France Decapitated (again)

Noam Sheizaf By Noam Sheizaf July 10, 2014 | Edit

[Completely off topic]

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen recently traveled to Paris and didn’t like what he saw. His latest op-ed is titled “France Decapitated,” and it predicts a dark future for The Republic.

My favorite Francophile, former Haaretz Editor in Chief Dov Alfon, who now publishes a great Hebrew-language magazine called Alaxon, adds some figures from the NYT’s archive (on his Facebook page):

Year in which The New York Times first described France as “a state in decline”: 1852

Number of times the “decline” of France was described in The New York Times since then: 35,400

Date of the first appearance of the word “malaise” in a Roger Cohen’s article about France: August 23, 1992

Number of articles about France in which Roger Cohen used the word “malaise” since then: 16

Percentage of articles about France by Roger Cohen including the word “problems”: 76%

Percentage including “huge problems”: 23%

Number of articles in which Roger Cohen predicted the downfall of France in The New York Times archive: 546

Number of times his prophecy was fulfilled: 0

Alfon told me that some numbers could be a bit off – he didn’t read all of Roger Cohen’s pieces; this would be too cruel to ask of him. Happy July 14, French readers!

Noam Sheizaf

Noam Sheizaf is an independent journalist and editor. He was the founding executive director and editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine. Prior to joining +972, he worked for Tel Aviv’s Ha-ir local paper, Ynet, and the Maariv daily, where his last position was deputy editor of the weekend magazine. He is currently working on a number of documentary films.

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