I may have missed seeing this item on WLDG -- if so, apologies, but I found Matt Kramer's writeup very amusing:
On January 16 the local court for the Paris region found against the Champagne producer Moët et Chandon and the restaurant group Brasseries Flo (which owns 15 restaurants, including such famous Parisian establishments as Bofinger, Balzar, La Coupole, and Vaudeville) for their joint promotional campaign for a rosé Champagne using the slogan "La nuit est rose" ("the night is pink"), accompanied by a photograph of a bottle of Moët rosé Champagne surrounded by rose petals.
The use of this phrase, the court said, "creates an association of ideas between the consumption of rosé Champagne and seeing 'la vie en rose,' which in everyday usage signifies having a euphoric approach to life."
Demonstrating that it wasn't taken in by subversive subliminal imagery, the court showed its contextual chops by noting that Moët's promotional photo "accentuated by the pink color against a black background that symbolizes the night refers to a party, the effervescent rose petals reinforcing the idea of euphoria. "It was precisely this sort of symbolic imagery," the court declared, "that the legislature wanted to limit in the interests of public health, allowing instead only the most objective references possible."
In an era of political correctness — usually seen by Europeans as an American affliction — the French have gratifyingly made us seem a model of sensibility. Fueled by a law only a Jacobin could love, two different French courts have managed, in the space of little more than a week, to both trample on freedom of the press and proclaim that in France, of all places, la vie en rose is not worth living.
One can only wonder what Edith Piaf would be singing today — and where?
