The end of civilisation

According to this report, a Belgian journalist has apologised to the French president's office for suggesting Sarko may have been sipping at the shandy prior to a press confo where he appeared "out of breath and euphoric", which is apparently the new version of "tired and emotional" and means "rat-arsed".

I'm not even going to bother lamenting the state of the world where a journo apologises to a foreign head of state over nothing. Let the state broadcaster for whom he works do the apologising, though even that stinks too much of the old Chinese style auto-critique that used to precede the bullet in the nape of the neck in the paddy-field.

No, what I'm more concerned about is this:

Sarkozy, who was making his international debut at the G8 summit in Germany, does not drink alcohol and is a long-distance runner.

The French people have elected as their leader a man who drinks neither wine nor cognac, not to mention pastis, Armagnac, Calvados, champagne or Poire Williams. What has the world come to? They'll be telling us next that he doesn't have a goomah on the side.

O tempora! O mores!

Here's the video in question. The newsreader remarks, "He was just coming out of a meeting with his Russian colleague, Vladimir Putin, and evidently hadn't only been drinking water". Judge for yourself.