653 France's Joy Boy

653 France's Joy Boy

In a world full of crazies, some are so nuts they stand out like pustules on the skin of an otherwise flawless complexion of a 20-something college girl.

Such a crazy is Alain Joyandet, the French "Minister of Cooperation." Monsieur Joyandet apparently believes the United States, by leading the relief effort in Haiti, is somehow trying to "occupy" the country. What? What nation in its right mind would want to occupy Haiti?

None. But nevertheless, France did for about 100 years and left it in ruins. Joyandet, born on the same day of the same month as Martin Luther King, Jr., is a political hack who calls himself a former journalist and is running for president of a French province, home to almost two million people. He is a member of a center-rightist party that at the moment has a majority in the French national assembly and a near-majority in the National Senate. Same party as president Nicolas Sarkozy, and is known for being only slightly to the left of the infamous racist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

France was one one of the world's great colonial powers. Does Joyandet fear that someone will outdo his ancestors? Is he just making a campaign speech. Or is just having a foot-stomping little fit because US forces operating Haiti's main airport put off the landing of a French aid plane for 24 hours until congestion cleared?

Apologists for Joyandet are busy telling us it was this last that set his mouth a ratcheting. Minister of cooperation, indeed. He wants the US role in Haiti "clarified." How much clearer can it be? We're the lead in this effort. We're the next door neighbor. We're the ones pledging aid larger than the GDP of the Tokelau Islands of New Zealand in one fell swoop.

We are the ones leading the digging of rubble, of bringing in medicine, of running an airport that was in chaos in a country that was chaotic even before the earthquakes struck. We are the ones appealing to our allies and to our trading partners to get on board. We are the ones who will pull that miserable pile of poverty up on its feet. We are the ones relieving the street gangs of their machetes. How much clearer does it get, Mr. Joy-less?

Go back to your office. Find a dictionary. Look up the word Cooperation. It's spelled the same in French and in English.

Shrapnel:

--The Scott heard round the world? Massachusetts picked the wrong senator. And the White House blew its chances for meaningful health care reform by fiddling while its 60 vote majority burned.

--Robert B. Parker has died. He was a best selling mystery writer and author of the Spenser books, some of which were turned into the TV series "Spenser For Hire." Parker was 77.

--Guns don't save people, people save people. Uh... but not always. Guy in California drove his SUV into a fairly deep creek. Used his handgun to blast out a window and then swam to safety.


I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2010