A matter of opinion

I usually only buy the Toronto Star when I want to get angry, but once a week there's good reason to trek over to the store and pick it up.  On Sundays the Star includes an insert from the New York Times, featuring a selection of book reviews and some of the week's news and op-ed pieces.  The contrast in quality between the NYT material and the Star's own stuff is, to put it mildly, very stark.

This past Sunday, however, we were presented with a reminder that even the world's best journalists can get things wrong, particularly when they are working to deadline.  The NYT op-ed pieces included two short articles by Roger Cohen, one on Brexit and one on the Notre-Dame fire, that already look badly misguided.  Let's take a look.

Regarding Brexit, Cohen argues here that the odds of the split ever actually happening are shrinking fast. The UK is now all but certain to participate in the elections for the EU Parliament next month.  Cohen believes that the pro-EU electorate in the UK will turn out "in force", while the pro-Brexit voters will be "more inclined to sulk". 

If only that were true.  Barring a last-minute Damascene conversion by the Labour Party, pro-Remain voters will have nowhere obvious to turn.  Meanwhile the new Brexit Party founded by the bibulous Nigel Farage is leading in the opinion polls and is very likely to attract large numbers of angry Tory voters,  The best guess is that Farage and his unlovely crew will create mayhem in Strasbourg for a few months, then the UK will crash out of the EU without a deal come October 31, with the Europeans wondering why they allowed the agony to go on for so long.

Then there's Notre-Dame, which has special significance for Cohen because he once lived and worked in Paris.  After some slightly stretched comparisons between the cathedral and the Statue of Liberty, Cohen teases the possibility of "a French coming-together in a determination to rebuild".  Again one has to respond, "if only".  The prompt response of France's very rich in offering large sums of money to help with reconstruction has only furthered the divisions within the nation that recent "gilets jaunes" protests have brought to international attention.  If there's this kind of money to put a roof back over Notre-Dame, how come there's no money to put a roof over the heads of the homeless?  The street protests last weekend, while the stones of Notre-Dame were still hot to the touch, were the largest in many weeks.

I'm not trying to pick on Roger Cohen here, and he gets full marks for trying to see the bright side.  The fact is that anyone who floats out an opinion for public consumption, from the Pulitzer-winning journalist to the barely-literate blogger, risks looking very foolish as events take an unexpected turn.  And if by any chance Roger happens to see this article, he's very welcome to fire right back if my Brexit forecast turns out to be dead wrong.