The New York Times has been left looking rather foolish after one of its writers appeared to fail to understand a joke.
The paper this morning published a long (really long) feature by longstanding reporter Sarah Lyall, complete with weird, moody, moving monochrome photos.
The ominous piece – entitled Will London Fall? – picked over the consequences of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
Its basic thrust is that London – a multicultural paradise – is being dragged into bigoted oblivion against its will by oafish natives who backed Brexit.
Among Lyall’s examples of this pernicious culture at work is a report in the Times of London on a speech by French politician Emmanuel Macron, written by journalist Patrick Kidd:
He could not tell his readers exactly what Mr. Macron said, however, because, as he boasted in the article, he does not really speak French, although he studied it in school. But why should he make an effort, seemed to be the idea, when it is so easy to ridicule the French for being French, and when to be English is to feel superior to your neighbors?
“Mr. Macron did not as for directions to la gare once,” Mr. Kidd wrote, alluding to this French lessons in school. “He didn’t even say ‘zut’ or ‘bof.’ One wondered if he was French at all.”
Mr. Kidd’s hauteur isn’t surprising, given that Mr. Murdoch’s papers and the rest of the country’s right-leaning news media have spent decades nurturing an ancient anti-Europe narrative long reflected in the Conservative Party’s Euroskeptic wing. If London, or at least much of London, has welcomed or tolerated all the changes, many people around Britain, particularly from older generations, have lamented that they no longer recognize the country of their childhoods.
The problem – as even the brief excerpt she quotes makes clear – is that this supposed example of Britain’s rife, public xenophobia is in fact a joke.
Kidd’s piece was a political sketch, a satirical account of a serious event, one of dozens which populate the British press every day.
Heat Street called Lyall about the reference – which has raised hackles on the staff of the London Times.
The paper actually dedicates more resources to covering France properly that the majority of its rivals – for example there was a regular news report on Macron’s visit in the same edition of The Times, and a leader column.
She insists that she *did* get the joke – but accepts it doesn’t necessarily come across that way in print.
She told us the column “just felt narrow-minded”, and that “I should’ve been more clear about how I understood it was satire”.
In light of some Fleet Street ribbing, Lyall said she now feels “a little bit like I’m being put in that category of the stupid American who reads The Onion and thinks that it’s real.”
Kidd, for his part, simply put it down to the struggle, common to many Americans, to appreciate British irony:
Someone, I think Simon Kelner, once wrote that papers shd use a type called "ironic" (like italic but slanting backwards) to help Americans
— Patrick Kidd (@patrick_kidd) April 11, 2017