Word: canards
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...headline in France's satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé (The Chained Duck) was printed in big red type last week, and it read: WATERGATE au CANARD. To the delight of the editors, one of Le Canard's cartoonists, Andre Escaro, had stumbled on an attempt to install bugging devices in the paper's new offices. The result: a scoop that had the government embarrassedly denying any knowledge of the affair, opposition Deputies demanding explanations in the National Assembly-and a sale of 660,000 copies for Le Canard, 210,000 more than the usual...
...downstairs, Escaro heard a voice come over a walkie-talkie held by a uniformed cop in front of the doorway. "Hello, hello, No. 2. Follow the guy who has come out. We've got to get out of here. Every man for himself." Escaro returned later with several Canard colleagues. The raiders had disappeared, but left evidence of their night's effort, which was duly photographed and published...
...Canard, which has been twitting French governments for years by printing juicy details of scandals involving political figures, promptly pinned the break-in on Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin whose office is responsible for all authorized wiretapping in the country. Marcellin's Ministry professed ignorance of the incident. But few Frenchmen were totally convinced. For one thing, a Senate investigating committee reported last month that the telephones of 1,500 to 5,000 people in France were tapped every day on a permanent or spot basis-most without a court order and thus illegally. For another, Le Canard...
Opposition spokesmen were indignant. Said Radical-Socialist Senator Henri Caillavet: "Three weeks ago, I said on television that if the government leaders didn't watch out, we would soon find ourselves in a police state. Now, apparently, we are in one." Le Canard, however, did not lose its satirical cool. On the front page of its "Watergaffe" issue, the editors jokingly boasted: "Read Le Canard Enchainé, the most listened-to newspaper in France...
...suspicions of the Gaullists were partially justified. As Le Canard Enchainé's film critic Michel Duran wrote: "You come out of the film not very proud to be one of those Frenchmen with a perpetual weakness for military men who offer themselves as a gift to France . . . Frenchmen, if you only knew that you are forever being cuckolded...