Welcome to Swans Commentary http://www.swans.com/ July 26, 2010
Note from the Editors: This year's Tour de France couldn't have come at
a better time for President Sarkozy, who found himself in the center of
a soap-operatic family feud between France's wealthiest woman --
cosmetic giant L'Oréal's matriarch -- and her heiress daughter, complete
with the butler's secret tapes, allegations of tax evasion, and
rumblings of illegal contributions to le president's campaign. As the
cycling fans clear the Champs-Elysées after another amazing Tour and
turn their sights to the unfolding sociopolitical spectator sport,
Gilles d'Aymery recaps the events of his second-favorite competition
(after the World Cup, bien sûr). In the meantime, Peter Byrne discovered
France in India, which he recounts in an amusing tale intertwined with
an Indian Francophile, national character, and a road that leads back to
Swans French editor.
On a more somber note, Bo Keeley writes from Mexico, weaving a
fascinating rags to riches story on laissez faire and the impact of the
US recession on the border towns, where corruption is a way of life and
survival can be found in the garbage heaps. According to Femi Akomolafe
the outlook is not much brighter in Ghana, whose corrupt and inept
government continues to ignore the fundamental and solvable problems,
from preventable diseases to flooding, that victimize its citizens year
after year. It is noteworthy in this context to read Paul Buhle's recent
talk on US foreign policy and the different theological and political
journeys of William Appleman Williams and Reinhold Niebuhr, along with
Michael Barker's analysis of elite "reform" and progressive social
change. Debating such topics is a challenge even in the university
setting, as Harvey Whitney, Jr. has discovered, and he considers the
invocation of fallacy in academic discourse, while Michael Doliner
addresses fallacies in a less-academic treatise on phony bastards.
On a cultural note, Charles Marowitz remembers Peter Barnes, whom he
considers probably the most brilliant anti-social playwright England
produced in the last quarter of the 20th century; Art Shay waxes poetic
over the warranty; and we close with Guido Monte's blending of verses
and phrases of poets and writers from many different times and worlds.
No letters to the editor this time around. Sorry (or should we be?) we
do not publish anonymous comments, which we receive in bundles time in
and out, but never, ever publish.
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Cordially,
Gilles d'Aymery
--
Swans
"Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht
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