Word: penning
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...decades, the French considered it taboo to question whether immigration and foreign influences were diluting France's social and cultural character. Indeed, the topic was considered so toxic that no one in France besides extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen would even take it up in public. But times have changed. Twenty years after Le Pen's National Front Party (FN) became a political force in France, its view that immigration is threatening the French national identity is starting to gain wider acceptance. Now, the government is putting the issue front and center for the first time by encouraging...
...Others are worried, though. Fleshing out how people view the concept of Frenchness today has sparked controversy, as one might expect. Detractors have loudly denounced the initiative as stealing the national-identity page from Le Pen's playbook - and casting suspicion on immigrants, naturalized citizens and French-born minorities as posing threats to it. Some opponents have also accused the government of using an emotive issue to try to divert attention from a series of high-profile political scandals in recent months, such as the accusations of nepotism surrounding a bid by President Nicolas Sarkozy's son to attain...
...Critics also believe the idea is motivated by political opportunism. With regional elections looming next March, leftist politicians and pundits say the government is using the national-identity theme to appeal to the right-wing Le Pen voters who flocked to Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign once he began promising to get tough on crime and immigration. Le Pen's daughter Marine, the FN vice president, has voiced a similar accusation. "This country is suffering a major crisis of identity that is driving it into chaos," she told the Europe 1 radio station on Oct. 28. "We've been denied...
...Some fear that these types of questions - even the debates themselves - invite assumptions that generations of immigrants have already undermined France's identity and may provoke nationalist sentiments long championed by Le Pen. "When you put immigration and national identity side by side, it creates the notion that immigration poses a threat to national identity - which can inspire racism," Mouloud Aounit, president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples, told the daily l'Humanité on Nov. 2. "But this debate also reveals an identity crisis of a part of French society ... and the failure...
...Christopher Reeve briefly appeared on Smallville in 2003, playing a scientist examining the young Clark Kent. A show "jumps the shark" when its ratings stunts smack of desperation. The phrase was inspired by a a three-part Happy Days special in 1977 in which Fonzie jumped over a shark pen on water skis; fans point to it as the specific moment the show started its decline. (Jumpingtheshark.com is devoted to analyzing ratings stunts to identify exactly those instances for current TV shows...