- "All ye Poets of the Age!
- All ye Witlings of the Stage!
- Learn your Jingles to reform!
- Crop your Numbers and Conform:
- Let your little Verses flow
- Gently, Sweetly, Row by Row:
- Let the Verse the Subject fit;
- Little Subject, Little Wit.
- Namby-Pamby is your Guide;
- Albion's Joy, Hibernia's Pride."
- -- by Henry Carey
Joie de Decline by Claire Berlinski - City Journal
I arrived in Paris to find commuter trains on strike, graffiti everywhere, the streets filthy, and every restaurant at which one might eat with a toddler closed. But Paris is always like this, and I saw no sign of distress at the imminent prospect of the eurozone breakup or even much evidence of a recession.
I had been in New York and then in Istanbul the week before. Of the three cities, New York is the only one where everything works reliably. In Istanbul, where I live, no one is ever on time for anything; the word “deadline” has no meaning. Once I nearly collapsed in shock after a repairman told me that he would be at my apartment within 90 minutes and was indeed there within 90 minutes. At first, I was suspicious. Was he a spy? When I concluded that he had really come to fix something, I had to fight back tears of gratitude.
The exception to Istanbul’s dysfunction is Atatürk International, one of the most pleasant and efficient airports in the world—it took me just 15 minutes, starting from my deposit at curbside, to get through check-in, security, and immigration—and Turkish Airlines, which I adore, despite those discomfiting rumors about its prioritization of customer service over pilot training. I’ll take the customer service and my chances, not to mention the certainty that Turkish Airlines won’t be on strike and the high probability that Air France will be.
No one in France seems to have grasped the connection between the country’s army of ceaselessly striking civil servants and the prospect of economic doom. For now, the cash machines still dispense euros, and the army of civil servants still makes French life more pleasant, not less. After all, they provide an agreeable diversion. My father, who lives in Paris, was taking out the garbage when he was accosted by two women in uniform, members of the ecology police, patrolling the neighborhood to make sure that tenants understood the importance of recycling. He offered them his opinion: recycling is a stupid racket. They listened and then offered the official state opinion: recycling is not a stupid racket. They were polite, well-informed, and dogged. In the end, they won: he agreed to recycle. It was all very civilized, and one could see that many people in the neighborhood found the bureaucrats’ visit pleasant.
-more at link-
No comments:
Post a Comment