Although Je ne suis pas Charlie but appreciate that tu es Charlie, as you would insist that people everywhere should be (dodging fatwas, of course—little joke there), I'm writing to suggest you use the services of the Department for Instilling Promulgations of Love Overcoming Murders and Tortures, usually known by its acronym DIPLOMAT, of which Je suis CEO. Your genius in having James Taylor sing “You've Got a Friend” to the French president the other day, along with your hugging him twice or thrice to calm French discomfiture over the assassinations at “Hebdo,” will move you toward legend-hood in the hallowed ledger of Secretaries of State. It doesn't hurt, also, as rumor has it, that you considered English as your second language at Yale and tried to get “Skull and Bones” changed to “Crâne et Tibias.”
One agency at DIPLOMAT that will help is the Rhythmic Options for Classical Kinetics, known as ROCK, for short. It will help you choose American music that will endear the U.S. to the French, who, as everyone knows, hate everybody up to and including themselves. George Gershwin's tone poem “An American in Paris” comes to mind, having even the taxi-horns in the movement. Also, someone like Tony Bennett singing that pensive “La Vie en Rose” with a cool quartet (piano, sax, bass, drums) would have French women in a swoon, nothing like Taylor and his guitar, blue jeans and sandals?—I don't remember. Bennett would be coat-and-tie, have his hair combed and sing on pitch. “You've Got a Friend” was...well...so ditsy. Parisians don't want friends...they need money and the National Guard to clean out the no-go-zones. ROCK is an unintended acronym but in the U.S. great music is either amplified and done in clouds of mary-jane smoke or consigned to the netherworld.
Another agency for help is tagged Rhyming for Asinine Poems, or RAP, for short. The music (actually people beating mostly on anything handy, sometimes each other) is designed to greatly offend Muslims—actually everyone, though the French may not be offended since the lyrics are sort of racy and the French are known for such things as prime ministers with harems and may not recognize the goodwill gesture. Perhaps the most elite artist is Gangsta-Rapper Drake, so maybe he could go over and “recite” his big hit “The Motto,” which has this uber-intellectual line, “almost drowned in her pussy so I swam to her butt.” Or...you might send another rap-king, Bruno Mars, whose “Locked Out of Heaven” has this French-toned line, “Your sex takes me to paradise.” Get it? The shooters knew they would inevitably be killed and thus headed, according to the late Imam al-Awlaki, to join him in paradise with their own 72 virgins apiece. Another rapper, using a revered rap-word for woman—bitch—is rumored to be putting together a new masterpiece called “Beating Burka Bitches Back to Baghdad Bared and Bruised.” He's already claimed he'll make a half-billion on it. He's mostly using lyrics applied to cops and mothers in the U.S.
Then there's Diplomat's agency, Bureau for Appealing Love Lyrics and Ditties—you guessed it, BALLAD, for short. This is a work in progress since most of the appropriate music was written 1900-1960, especially in the 20s-50s and today's U.S. singers aren't actually singers, a requirement for this music. The male award winners sing into a mike a half-inch from their mouths, sound raspy or hoarse or both and have no intention to sing words anyone will hear over the bedlam of the amps. Maybe someone like Harry Connick could go over and sing old-fashioned stuff like “More than You Know” or “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” or “Stardust,” national life-sanity-saving-stuff during World War II and Korea in both France and the U.S. Girl-singers are more interested in bump-and-grind nudity than music so they can't out-French the French in that. Beyonce might go over and lip-synch the French national anthem La Marseillaise like she did the U.S. national anthem during the last inauguration but they would hardly notice. Anyway, if she should take a bow and flash the whole country there might be an incident.
In any case, cher John, give DIPLOMAT some serious thought in the interest of showing solidarity with the French. Let ROCK, RAP and BALLAD help you do better than James Taylor the next time. We also have plans for other nations, too, especially the ones insulted by the administration on practically a daily basis, like the Brits, for instance.
Bien Cordialement,
Je Suis Otherself, CEO
DIPLOMAT
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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