FROM SIRIUS' POINT OF VIEW
Retrospective Scandals

Until now, we had not seen these things.
That a politician was convicted of having received money, cashed checks or squandered public funds or, again, of having engaged in hoarding maneuvers and stock market stunts, it was, by Jove, a godsend. The scandal exploded. The adversaries, who prudently kept quiet about the actions of their friends, were making a hell of a gossip, went to war, in the name of Probity, Virtue, the Public Interest. Once again, it was all the better for public opinion, enlightened on certain underbelly, and too bad for the clumsy one who let himself be caught.

But, today, we are going a bit too far. There is a proverb according to which he who wants to prove too much proves nothing. But scandal-mongers are trying to prove too much. To better establish that their enemy is crazy, they are no longer content to highlight his little personal rogues. They dig into his ancestry. They question his ancestors. They spread out his family secrets. And it's an avalanche of revelations.

So-and-so? But don't you know that he had an abortionist mother-in-law, convicted about twenty years ago?

X...? But he's the grandson of a convict.

-Y.? Ah! my poor sir. Isn't his great-grandfather the nephew of an accomplice of the famous Chopard, of the Courrier de Lyon?

And Z...? That one is terrible. He married a lady who is the cousin by marriage of a descendant of Fra Diavolo.

With the help of such methods, there are not many politicians left who are capable of resisting. No one can affirm, because we do not know everything, that he does not have in his direct family or his allies, some arsonist, unless it is a horrible satyr or a fearsome leader of pillagers.

Who proves to me, who proves to you that, you or I, going back up the current of our genealogy, do not meet, in the series of our ancestors, some lieutenant of Cartouche or some emulator of Pranzini?

Scripture, certainly, teaches that the faults of parents fall on children through the generations. But it also teaches us charity and suggests forgiveness to us.
We should not, all the same, exaggerate and make poor devils, who can do nothing, pay for the crimes committed by individuals of whom they have not the slightest idea and, even less, the slightest memory.

On that basis, we would all be responsible for the murder of Abel. Because, with the terrible Cain, we are all descended from Adam, Eve or the Devil!

On that basis, all our aspirants to the throne, starting with the affectionate Philippe, are undesirable. Because the last of the Bourbons or the Orléans have, in the collection of their ancestors, a nice band of assassins, thieves, counterfeiters, pederasts, traitors, stranglers, thugs and voluntary cuckolds.

There was a President of the Republic who was made to pay for the stupidities of his son-in-law.
There was another President of the Republic who was tried to pay for the stupidities of his father-in-law.
And yet, son-in-law and father-in-law belonged to the same era as their unfortunate parents of presidents.

Thanks to the methods of certain champions of virtue, we will end up going back to the flood. And, under the pretext that our father Noah has drunk a little too much wine on Mount Ararat, it will be decreed that we all constitute a family of alcoholics.

It is high time that legislation intervenes to establish the time of the indispensable prescription.

Victor MERIC.