8/25/2003: French violence against women

[Undertoad]

This one comes from the summer doldrums. It's become extra hard to find news images that are compelling just on their own right now, so we go to plan "B" with images that are compelling through their explanation. Ordinary photo, extraordinary circumstance.

This is beloved French actress Marie Trintignant as she prepared to work on a documentary for French TV. She's dead now.

And an autopsy now shows that she was, in fact, killed by her boyfriend with a combination of blows from his fist and head butts.

I wonder if she will become the new poster woman for anti-violence campaigns, because as the caption notes, the news has unleashed an outcry over domestic violence in France -- where one in 10 women is beaten at home.

Now here's the completely unfair, biased, one-sided part of my post. They are now revising upwards the number of dead in France from last week's heat wave: it's headed over 13,000. It turns out Chirac himself was on a three-week sunbathing vacation while his country broiled to death. I don't take any glee from all this pain, but often hard leftists (i.e., not Sycamore) say that the long run goal of compassionate government policies is to produce a more compassionate society. After this week, I'm skeptical: 13,000 dead and 1 in 10 women facing domestic violence is not a compassionate society... unless you count the compassion of the mourners.