Vous Permettez, Monsieur?

Lack of patriotic feeling could well be a criminal offense in France. What happened to that liberté business?

Richard Makela, 30, a Zairean-born rapper who performs as Monsieur R, has been brought to trial in a private prosecution by a conservative MP from the Pyrenees who says that lyrics and images from the internet video insult France.

Daniel Mach, an MP for President Chirac’s Union for a Popular Movement, is outraged over FranSSe, a song from Monsieur R’s 2005 album Politikment Incorrekt, in which he vows to urinate on Napoleon Bonaparte and General de Gaulle and says: “France is a bitch/ Don’t forget to f*** her/ To the point of exhaustion/ Like a slut/ She should be insulted.”

Comments

[Martin Owens]

I'm on the MP's side.

Free speech is a right, to be sure, but as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. remarked, even an action which is the exercise of a right is not a limitless dispensation from that act's consequences.

Monsieur Mach is simply fed the fuck up with folks who come to his country as beggars and refugees, take all the benefits and privileges and freebies they can lay hold of, and then turn around and spit, they and their state-supported children, on the people who provided all of it.

Or as Popeye the sailor said, " enough is too much."

[dave]

Perhaps France should allow Monsieur R to continue his "art" but stop subsidizing him in every other aspect of his life! Ahh France!

[Adam W.]

He shouldn't be prosecuted for this, but maybe for horrible lyrics! All short! Like this! Mainly exclamation marks! It's really obnoxious!

[John Palubiski]

If he hates France so much, and if he considers the country a whore, then why doesn't he just go back to Zaire....a country of progress and sophistication?

Seems a reasonable choice because if Makela is into sustained rape and all Zaire will know how to bugger him.

If I invited someone into my home, gave them spending money, a warm bed and a hot meal, and they then turned around and complained of my hospitality, then out the door they'd go!

I've no trouble, whatsoever, with deporting immigrants who, all the while sucking back the welfare cheques, denounce their country of "adoption" as cheap and tawdry.

And, yo! Who the fuck really needs another rap "singer" with a chip on his shoulder against "whitey", and always expressing an inveterate hatred of women and gays?

[Rogier]

I don't dispute that the man's lyrics are ugly. But so what? Will you only defend free speech if it happens to be speech that doesn't offend you? For God's sake, this man is subject to prosecution for saying critical things about his country. THAT is more offensive than any insult he cares to spout. I also disagree with the stereotypes in some of the comments above -- about welfare checks, beggars, state-supported children... Where do you GET that stuff? I find it very primitive to drag all that into it based on nothing but hunches and easy assumptions.

[Jeff the Poustman]

RE: "What happened to that liberté business?" France's history began with 'liberte' meaning not freedom in general but simply freedom from one set of bosses-- royalists. The next set of bosses was waiting in the wings--republicans (French revolutionists)-- and each new boss continues the same repression.

[John Palubiski]

I admire many of your opinions, but I will never turn liberty into a kind of god. Liberty is not to be worshipped, liberty has to be generated.

Our intrepid rapper is merely a brat devoid of behavioral parameters and self restraint.....the very prerequisites for liberty. And he is that way because he's been given everything and has had to work for nothing

Donc, à mon avis, un petit séjour, disons 15 ans à Zaire, apporteras le remède pour ses problèmes de comportement.

Désolé!

[Martin Owens]

When I say " State- supported children... who spit on the people that provided it", I am doing no more than quoting the headlines.

Subway bombs in London, riots and arson in Paris and all over France, Pym Fortyn and Theo van Gough murdered in Holland, "honor killings" in Germany, to say noting of a steady drumbeat to replace the Western rule of law with value systems out of the Dark Ages. Who does this? the SS? KGB? the Klingons?

Hell no, these are the people I mentioned- they came in to Europe as beggars and refugees, taking care to claim every special status and loophole there was. Name me a single social service or benefit they didn't take- health care, schooling, the dole.

But somehow it is an outrage to ask them to stick up for the countries which have given them so much, or even to control themselves for one minute. If one man has a right to speak, still, doesn't the other fellow have a right not to be insulted, particularly in return for generosity and acting in good faith?

And why the double standard? It would certainly be a hate crime in the EU to use ethnic slurs against this so called entertainer- why should he be able to use hate themes ( including anti feminist words like slut and bitch) and call it free speech?

Lastly, word is father to the deed.To use words calculated to arouse contempt and encourage disorder, like this clown does, is unquestionably to throw fuel on the fire.

Again, I applaud that French MP for finally calling this parasite to account.