Mia Doornaert, I love you. (No, not in that sense: I am very happily married.) Via LvB, here goes the editor-at-large of De Standaard, fisking VRT's resident pompous "French intellectual wannabe" Rik Coolsaet (my translation from Dutch):
Academics may of course soar at great heights, but the learned professor gave the impression he came from the boom. Because lowly institutions like the press, that have to pay a modicum of respect to facts, already knew for hours and hours from very reliable sources that [not "terrorism", but] "moral values" was the motive most often cited by voters." [LvB: As to the uncritical way in which the VRT interviewed Rik Coolsaet:] " [He] was of course never contradicted, just like he wasn't when in another VRT appearance he ascribed the pro-American policies of then-Spanish PM José Maria Aznar to the traditional gratitude of a previous generation of politicians for the Liberation after WW II. That Franco's Spain did not participate in this war [FB: well, aside from the "Division Azul" that fought with the Nazis on the Eastern Front] and was not liberated; that Aznar is manifestly of a postwar generation; who makes a fuss about this? Any European who is not anti-American can only be driven by outdated sentiments." [she sarcastically concludes] "What bugs me is not justified criticism of Bush... but the haughty, holier-than-thou tone of a shivery Europe, which is too divided and ineffectual to make its mark on the world and therefore is reduced to whining about the American "hyperpower".
Adds LvB:
We hear a lot about how "undemocratic" US Presidential elections supposedly are. The "Winner Takes All" principle [FB: also seen in England], the electoral college, registration requirements. Critics forget that in Belgium, neither the head of state nor the head of government are elected directly, unlike the US. [...] The registration requirement is a consequence of the nonexistence of a National Population Registry or of National ID Cards. Whatever one can say about the Patriot Act, the all-seeing eye of Big Brother is much more omnipresent in Belgium than in the USA.
UPDATE: Here is Mia Doornaert's original article (YMMV with the permalink). She actually would have preferred a Kerry election herself, but as she sees it, Bush ran a tight and strong campaign while Kerry blew it --- end of story. Another priceless bit:
This Europe is also so multilateral, compares so favorably with unilateral America. [Europe] is so altruistic, it invests ten times more in EU common agricultural policy than in aid to developing countries. The EU agriculture budget is big enough to pay for a first-class roundtrip ticket to New Zealand for every cow in the European Union. And meanwhile poor farmers from the Third World knock in vain on our doors (OK, American doors too) with their products, which in addition suffer competition in their own markets from our [i.e., the EU's] subsidized products.
Mia and I do not see eye to eye politically, but it looks like we have just about the same level of patience for sanctimonious hypocrisy.
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