Yann Moix lets go of his shots. In a column, published on the social networks of Europe 1, the host at the controls of The free antenna weekend on our antenna sharply pinned the media treatment reserved for the Pierre Palmade affair. On February 10, the actor, under the influence of narcotics, caused a serious traffic accident. Under house arrest in an addiction service, the comedian suffered a stroke on Saturday evening, which did not prevent the courts from deciding on his placement in pre-trial detention on Monday. A news item that generated media coverage that was a little too broad in the eyes of the writer who wanted to be very critical of the continuous news channels, without however looking for mitigating circumstances for the artist. .
“Pierre Palmade is inexcusable, unforgivable, lamentable, pitiful. And if I find another word in -able later, I will gladly put it on. But it is not because Palmade is pitiful that the trays of television are not”, he asks at the start. And to clarify his thought: “This is the first time, in memory of a television viewer, that I have seen a news item dissected not in real time but in dilated time. Each second of the accident is likely to be stretched over hours. Each new element of the day in question, that of February 10, is analyzed, deciphered, as if we had discovered a plan of invasion by the Chinese “.
“Crabs with their horrible claws”
The columnist then launches into the exercise of comparison, evoking a major event in American political history of the last century. “Watergate, in proportion to its global importance, had made less noise”. In other words, the media resonance of the Palmade affair is, according to Yann Moix, highly disproportionate, with regard to the issues it raises. “I sum up: a junkie takes his car and hits innocent people, including a child and a pregnant woman who will lose her baby. Sorry, but that’s all there is to know! But no, we have to go back to this day, stir it like mud. Know the schedules, the names of the drugs ingested, the details of the sexual positions. The number of stains on the sofa”, he grumbles.
Yann Moix then criticizes, without naming them, journalists, editorialists and speakers on TV sets, which he compares to “crabs with their horrible claws”. “As always, a certain number of anonymous people, very happy to suddenly be specialists in something, rush to the sets to comment on a piece of clues, to wonder about a statement, to worry about a new element of the investigation (…) We call on the buggers of specialists who know more about Palmade than Palmade will ever know about Palmade”, he annoys. According to him, “if Coluche’s death took place today, she would occupy the antenna for four or five years”.
“To give pleasure to the public, eager for misfortunes and tragedies”
These comments, broadcast in a loop, around this affair, aim, according to Yann Moix, to “give pleasure to the public, eager for misfortunes and tragedies”. “Nothing really new, the onlookers did not stop on the side of the road. So they stop in front of their screen where, in a loop, they are shown a section of road with a little grass and tire tracks “. The writer then evokes “what is lowest” in the human being, “flattered” according to him, by these news items as banal as they are sordid. And to conclude his plea as follows: “People who love life often lose it in accidents. And those who don’t like it very often come out unscathed. doesn’t deserve 50 hours of live”.