TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #14
A markable moment (hint: Proust!)….Scooooore in Qatar….Our regular tour du monde….A weekend of elections….plus our cartoon!
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, explores how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
This week coming to you from Paris….as good a spot as any to watch the world watching America … and itself.
A memorable anniversary
In 1962, when I first arrived at Harvard, having satisfied my language requirements with five years of high school French and a ‘5’ on the Advanced Placement exam, I still wanted to know the best way of understanding France and the French people. There seemed to be all but universal unanimity. You need only read Proust.
So, I embarked on and finished À La Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past)—yes, all seven volumes—in what was then the state-of the-art translation by the British translator extraordinaire, CK Scott Moncrieff. He’d embarked on this Herculean project during Proust’s life, the first volume, Swann’s Way, published not long before the author’s death. Eighteen years later, about to leave for France to take up my new position as Paris correspondent for CBS News (yes, when there was very much a fully functioning bureau there!), I again asked a range of folks I respected—Americans and French—the same question I’d asked in 1962. And received all but unanimously the same response. So this time, I embarked on a project to read all seven volumes in the language of Proust himself. I was hooked on the man and his society and culture. I haunted the book sellers of Paris, the bouqinistes in their stalls lining the quays of the Seine, and managed to accumulate quite a respectable collection of Proust and Proustiana. I visited his beloved seaside resort of Cabourg and stayed in the Grand Hotel where he wrote and revised, endlessly, large chunks of his oeuvre, the wind lashing the terrace and rain battering the huge windows.
Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of Proust’s demise, hence a very important moment in my life as a collector and ‘amateur’ of Proust. November 18, 1922 was also one month and a few days since Moncrieff received the one and only letter from this irrepressible letter-writer, complimenting him on “the trouble you have taken” and his “fine talent,” but in his inimitable style unable to refrain from caviling with the translation of the first (and until that moment only) completed volume, Swann’s Way, which he felt should be more felicitously rendered To Swann’s Way.
To commemorate this moment, French media, every kiosk and network outdid themselves in paying homage. The Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) mounted a major exhibition, the only day with free admission being, of course, the 18th of November. I eschewed the crowds. I wanted a degree of solitude to pay my homage.
Page One …. Scoooooore !
What’s forced Ukraine, the environment, even American politics and Donald Trump (hardly synonymous of course) off front pages around the world has been one item….the quadrennial renewal of The World Cup. That’s all you really need to know. Not the soccer world cup, nor even the world cup of ‘le foot’ as the French delight in calling the sport, nor for that matter the FIFA World Cup (it’s official name—Fédération Internationale de Football Association). This is the 22nd quadrennial renewal of the world’s most watched, most followed sporting competition, the first ever held in the Arabic world, 32 national teams competing in 64 matches to decide which nation will be crowned The Greatest one month from now in Qatar as “Le Mondiale” winds up.
No wonder, incidentally, the French in particular have been so utterly transfixed by this event. They are the current titleholders from four years ago. Hoping for a most unlikely, but hardly impossible repeat. At the same time, there have been all sorts of critiques of Qatar itself, as the French daily Le Figaro splashed across its front page: “World Cup in Qatar: sports, diplomacy and polemics.”
This peaked, for some, when the Qatari government decided no booze at the event that has long been celebrated for inebriated excesses. “Fifa has confirmed alcohol will be banned for World Cup fans at grounds in a major and unprecedented volte-face just two days before the tournament will kick off in Qatar,” Sean Ingle in Doha wrote in London’s Guardian newspaper. “The news that it will not be sold inside or around the perimeter of stadiums was confirmed by Fifa in a terse statement on Friday afternoon….Football’s governing body will now be looking nervously over its shoulders at the prospect of legal action from Budweiser, which has a $75m (£63m) sponsorship agreement with Fifa and is likely to regard this as a major breach of contract…. The Guardian understands the decision was taken after the Qataris, as the host nation, decided that everyone inside World Cup stadiums had to feel comfortable – and that this would not be the case if fans were seen drinking alcohol or turned up drunk.”
Not only the Guardian, of course—rather much of the sporting world, certainly the drinking world, was understandably horrified, and even before the first ball is kicked on Sunday. But there was lots more. As the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Saturday, “In a remarkable press conference, the Fifa boss launched a sweeping attack against doubters in the controversial tournament. He also renews security guarantees for queer fans in Qatar.”
