The Clinton Impeachment: A View from France

For the french, the trial of the president of the united states was from beginning to end incredible, unimaginable, surrealistic. Your run-of-the-mill French citizen found the Americans to be both ridiculous, prudish, and feverishly preoccupied with smut. From the time of de Gaulle and the once-powerful local communists, we have repeatedly heard that Americans are naïve, backward, arrogant, and imperialistic. And now, voilà, here comes the trial providing made-to-order confirmation for these hand-me-down, rudimentary judgments. Imperialism and arrogance manifested themselves in the unbelievable indifference with respect to international opinion on the part of those who wanted this trial and who insisted on broadcasting, over Internet and television channels throughout the world, the rather pitiful pornography of the Starr report and the degrading images of the world's most powerful man with his pants down. The America that was thus revealed could only cause its enemies to rejoice—they could not have hoped or wished for more. As to the view of the backward character of Americans, it was immediately thrust to the forefront by intellectuals who spoke of the Inquisition, witch hunts, McCarthyism, an inconceivable invasion of privacy, and a blow to individual freedom. There was a communion of the traditional, mainstream right-and left-wing parties in a unanimous condemnation of the proceedings. Newspapers ran “America Has Gone Amok” headlines, and magazine covers showed Clinton crucified on a feminine pubis, transposing in this way the poster of the film The People vs. Larry Flint. A well-known feminist, Elisabeth Badinter, wrote an article in the Nouvel Observateur (1998), in which she compared the fate of