Just Call it Terroirism

Behold the monomaniacal European mindset on display.

The French government regulates speech for no reason other than commercial purposes. Twitter and Facebook may no longer be mentioned in television unless the story is about Twitter or Facebook, and you can expect the same sort of passive-aggressive resentful coverage to be all that the two operations will be left with.

Why? Because they are foreign businesses. They would do this to other Europeans if need be.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed to uphold a 1992 decree, which stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs, the Daily Mail reports.

Broadcasting anchors would be forbidden to refer to the popular social networking site and the microblogging phenomenon, unless it is relevant to a news item.

...unless it’s a domestic commercial enterprise, of course, especially if the state still has an ownership stake in it.

When you really see what laws are on their books, or when domestic motives are exhibited, there is no point in calling them free societies in the slightest way.

Christine Kelly, spokesperson for France's regulator of broadcasting Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA), believes that the government is correct to uphold this law.

"Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?" Kelly said.

Regulating television content and speech using free enterprise as a pretext. The fact is that most of the natives are too far gone to grasp just how bizarre that statement really is.