To: contact@guardian.uk; contact@economist.uk; contact@time.com; contact@newsweek.com
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2014, 6:15PM
From: John von Sothen (john@johnvonsothen.com)
CC: your conscience
Subject: Emails in France after 6PM
Hi guys!
I know that the time stamp on this email says 6:15PM, but that’s just because I had it in my outbox and didn’t have wifi where I was. (Yes your 306th article on “What’s up with Parisian cafes not having wifi!” did come to mind!). If not, God knows, I’d probably be hand cuffed now in some off site in Syria, renditioned and interrogated as to what the fuck I was doing after 6PM that would warrant such a breach of French law. And you probably wouldn’t have gotten this email in the first place.
But you did, so that’s a relief.
It’s also a relief knowing all those articles you guys wrote last week about France passing a law banning work emails after 18:00 (I’m using military time so there’s no confusion with 6AM) was a joke. At least it seems that way right? Because usually if you get a story seriously wrong or you realize you were just copying and pasting something else from some other loser outlet, the honest journalistic thing would be to refute it or say “Sorry we fucked up” or both.
But I haven’t seen that. I just saw “Not what it seemed” in Tuesday’s Economist, which I guess is an admission that it was an April Fool’s joke, just two weeks late. And that’s OK.
But in that case I’ve got one too.
I have it on good authority that there’s a bill being passed in the Liverpool assembly this week making it illegal for Brits to brush their teeth after 6PM. It’s being pushed by the Green party as way to preserve water, and it also fits into the convenient cliché that Brits have fucked up teeth. It’s one of those things that almost sounds plausible, what Stephen Colbert called “truthy”, so I’m going to run with it and see if it gets traction. Cool? Cool.
I also have another good one via a US friend who says he’s uncovered a Starbucks inter-company memo, which states, get this, the coffee chain will start selling advertising space by drawing company logos on the foam of all of its Machiatos. You see, it’s a great revenue stream that hasn’t been tapped, and since we all know Americans love Starbucks just as much as they like to make money, it TOTALLY makes sense.
You see, the magic of these pieces (other than the fact that I will write them) is that they touch on trending fads, society at large, and business all at the same time, and they make for great headlines like “No work emails after 6PM please, we’re French” (Plus d'e-mails professionnels après 18h s'il-vous-plaît, nous sommes français. ) and “When the French clock off at 6PM, they really mean it.”. (Quand les Français quittent leur travail à 18h, ils le font vraiment. )
But jokes (or not) aside: I’m curious to know where all this Anglo-Saxon obsession for France is coming from, because, honestly, it’s starting to seem sexual. The magazine Newsweek kicked off 2014 with “The Fall of France, » which Time magazine then followed up with Francois Holland on its cover and the headline « “Can he repair France?” (assuming, I guess, that France had broken when she fell.) The Economist then published its scary A time bomb in the heart of Europe only to be topped off by an in depth analysis by the renowned social-economist, Scarlett Johansson, whose findings declared “Parisians were terribly rude.”
Personally I think somebody has a crush on the French girl and doesn’t really know what to do with himself. And what kills the guy the most is the French chick’s kind of indifferent to it all.
I’m not seeing a lot of French people handwringing over whether Wall Street makes more in bonuses than every American combined working on minimum wage or that they’re paying twice as much for gas or that there are almost 9 guns for every 10 US residents.
(By the way, all of this totally true because I found it on a five minute Google search - just like you guys did when you wrote your 6PM email pieces.)
And even if the French did care, I think they’re too busy drinking wine and fucking and smoking and not getting fat while having remarkable kids that are polite and well dressed and who put themselves to bed at night reading Le Petit Prince in the passé simple.
But you knew already knew that, thanks to the same books and articles we’ve all apparently read. I was going to let you know anyway, but it’s already 17:58 and this email has to go out first - before the gendarmes knock on the door. I hope you understand.
A+
JvS
PS
That Starbucks idea is totally mine, so don’t try and copy it. I’ll sue (because I’m American.)