Friday, Dec. 24, 1965
Anarchists' Weekly
Upon being told that Christopher Columbus was not the first to discover America, a bulbous-nosed, sleepy-eyed Charles de Gaulle murmurs: "Eh bien, I congratulate him for that."
Standing under an umbrella in a rainstorm, up to his knees in water, le grand Charles shouts: "Apres le deluge, moi."
Such droll, needling cartoons are not softened a bit by the text they illustrate. Week in, week out, Charles de Gaulle comes under irreverent attack in the French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine (the Chained Duck-).
Anything but chained, the Duck pokes more fun at the man it calls "le grand Charletan" than any other French publication. Nor does it spare anyone else who merits attack. Last week the eight-page weekly celebrated 50 years of ridiculing the high and the mighty, the smug and the pretentious in French life. Proud of the Duck's surviving without mellowing, staffers boast: "The duck still has all its teeth."
Combating Hysteria. Over the years, the Duck has learned to clamp those teeth on its enemies and live to bite an other day. Its secret is circuitous attack; it never charges an opponent headon. Stories begin disarmingly: "We of course deny ... It would be false to say . . ." Then they deliver what they are denying in spectacular detail. Thus the Duck gets away with printing stories no other paper dares touch. Once a Deputy not beloved by the Duck sent the paper a letter full of gamy information about government officials. What to do? The Duck solved the problem by running a photocopy of the letter. When a politician named Marcilhacy, whom the Duck disliked, declared he would run for the presidency, the Duck ran a story: "Paris-Match announces the publication of a book entitled The Life of Marcilhacy. We have been able to acquire the text of this book. Here it is." A blank space followed.
The Duck began its bold sniping in 1915, during some of the bleakest days of World War I, when its dry wit turned out to be just what was needed to combat wartime hysteria. At the time, the French press was frantically reporting every defeat as a glorious victory. The Duck did not set out to correct these inaccuracies. Instead, it claimed the biggest victories of all, until it began to make all war reporting look ridiculous. On one occasion, when the press was clucking in astonishment over a German submarine that had traveled as far as the U.S. coast, the Duck announced that the sub had done even better than that--it had been built and launched in Baltimore. The other French papers excitedly picked up the story. Exulted the Duck: "The stupidity of these great papers is so enormous that they fell upon this fable like a pig on a truffle."
Uneasy When Happy. The Duck's staffers--a collection of a dozen writers and seven cartoonists--not only champion anarchy in print; they live it. They refuse to accept any advertising; though famed for consuming fine food and drink, they turn down most luncheon invitations to avoid what they feel is contaminating contact with the outside world--the kind of contact most newsmen prize. Honors of any sort are taboo. Once a writer made the mistake of showing up for work wearing the Legion of Honor. The editor took one horrified look and fired him on the spot. "But," the writer stammered, "I didn't ask for it. They gave it to me." Said the editor: "Well, you shouldn't have done anything to deserve it."
"When we're not opposing, we're not very good," says Robert Treno, 63, the Duck's shy, pun-loving ("One Debre below zero") editor. Staffers who lament the fact that they have never managed to overthrow a government are even unhappier about the time in the recent past when they supported one--that of Pierre Mendes-France, the 1954-55 Premier who momentarily jolted French politics by pulling out of Viet Nam, by trying to end the Algerian war, and by campaigning for greater milk consumption. But even at the time, the Duck was uneasy. "Is it our fault," the paper asked defensively, "that we finally have an intelligent man in power? Anyway, there's nothing to worry about. He won't last very long." He didn't.
So far, all attacks on the Duck--threats, libel suits, De Gaulle's icy disdain--have rolled off its back. When the press was forbidden to print one of Jean-Paul Sartre's interminable essays on the Algerian war, the Duck ran the piece in type so tiny that it could hardly be read. Next day, throughout the city, Parisians could be seen squinting through magnifying glasses. "Seize the Duck!" exploded Robert Lacoste, the French proconsul in Algeria, who had banned dozens of other offending publications. "I don't want to look like an imbecile."
Not long ago, an outraged army colonel decided on more direct action. He challenged Editor Treno to a duel. Treno accepted and showed up at dawn at the appointed spot. There, as was his right, he demanded the choice of weapons. His selection? Rubber-dart pistols. The colonel went home in a huff--leaving the Duck quacking as loudly as ever.
* Canard is also French slang for rag--as in the sentence: "What's the name of that rag you work for?" The chain refers to government censorship.
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