I don’t care if Liberation folds. I really don’t. I’m done with mourning newspaper deaths, and ever since my native Washington Post sold out to Amazon, I swore I’d never get attached to one again. I also don’t really care if Liberation becomes a Starbucks either or a Foundation Cartier or an Office Depot. What I do care about though, is that if Liberation does go down, that means I’ll never be on the back page of Liberation, and that my friends, would be a tragedy.
For anybody who votes left of center and lives on the right bank of Paris in an arrondissement with two digits and drives a Volvo (which for me, means everybody in the world) being featured on the back of page of Liberation is one of life’s crowning achievements. Top 5 at least - up there with graduation, children, and getting to meet Manu Chao.
And unlike a lot of Liberation, the LBP (Liberation back page) is usually read. It’s tactfully written, not too blowjob-esque, not too critical, a beautifully synthesized, photo shopped, power point of one’s life that’s vein without admitting it. Plus, it allows for that rare moment when you can say with a straight face at a dinner party “Liberation put me on their back page today, and I have no idea why!”
And now it’ll soon be gone, which sucks because I already had my LBP ready to go – complete with topical dates and a story arc that read like a classic nauseating Hollywood biopic.
1969 unexpected birth to old couple
1998 identification of special talent by older mentor
1991 early success without appreciating it/bling bling before bling bling was invented
1993 death of mentor/chute/career detour/random sex
1994-2000 darkness/search for meaning/test of character/mental fog
2001 9/11 (obligatory for Americans)
2002 meets love interest (who of course I don’t like at beginning – see “Romantic Comedy” template)
2003-9 kids, less drinking, goes vegan, gets Brazilian wax (not sure why I mentioned this)
2012 enter new mentor who challenges hero’s ego/rebrands name/gives focus
2014 renaissance – new book – which is basically a copy of old book, but with “sagesse”
Hedi Slimane was going to take the photo. I’d be dressed in APC with Red Wing boots doing something Judd Apatowish with my kids – like spraying them with a hose. The article would point out how I’ve evolved politically, having gone from idealiste to pragmatiste; the guy who used to work in the system who’s now the outsider who the system covets. I’d reveal that I spend more time in the countryside than I did before (hence Volvo) only because Paris has become too New Yorkish, now that New York has become too LAish. London I’ll say is the new Hong Kong now that Shanghai has become Hong Kongish and that I spend six months of the year in Lisbon which is, of course, the new Berlin. I’d have a Daniel Darc type tattoo done just for the photo session, probably some proverb written in Cyrilic that reminds me that nothing is given or some Carpe Diem shit. The LBP would be timed to the release of my new book that of course nobody will buy, but which will be given out at Lacoste parties that Pharrell Williams’s “people” apparently attended.
It would have been an awesome LBP. And now - I’m not really sure what to live for.
If Liberation’s majority stock holders Bruno Ledoux and Eduard de Rothschild were smart, they’d rent the LBP like the pricey Stark designed trendy loft they’re envisioning for its offices – selling the back page like limited tickets on a boat fleeing a war torn country (because my guess is there’s about 30 back pages left). I’m sure Bernard Arnault would buy one. Stark himself probably would too. Hell, I’d even buy a page (if I could spread it out over three payments). They could go as far as just publish a two-page paper – the cover with some newsy person like Putin on the front and me on the back – with a Liberation type headline – “JvS: le ricain qui ricane.” Petty jealousy would provoke my confreres to buy their own pages, and the snowball effect would grow, eventually allowing Liberation to earn back the money they’ve lost in circulation, enough at least for the staff to turn it back into the boring paper it’s always has been. Everybody wins!
Unfortunately though, that’ll never happen, and instead, I’m left to wallow in the fact that I’ve missed my chance, sitting around my apartment humming that Dire straits song I want my MTV in my head; only now replaing the MTV part with LBP. “I want my, I want my, I want my LBP.”
The LBP is (or soon to be was) the career equivalent of a burial at Père-Lachaise, getting your name in a Philippe Katherine song, or yes, having a blog at Mediapart. Because if you’re a hipster this side of 45, who happens to be reading this and hasn’t been on the back of Libe? Well, as the French philosopher Jacques Séguéla once said, “Vous avez raté votre vie mon fils. »