God Help Them - It Sure Ain't Funny

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Here's a question: does anybody know how much money it costs to have a something printed, distributed, prominently displayed and sold at newspaper kiosks all over Paris? What are the difficulties one would encounter? Start-up capital? And if you carry no ads? How do you start? Whom do you need to know? Can any idiot do it or just these ones?

Here's another of the first thinga I bought at a newspaper kiosk that Monday. I purchased it as a sort of cultural artifact. At the airport, I found the publication you see above prominently displayed. I asked the guy behind the register if he'd sold many copies and he told me that mine was the first he'd sold. "C'est fou, la politique," he said, throwing a hand in the air dismissively. I don't know when it hit the streets but it might have been that it was the first day the thing had been available. All I know is — and I'm sorry I didn't get any photos — it is up front and center. Not in the back with the motorcycle magazines or other satyrical publications but right next to Le Monde, Libé, Les Echos, etc.

This is not publication that is important in and of itself. What is significant is its presence at the newstands. So much of French anti-American sentiment claims to be animated by provocative anti-French sentiment in the "presse yankee." Yet can anyone imagine the reaction if nearly every newspaper stand in Washington, DC carried a publication called "The Frog Basher" (and how much more devastating would it be if W. were the editor?)

Who are the well-connected jokers who put out this thing? Will there be a January '05 issue? It cost €1.50 and carries no advertising (thank God). The masthead has the following names on it: Editor and Publisher: Frédéric Royer Art Director: Arnaud Demanche Deputy Editor in Chief: Diego Saavedra Editorial Manager: Agnès Brisset Contributing Writers in France: Frabrice Argelas, Santiago de Cuba, Clara Dupond-Monot, Jean-Pierre Liégois, Olivier Malnuit, Stéphane Rose, Théodore Valente; in the US: Jean-Michel de Alberti, Andy Bilchbaum, Mike Bonnano, Nadya Connolly Williams, Fabrice Legique Design: Pierre Bunk, Arnaud Demanche, Frédéric Pierre.

According to the geeks on this discussion thread, Jean-Pierre Liégois and Frédéric Royer used to publish a satyrical weekly called L'Examineur. The old Web address for that site is a redirect to L'Anti-Américain Primaire (which I only saw after scanning in the copy I'd carefully kept from my trip). You can rest assured, January's edition is in the works and is to appear on Monday. "We're gonna bust a gut," writes the first commenter in the thread.

The masthead also says that AAP is published by DF Presse but gives the address as 4, impasse Montlouis, 75010 Paris. I believe that address is actually in the 11th. It's license number from the Commission Paritaire is pending and it is printed in France by Siep in Bois-le-Roi outside Melun.

They have yahoo email address for "press contacts" : mediasaap@yahoo.com. And they actually invite reactions at lantiamericainprimaire@yahoo.com.

I haven't scanned in any extra pages but I'll take requests if anybody wants me to.

On the cover: a banner playing on Jean-Marie Colombani's famous front-page editorial in Le Monde following September 11th: "We are all anti-Americans!" The deck of on the front page identifies the paper as a "satyrical and funny-ish monthly." The lede hedline is "France Offers Political Asylum to Americans! Cut-out for our Democrat friends: the refugee form, p. 2" (They have no Democrat friends.) The hed next to the picture of Bush flipping the bird reads, "4 Ways to Lodge a Grievance Against Bush." The teaser heds on the right and below are: "Bill O'Reilly, died-in-the wool anti-French, p. 3;" "How to prevent the inauguration in January, p.5;" "Operation freedom for Condoleeza Rice, p.11;" "They never landed in 1944! p. 13;" "A scientific study proves it: Americans lay turds that are too big!"

Inside on page 2, there is a lede editorial by Frédéric Royer:

"Lafayette, we are coming!" proclaimed general Pershing, flying to the aid of France in 1917. "Bush, here we are!" at last we shout today. For three years now, the French have been courageously suffering the mockery of the US people, never daring to respond. As the reelection of George W. Bush makes us fear the worst — there was September 11; some now say there is November 2 — we shout loud and clear, "Enough!" and let us brandish the weapon of satyrical destruction that you are holding in your hands. All of you have felt the same these many months, the United States have never before been as present in our daily preoccupations and have never weighed as heavily on our fate: we all had the feeling of voting in early November and our impotence has never been as patent. And yet, France must become the spear-head of the global anti-American struggle with L'Anti-Américain (primaire) at the very tip.

[...]

At AA(p), we are French like you: as the inhabitants of the little Gaulish village, we do not entirely know the empire we are resisting. Most of the members of our staff have of course traveled and lived in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles... but as for "middle America," we will leave it to our correspondents to set foot there. In sum, we do not really know what we're talking about (and in this we are true journalists), and let us meet bad faith (many of us are non-believers) with good will. [...]

Page 9 is a hit on André Glucksmann. Stéphane Rose writes:

Of fully sound mind and body, one of the most alert thinkers among French intellectuals has written a book to lend support to a red-faced Texan mafia boss in cow-boy boots disguised as a world policeman and who chokes on pretzels. Glucksmann, the former maoist, has taken sides with McCarthyite bigot of the worst sort. Glucksmann the intellectual, is consorting with the enemy of intelligence. Glucksmann, the friend of Sartre, is buddy-buddy with the thickest brute in the history of the far West. How far will he go? Will he support Schwarzenegger in his battle for the next presidential elections? Will he defend his books wearing a Nike hat on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News? In the meantime, in order to test his ideas, we invite him to enlis in the US Army to go fight on the Iraqi front.

On Page 11, it's that thing on Condi Rice as promised from the front page. Do they even know what racism is in France? The faintest notion? Really?

What is Condoleeza Rice doing in the US Government, alongside guys who are as un-funky and un-cool as George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney? Was Condi drugged? Hypnotized? Was she brain-washed? Does she think she's a right-wing white woman?

Doesn't get much better so I'll spare you the rest. On page 13, Stéphane Rose writes again:

In June of 1944, thousands of US soldiers parachuted onto the coast of Normandy liberated France fro mthe German invader in an epic battled known throughout the world today by the name of "débarquement." That is the official version which supported the commemoratins of the sixtieth anniversary of that even last June, an event to which the English historian Robert Patterson, professor at the university of Gloucester and World War II specialist, was not invited. This is because, according to him, not a single Yankee participated in the débarqument. "This business of US allies who save France is nonsense," he explains. "The US have never been the allies of anybody and cared not a whit for what happened in Europe in 1940, just as they don't care today."

Page 14 is sham interview with Dieudo in which he poses at McDonalds pretending to be an American cousin named Godgiven McBala O'Bala, a Republican and Bush voter. I won't spend any time translating that. I'll just say that this is where the innocence of this publication is entirely refuted. Want to have a little fun? Let off some steam? Sure. But what can we say of people who associate with Dieudonné?

That's it my friends. You lose.