And one day before the opening, the paper continued “Fifa President Gianni Infantino [who’s Swiss] denounced Western nations for "double standards" against World Cup hosts Qatar. ‘I think what we Europeans have been doing around the world for the past 3,000 years, we should apologize for the next 3,000 years before we start giving moral advice to others,’ the 52-year-old said during a notable news conference on Saturday at media center in Doha, where he gave a monologue that lasted a good hour. ‘This way of wanting to give lessons one-sidedly is hypocritical.’ Today I feel Qatari, today I feel Arab, today I feel African. Today I feel homosexual. Today I feel disabled, today I feel like a migrant worker.’”
But perhaps the most difficult coda to Qatar’s extraordinary handling of the World Cup came when it was disclosed that the emirate’s ruler, had a long and fraternal chat with Vladimir Putin who much of the world considers all but a pariah but who still seems to have a great pal in this Emirate. Even government-controlled China Global Television could not resist reporting that “Putin congratulated Qatar on hosting the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which kicks off this weekend. In a phone call with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was interested in working in close cooperation with Qatar to ensure stability in the global gas market,” which could not have been unwelcome news to China and its desperate need for cheap oil and gas from abroad. Sheikh Tamim had already, in his phone call with Putin, thanked him for “collaborating [in] organizing this event,” referring to the World Cup from which any Russian team, incidentally, has been banned.
Somehow, though, Infantino earlier in the week from the G-20 in Bali was unable to resist inserting FIFA into the Ukrainian war—on whose side exactly? “FIFA’s president has called on Russia and Ukraine to enter a one-month ceasefire during the Qatar World Cup 2022,” DohaNews correspondent Fatemeh Salari reported.
“Gianni Infantino urged a ‘temporary ceasefire’ in Ukraine while speaking to leaders at a summit of the G20 group of major economies in Indonesia. ‘So, my plea with all of you is to stay on a temporary ceasefire for one month for the duration of the World Cup,’ he said at lunch with G20 leaders in Bali.”
How Others See the World
A ceasefire could only be welcome news to Vladimir Putin, whose forces continue to be battered and desperately needs a respite of any sort. “Ukraine will not consider entering ceasefire negotiations with Russia, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin declared in an interview to the BBC over the weekend,” the Jerusalem Post reported. “’Ukrainians are paying [with] their lives for the same struggle.’” As The Economist in London pointed out, “Russia needs a respite, so the West must help Ukraine fight on….Russia’s brutal aerial assault on Ukraine that day—its biggest barrage of missiles against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure so far [suggests] Russia is escalating because it is losing.”
Beneath a photo of rescue workers at the site of a missile that fell, apparently in error, in neighboring Poland, The Economist continued, “The West must keep its cool and intensify its support for Ukraine. This is a time for bold steps.”
And then there’s Iran. The violent protests against the excesses of the regime continue to capture the world’s attention, France’s Le Monde splashing a headline across its frontpage “Iran: the protest is growing, the regime is worried,” above a dramatic photo showing fires burning in Shiraz.
“What future does a regime offer that murders its youth?” a front-page editorial asks. “That question never stops being asked while blood has flowed now in Iran for more than two months…but fear no longer seems an answer….The legitimacy conferred by the revolution of 1979 which deposed a hated monarch has long since dissolved.”
And then we have elections…
As part of our pledge to examine every national election, the latest we have is Malaysia on Saturday, followed by a trio on Sunday—Nepal, Kazakhstan, and Equatorial Guinea, the latter two really of little real value in nations where rule comes from the top down rather than from any power conferred by the electorate.
Still, stand by on Monday for returns from all three, the latest installments of our Andelman Unleashed pledge to chronicle every election, everywhere in the world.
Finally, there’s Hermann….
It’s back to Switzerland this week, this time for the cartoonist Hermann who has quite a compelling riff on Donald Trump and his rambling, all but unhinged declaration of candidacy. As JFK said in 1960 on his inauguration, “Ask not what your country can do for you….” Now there’s Trump’s imagined riff, “Ask what you can do for me.”
Gerald Hermann, born two years before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, draws for the Swiss daily, Journal de Genève and is a member of the great Cartooning for Peace collective. Here’s how he imagines himself.
Proust! Who knew? But this is indeed a remarkable era with remarkable insights from David.
Excellent piece David, as someone who loves world news, your thoughts and words here appreciated!