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Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
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8 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Journalists and reporters around the world: Would anyone like to join me in starting a venture called "The Globalist?"
Non-journalists and non-reporters, too: Any writer who writes well and compellingly about the country in which he or she lives.
What about you, @IlvesToomas? You'd be great.
What about you, @keithmfitz?

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More from @ClaireBerlinski

Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
8 Nov
By and large, the French coverage of this election has been excellent: informed, thoughtful, and worth reading in its own right. This can almost never be said of US coverage of events in France. Maybe it's time we start to look outward again? lemonde.fr/idees/article/…
Some honorable exceptions: @nytimes coverage of the fire at Notre Dame was better than any French newspaper's. But when it comes to French politics or culture, US coverage is generally absurd. And don't even get me started on US coverage of, say, Turkey.
I've written many times about the collapse of coherent foreign news coverage in the US, and their are economic and structural reasons for this that are very hard to overcome. But it's genuinely essential to crack this problem: The rest of the world exists, and we're a part of it.
Read 5 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
6 Nov
A propos of absolutely nothing, isn't it strange that fish names are never pluralized with an s? It's "lots of salmon," not "lots of salmons." Ditto trout, flounder, haddock. All other animals? Hamsters, iguanas, etc.
And every native speaker knows this despite never having been taught the rule.
What *is* the rule? I'm thinking now--"We have lots of deer" sounds right to me, but so does, "We have lots of deers." And "lots of bison," not "lots of bisons." Does the "no s" rule apply mostly to animals we hunt for game?
Read 4 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
30 Oct
Incredible footage of everyone in Paris spreading Covid-19 to every last remaining corner and remote province of France.
No matter what rules they impose, the public can't understand, or won't understand, the underlying rationale for the rule: The virus spreads from person to person, and the closer the proximity among people, the greater the risk.
I genuinely don't understand this. I don't find the concept hard to understand at all. It makes perfect sense to me, intuitively. Yet obviously, many people find this extremely hard to understand. What's the obstacle? How are public authorities failing to communicate this?
Read 5 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
28 Oct
When consumed by anxiety, I tend to clean compulsively. Since this is such a harmless compulsion, I've never tried to control the impulse. What harm does it do, after all?

But at times like this, I do tend to give myself repetitive stress injuries.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, "Reflections on Democracy in America."

(I used La Croix Spray Salle de Bain, and Monoprix nettoyant ménager multi-surfaces--with an H. Koenig Nettoyeur-vapeur NV700 for the accents.)
I call this one, "Meditations upon a pandemic--and the fragility of our human condition." I did it with the Bestron aspirateur balai 2en1 600w in rouge--and a dash of Carolin Nettoyant pour parquets vitrifiés et stratifiés:
Read 4 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
27 Oct
I wept when Obama was elected. I hadn't voted for him. I thought him a dilettante. I didn't vote for McCain, either; for all I admired him, I was appalled that he put Palin on the ticket.

But when Obama was elected, I cried.
We had come so far, I thought. We had finally put the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow behind us. We were now--at long last--a country that lived up to its initial promise, and judged men by the content of their character, not the color or their skin.
I was in Turkey when the results were announced, and my friends saw me weeping. They teased me for being sentimental. But they were moved, too. For the same reasons.

I don't consider Obama's presidency a great success, by the standards we used to use.
Read 8 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
27 Oct
Y a-t-il des preuves que les demi-mesures comme les couvre-feux peuvent fonctionner alors que le virus est aussi répandu qu'il l'est actuellement en France? Pour autant que je vois, le couvre-feu ne fait rien pour freiner la charge. #confinement2
Les gens se rassemblent pour des brunchs arrosés, à la place.

Ma forte intuition est que la seule chose qui marchera - à la fois pour arrêter la transmission et pour sauver l'économie - est un autre confinement total, probablement pendant trois semaines.
Les demi-mesures ne feront que prolonger l'agonie; ils ne sauveront ni des vies ni des entreprises.

Je sens que le gouvernement se fout des demi-mesures parce qu'il ne peut pas se résoudre à affronter la réalité.
Read 8 tweets

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