NYC Letter: Jackass Heaven

Is there really such a place?

With the passing of Daniel Louis Bernard, a creature of the l'ENA and French ambassadorial factotum, it's a good bet there is. Where else to deposit him for all eternity? For M. Bernard was not a towering embodiment of evil. No, he was merely a French diplomat, who, outside of a small clique of professional fancy-dress reception attendees, was mostly unknown to the world at large despite a string of stellar appointments. Why, you'd hardly know M. Bernard had ever been among the quick from the Quai d'Orsay's flat regrets (item No. 14).

M. Bernard came to our attention in December of 2001, when at a private buffet party the then French ambassador to Britain pronounced Israel "that shitty little country", and further asked, "Why should the world be in danger of World War Three because of those people?"

As I said, he got our attention.

M. Bernard was mortified. Not for being exposed as -- if not an outright anti-Semite -- a reckless deipnosophist and a diplomat absent diplomacy. No, M. Bernard was "outraged that a private discussion found its way into the media". Imagine that. Can't poshy Londoners keep a secret?

M. Bernard never denied the comment. He did not offer to resign nor was he asked. Quite the contrary, the government continued to back him, dismissing the charges of anti-Semitism as "malevolent insinuations". Nor did he see anything for which he should apologize:

[M. Bernard] has made clear he does not intend to apologise.

"He doesn't feel there is any need for him to do so," the ambassador's spokesman Yves Charpentier insisted.

The mortification was contagious! The Jerusalem Post reports:

Charpentier added it is "sheer nonsense" that "a frank and open discussion in private" had been reported in the press. "It's a private dinner... and then all of a sudden you find it in the media."

That's not anti-Semitism, that's just so much openness and frankness. You see it was all a misunderstanding:

"In the course of the discussion the ambassador referred to 'little Israel' in the sense that it is geographically small, but that nevertheless the scale of the consequences is huge and the repercussions around the world are tremendous," Mr Charpentier said.

And as Mr. Charpentier might have ventured by way of completeness, in the course of the discussion the ambassador referred to "shitty Israel" in the sense that it doesn't accord with French ambitions in the Levant. (It is widely believed in the Metropole that anything not harmonizing itself with French interests is, well, la merde.)

The Telegraph, which spilled the beans on M. Bernard, gives the story considerable play in its obit as does the Jerusalem Post.

Le Monde obit blows it off as a little "discomfort" over an "incisive comment":

In his diplomatic postings, he maintained his frank way of speaking and this earned him a few moments of discomfort; particularly in London, where, over the course of a dinner, he used an incisive expression with regard to Israel that, even though uttered in private at the home of a press baron, could never have remained a secret.

(Translation Hat Tip: ¡No Pasaran!)

In 2002 M. Bernard was put out to pasture as the ambassador to Algiers, a clime more congenial to his dinner opinions.

Isn't this more comment than M. Bernard deserves?

Ah, yes. Yes it is. But it serves to remind us, gentle skimmer, how being a jackass about being a jackass can quickly become the signature event in the whole of a person's life and career.

Daniel Louis Bernard (1941-2004), holding forth, openly, frankly, on the buffet line in Jackass Heaven.

Posted by Damian at May 5, 2004 02:38 AM