Tea at Trianon: Facebook and the French Resistance

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Facebook and the French Resistance

Matthew Fraser, a Paris-based journalist and professor at the American University of Paris and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, looks at Facebook has made inroads everywhere.

When Facebook and Twitter first surfaced several years ago, the French showed relatively little interest in these online networks. A French alternative to Facebook, called Skyrock, was more popular. But Facebook’s global success was unstoppable. Today, it has three times more members than Skyrock in France.

If Skyrock were still the biggest online social network in France, however, it’s a good bet that regulators would not have banned its mention on TV and radio shows. French national pride would take precedence over strict application of laws. The Minitel, in its day, was not banned from promoting commercial services. Officious micro-regulations are reserved for foreign -- and, in particular, American -- services and technologies.

Can we say this is an example of overt anti-Americanism? Probably not. But it is not entirely irrelevant to situate this latest French obstacle to American technological and cultural influence within the longstanding animosity between France and the U.S. in these spheres. (Read entire article.)