{"id":180498,"date":"2017-03-30T19:43:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T00:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/30\/you-gotta-read-this\/"},"modified":"2017-03-30T19:43:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T00:43:00","slug":"you-gotta-read-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/30\/you-gotta-read-this\/","title":{"rendered":"You Gotta Read This"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s an article on, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/12-people-things-that-ruined-the-european-union-viktor-orban-treaty-of-rome-boris-johnson-antigone-loudiadis-francois-mitterand-christoph-blocher-edith-cresson\/\"><b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">12 people, things that ruined the EU<\/span><\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It starts with Zeus&#8217;s rape of Europa, but my favorite item is number 2:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3><span style=\"color: blue;\">2. Edith Cresson<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Going straight from Zeus, ruler of Mount Olympus, to good old Edith  Cresson may seem a bit of a stretch. But as a strong contender for the  title of worst European commissioner ever, the Frenchwoman does have a  claim to fame, too. In the early 1990s, Cresson was a French prime  minister who quickly fell out of favor and was forced to resign after  less than a year in office. That apparently qualified her for a  high-powered job in Brussels. As commissioner for science, research and  development, Cresson famously paid her dentist to be a scientific  adviser. In 1999, allegations of fraud intended to target Cresson ended  up bringing down the entire Commission. To put it crudely: Cresson did  to the EU what Zeus did to Europa.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read it all.<\/p>\n<p>It may not mean anything about the future of the EU, but it is a hoot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s an article on, &#8220;12 people, things that ruined the EU. It starts with Zeus&#8217;s rape of Europa, but my favorite item is number 2: 2. Edith Cresson Going straight from Zeus, ruler of Mount Olympus, to good old Edith Cresson may seem a bit of a stretch. But as a strong contender for the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[630,400,464,389],"class_list":["post-180498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-european-union","tag-funny","tag-good-writing","tag-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}