Watching the world fall apart

Andrew Marr’s interview with Marine Le Pen was culpably ill-prepared. But instead of outrage we just keep watching

by Lucy Wadham / November 17, 2016 / Leave a comment

Two men protest Marine Le Pen’s appearance on “The Andrew Marr Show” ©NEWZULU/See LI/NEWZULU/PA Images

More than a week has passed since that most surreal of mornings when many of us woke to find that the world was entirely different to the one in which we had gone to sleep. My initial shock at Donald Trump’s election has been slowly replaced by a kind of frozen comic detachment at its continuing awfulness. As if with each successive news item featuring Trump I’m being made to watch Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler” over and over again.

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Comments

James O.
November 21, 2016 at 08:16
Hits several nails on the head. Most eye-opening for me was the realisation that I don't watch TV news any more - mostly crime dramas or post-Simpsons cartoons - and that I get my news from the Guardian and reasonably authoritative internet sites. I would prefer if the rest of my fellow citizens did better (I don't need to ;-))
PHILIP_GOUGH
November 22, 2016 at 18:21
Rather an overwrought piece. Fastidious Guardian types may well recoil in horror, but it is because neo-liberalism has left so many people behind that Trump and Le Pen pick up so many votes. Posturing at anti-Nazi demonstrations won't change the disarray in politics one jot.

Lucy Wadham's study of the French, “The Secret Life of France,” is published by Faber. Her website is www.secretlifeoffrance.com