Thursday 4 October 2007

French Republic = United States of America (II): The Tazering Years

Just in case anyone thought that my last post on France and the US was frivolous - here's another tiny step towards French Americanisation. According to an announcement reported by today's Le Monde, the French municipal police will be equipped with - Tazers. It seems like all things American, good and bad, eventually cross the Pond. If the French aren't careful, Oreo-topped pizza might be next...

The French, however, will have to use Tazers more carefully than police in Flordia did during a recent John Kerry speech (see below): if every rambling audience member at French political rallies was to get tazered, the whole audience would be sent into paralysis sooner or later.

Better idea still: politicians on TV debates, when they exceed their allocated speaking time, could be tazered into silence. I knew America would find a way of silencing these self-righteous French politicos eventually... and a few years ago, when the "Freedom Fries Years" gave no indication that they might be succeeded by the "French Tazering Years", we all feared that the Whist House's weapon of choice might be rather less peaceful!

2 comments:

Gracchi said...

What about politicians who don't answer the question- the whole British political class would have been done- Michael Howard 14 times!

Yascha Mounk said...

But Michael Howard got grilled about it by Jeremy Paxman, at least!

And there's Prime Minister's Question Time. Britain, of any political system I know, certainly have the best debate culture.

Though in that respect (and just in that) the Blair/Howard years were more fun than the numerable Brown/Cameron years we seem to have ahead of us now...