Frere Jacques, dormez vouz?

I want to wrap my mind around this.

George Bush took eight minutes to finish reading a book to school children before heading back to deal with 9-11. FEMA took three days to reach those stranded by Hurricane Katrina (exacerbated by local government's inefficiency and obdurance). In each case people used it as proof of outright malice by the President.

Meanwhile, Jacques Chirac spent fifteen days hiding in his bidet while half his country burned.

This is not a recent phenomenon, as Denis Boyle recounts. And unlike our domestic examples, his emergence hasn't done a whole lot of diddly-squat to remedy the situation. (Fewer cars are being burnt each successive night, but that simply may be a case of the rioters running out of things to break.)

There is evidence (much of it compiled here by the intrepid Lost Budgie) that Those Who Must Not Be Named have taken advantage of the situation to indulge the anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism already much on the rise in all of Europe.

Yeah, it kinda ruins my lunch time, too.