psychology dector

French TV is supposed to be in color.  I prefer to say it's black and white: either incredibly lousy or splendid. The time-honored TV celebrity Michel Drucker had harsh words concerning a nitwit named CH who would make me vomit if ever I were obliged to watch him for any length of time. Drucker has been around for decades, and his TV credentials are the finest in French media history. Concerning the vomit guy, Drucker came up with a delightful formula: It was impossible for me to do that kind of bad TV work. My mother would have been disgusted. She wouldn't have let me come home. She would have changed the door locks to keep me out in the cold.

Click here to view a TV-studio performance of Jean Dujardin in December 1996.

On Tuesday evening, the excellent investigation show run by Elise Lucet wanted to illustrate the problems they had encountered in trying desperately to contact the French minister of Defence, Jean-Yves Le Drian , So, they screened a fake alert message, of the kind sent out by police when a child has been kidnapped. There was just one big problem. At that same instant, a baby had in fact been kidnapped, and the police sent out an authentic alert message. But that was neither here nor there. The confusion simply added to the atmosphere of an excellent show, whose highlight was a no-holds-barred debate between the brilliant journalist and Christian Estrosi , mayor of Nice. The right-wing politician, with financial egg on his face, was being blasted for the costly deal he had struck up with a private firm in order to obtain for Nice a luxurious sporting stadium… which appears to be half-empty most of the time. As for the baby kidnapped in Grenoble by her father, she was soon found, unharm...

Last night’s L’Emission politique was a calamity. My personal opinion is that both journalists— David Pujadas and Léa Salamé —should be invited to take a break of a month or so, giving France 2 the possibility of halting this show and replacing it, if possible, by something more coherent, more friendly and peaceful. The current style has simply veered into nasty absurdity. Last night, to greet a smart French statesman, Alain Juppé , who'll probably become president of France, that pair of tired little nincompoops decided to hurl at him two fellows who seemed to emerge from a low-quality movie. One was a dubious specimen from the field of finance. The other, a brain-damaged extremist-right-wing politician. I was so disgusted that I almost turned off the TV… but I persevered in order to appreciate the skill with which the candidate might succeed (he did) in trudging through all the smelly slime thrown in his face.