France Decapitated (again)

[Completely off topic]

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen recently traveled to Paris and didn’t like what he saw. His latest op-ed is titled “France Decapitated,” and it predicts a dark future for The Republic.

My favorite Francophile, former Haaretz Editor in Chief Dov Alfon, who now publishes a great Hebrew-language magazine called Alaxon, adds some figures from the NYT’s archive (on his Facebook page):

Year in which The New York Times first described France as “a state in decline”: 1852

Number of times the “decline” of France was described in The New York Times since then: 35,400

Date of the first appearance of the word “malaise” in a Roger Cohen’s article about France: August 23, 1992

Number of articles about France in which Roger Cohen used the word “malaise” since then: 16

Percentage of articles about France by Roger Cohen including the word “problems”: 76%

Percentage including “huge problems”: 23%

Number of articles in which Roger Cohen predicted the downfall of France in The New York Times archive: 546

Number of times his prophecy was fulfilled: 0

Alfon told me that some numbers could be a bit off – he didn’t read all of Roger Cohen’s pieces; this would be too cruel to ask of him. Happy July 14, French readers!