Dec. 8, 2006
 
COMMENTARY: Cultural Learnings of America
 
By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
 
Sometimes the more fastidious French intellectuals must think they can't win for losing in the culture wars.
 
This week a French 24-hour news channel, France 24, modeled on CNN, the BBC and al-Jazeera, went on the air with government encouragement and funding to offer news from a French perspective and to offset Anglo-Saxon -- that's us and the Brits -- "cultural imperialism."
 
France 24 will broadcast in French and English and eventually Arabic. So far in this country it is available to only a limited number of Comcast cable subscribers in the Washington, D.C., area.
 
Even as France 24 went on the air to reclaim the cultural high ground, American culture was striking deep in the heart of Paris. An American monster-truck show had come to the City of Light as part of a European tour and had caught on big with French youngsters, especially the boys, according to The Wall Street Journal.
 
The crowds counted down -- in French, to be sure -- as the Grave Digger deafeningly fired up and crushed a row of old cars. Monster trucks wreaking destruction is a universal language, it seems, and apparently there's a market in France for what the Journal called "the ultimate in American bubba entertainment."
 
We hope France 24 vastly expands its reach in America because, frankly, we're curious if and how the channel covers monster-truck rallies now that they've crashed into the French cultural scene.
 
Fastidious French intellectuals can never rest. It's always something. Maybe we shouldn't tell them just yet about tractor pulls.
 
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