New York Times Bias In French Election

Anybody reading the New York Times coverage of the recent French election would have had no problem knowing which candidate that paper favored. From the Media Research Center:

Paris-based New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino continued to nurse her long-standing grudge against Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-on-crime presidential candidate of France, in two stories, one before and one after Sarkozy routed Socialist candidate Segolene Royal to win the presidency. Before the vote, she fretted that “while Ms. Royal has pledged to protect and unite France, Mr. Sarkozy has often taken a ruthless us-against-them attitude” and complained: “In this election, authority apparently is deemed to be more important than compassion.” After the election, she declared that “the election was a triumph of raw ambition, efficiency and political sleight-of-hand.”

Sciolino wrote in Saturday’s “France to Vote After Presidential Race’s Scorching Finale”:

He has gambled -- apparently successfully -- during the campaign that by turning hard right he would win over supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the head of the extreme right National Front who made it into the second round of the 2002 election but made it into only fourth place this time.

While Ms. Royal has pledged to protect and unite France, Mr. Sarkozy has often taken a ruthless us-against-them attitude, stressing there is no place in France for young people who do not respect the law or for immigrants who do not embrace French values.

In Montpellier on Thursday, where he made his last campaign speech, Mr. Sarkozy railed against those who do not like him. ‘People accuse me of encouraging public anger,’ he said. ‘But who’s angry? The thugs? The drug traffickers? I can assure you -- I do not seek to be the friend of thugs.’

In this election, authority apparently is deemed to be more important than compassion.

Sarkozy’s win was Monday’s lead story, and Sciolino remained hostile:

Ms. Royal had repeatedly appealed to the women of France to vote for her in a show of female solidarity. But Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative who made his reputation as a hard-line minister of the interior, got the majority of the women’s vote, according to Ipsos, an international polling company....

He also struck a conciliatory note, reaching out to the huge swath of French people who seem to fear him, especially in the country’s ethnically and racially mixed suburbs, where he is accused of fueling tensions with his provocative language and an aggressive police presence....

With his raw, often divisive rhetoric, Mr. Sarkozy will have to change course to neutralize deep-rooted hostility against him, particularly in the tough ethnic suburbs.

About 2,000 people gathered at Place de la Bastille in central Paris to await the election results, with some burning an effigy of Mr. Sarkozy before tearing it apart.

But within two hours of the polls closing, the scene had degenerated into violent clashes between the police and several hundred people in the crowd who smashed windows and set one vehicle on fire....

The election was a triumph of raw ambition, efficiency and political sleight-of-hand.

It doesn’t occur to the Times that there might be something wrong with people who, when they face losing a democratic election, turn to violence.

In their leftist world, it is Sarkozy’s responsibility to placate the thugs.

After all, the violence is from the left, so it is righteous!

It must be galling to the American left, so used to invoking the hostility of the supposedly so civilized French against George Bush, to have a generally pro-Bush and pro-American candidate win.

It was, of course, a bad argument to make in the first place. There is nothing about the nation of France that gives it any particular moral authority.

But it was an important argument to the effete liberals, and now it has been ripped away from them.