France, Joe Millionaire
Better late than never?

By Seth R. Norman
7:00 PM, 2/12/2003

Art mimics life. Maybe that's why FOX mimics French foreign policy. Behold: Joe Millionaire.

Monday night's "finale" stuck with the show's central theme of betrayal and deceit and turned out not to be a finale at all. Evan (Joe Millionaire) didn't pick a woman to propose to and didn't break the news that he's just a $19K/year construction worker.
Instead, we at home were forced to sit through a clip show rehashing old lame episodes and once again Americans were held hostage by an indecisive, lowbrow playboy stumbling around the French countryside.

Millions of people held hostage by someone in France. Change the channel to FOX News and you can see the same thing.

Early yesterday morning, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson requested that the organization send Turkey, a NATO member, stockpiles of defensive weapons--such as AWACS radar panes, Patriot air-defense missiles and anti-germ agents. The Turkish parliament, which recently voted to allow American soldiers into the country to form a staging area for the invasion of Iraq is fearful-and rightfully so, that Iraq may launch a
retaliatory attack on the nation.

In a shameful display of cowardice that both shirks its responsibilities as an international power and as a NATO member, France (along with Germany and Belgium) blocked the
shipment of these defensive tools. The reasoning behind this decision was, as Belgium's foreign minister, Louis Michel, explained, was that "it would signify that we have already
entered into the logic of war" and that any chance for peace was "gone."

Not so hard to stall for peace when Turkey is the one with its neck out on the chopping block (no pun intended). But France and the other WWII dropouts keep insisting that since no actual assault has taken place on Turkish soil, they are well within their rights to
restrict the shipment of these arms. In a tasteless display of selfishness, these nations are turning their back on an organization that protected them from the Communist block for
over 50 years.

And yet, after all this whining and war-mongering accusations, France still dispatched the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Mediterranean on February fourth to begin "unrelated training exercises," as President Jacque Chirac calls them. As France risks the lives of innocent Turkish civilians, it positions itself to join the conflict at the last minute; thus insuring minimum risk while securing maximum control in the post-war Middle East.

As America is forced to wait one more week for the two-hour explosive season finale of Joe Millionaire, we must sit back a stunned moment and reflect on how we've been misled. As the world waits perhaps only one more month until the explosive conflict in Iraq finalizes Saddam Hussein's regime of terror, we must sit back a stunned moment and reflect on France and it's "old Europe" fuss brigade.

How a nation can question the morality of President Bush, while manipulating its position in a struggle it claims to condemn; all while risking innocent lives is despicable. For an administration that spends a lot of time critiquing America's true intentions,
maybe President Chirac should bite his tongue as he positions warships in the region while lambasting Bush as an inept warmonger.