Who cares what happens in Paris?

"Who cares what happens in Paris, France?  That's not here. That's a foreign country.  We gotta be concerned about Ferguson, not Paris."


After September 11, 2001, Americans discovered that "the world" (outside the United States), unfortunately for many of my compatriots, does "matter."

So that the massacre of journalists in Paris does matter. especially coming from the one Western country with the highest percentage of Muslims.

Granted irony and satire and nuance are not part of the American diet.  (Charlie Hebdo is an irreverent*, often politically incorrect weekly famed for its satirical cartoons).

Most Americans prefer the more direct, sucker-punch approach.




* irrespective of religion or ideology, whether it be the Pope, fundamentalists of any stripe, the president of the French Republic, Putin, etc.



"La France a invente la liberte.  Il n'y pas de pays qui a paye de plus grand prix pour la defendre."
-John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, January 7, 2105