of course, they’ve been dead a long time…
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