In case you haven’t been watching the news, Bolivia went and installed itself a new indigenous president package lately. This could signify big things (whether it signifies good things is not mine to speculate, I’ll leave it to the outstandingly boring tele intellectuos). But it might means decent representation of the predominantly amerindian people. It might mean better redistribution of wealth form the profits of natural resources.
And so how do the main French news channels reporting this blip on the political horizon?
‘And a visit today by the Bolivian president who met with our brandy marinated fruitcake president Chirac (oh, how I do wish they would say it) …without a tie’
‘The Bolivian president was sworn into parliament today... still without a tie’
Yes, bravo, 10 points for the astute fashion centric commentary. Possibly its concerning to see a head of state wandering about without the blood supply being cut off somewhere around the neck area. Possibly all this extra blood rushing about might trigger the thinking power required to, oh, say – run a country.
As an aside, the French word for tie is cravat. Which is what we call that impossibly complicated opportunity to strangle oneself with romantic flourish. So unless they’ve come up with another name for it, the French are missing a word here. Which seems impossible where clothing is concerned. Actually the truth is I can’t be bothered checking my facts. It’s a long couple of metres to the dictionary.
Anyway, still on the topic of trying to pass miscellaneous clothes drivel off as news (which hardly seems necessary considering the spring summer collection season – and oh, someones painted Giorgio Armani a startlingly vibrant orange. Who convinces these people that carrot orange passes for tan. Who?) they sent off the evidently underworked morning camera crew (probably the work experience mob) down to one of the Paris train stations sometime around 6 yesterday morning so that they could have some completely unimaginative images to flesh out a headline story that went something along the lines of ‘Bit chilly today eh?’ So granted, there is a big nasty cold snap whipping about Eastern Europe and generally causing mayhem and brass monkey freezing. This has translated to a winter nip about the heels here in France. Trains still work. Cars still manage to stop colliding into each other (as much as they can in this country) we pull out the extra woolly scarf from the cupboard and zip up the coat to the chin. However, its hardly enough of a reason to send off the AM camera detail to the train station so they can interview the guy who had his coat zip somewhere around mid chest (flouting cold fashion norms) level and film old dears in tragically boring beanies. I may be semi comatose in front of the morning telly, but I’m not that cerebrally disconnected yet…
2 comments:
Oh come on, that's not the only thing they said. And it seemed to me it was more a "good on him for doing it" rather than a "my, what a fashion faux-pas".
But you sound like today might not be the day to argue the fine points of journalistic subtlety... ;)
But its so much more amusing to grizzle about it ;p
Ok, so the first time it was a bit 'good on him', the second time it was a bit 'oho! his still on the no-tie gimmick'.
Of course we should overlook my hypocrisy about discussing it so much when what bugged me to start with was the fact they thought it was worth mentioning at all
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