Fads, Fashion and Foolery for 1994

By SCOTT KRAFT and WILLIAM TUOHY

Jan. 4, 1994 12 AM PT

Paris —

THE FRENCH CONNECTION: Sometimes they’ve been enemies; sometimes they’ve been allies. But throughout their long histories, the French and the British have always been comfortably separated by the cold seawater of the English Channel--or La Manche (The Handle), if you prefer.

But come May 6, that buffer zone will, in effect, disappear. That’s when the Channel Tunnel, seven argumentative years in the planning and digging, officially opens to passenger traffic, cutting the crossing time to an estimated 35 minutes for special auto-carrying railroad cars dubbed Le Shuttle.

The British already are worried about French rats. Some fear that rabid rodents from the Continent, where all domestic animals receive rabies shots, will traverse the dark, dank warrens of the tunnel to wreak havoc in Britain, where rabies has been eradicated and pets are not inoculated.

For the French, the big worry is another kind of rat pack--British shoppers clogging grocery stores to buy up beer and other items that are cheaper in France than Britain. Already, Paris newspapers say French families in the channel-side town of Calais are hesitant to go to their local grocery stores because of all the British shoppers. And, cutting right to the heart of French pride, the stores has even started posting signs in English.

Meanwhile, even as the French lay high speed links to the tunnel, the British continue to argue over the route of a permanent fast-track to London, giving editorial cartoonists an inviting target. One, for example, depicts a bullet-type train entering the tunnel at the French side and a Toonerville Trolley emerging from the British end.

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Scott Kraft

Scott Kraft is editor at large for enterprise journalism and special projects at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversees the Investigations department, standards and practices, polling and survey research projects, and newsroom-wide reporting initiatives. He works closely with departments across the newsroom to elevate series and is leading an initiative to actively develop books that are an outgrowth of Times’ expertise and original reporting, in partnership with commercial book publishers. During nearly four decades at The Times, Kraft has been managing editor, deputy managing editor/news and national editor, as well as a foreign and national correspondent. As an editor, he has directed work that won nine Pulitzer Prizes. As a reporter, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing while a New York-based national correspondent for the Associated Press before joining The Times in its Chicago bureau. He spent a decade abroad as The Times’ bureau chief in Nairobi, Johannesburg and Paris. He covered the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid as well as the ill-fated U.S. military mission in Somalia, among other major stories. His story for the Los Angeles Times magazine on the AIDS epidemic in Africa won the SPJ Distinguished Service Award for Foreign Correspondence. He has served as both a juror and chair of the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. He also was a Pulitzer Prize juror in international reporting in 2014 and subsequently chaired five Pulitzer juries – Public Service in 2015, International Reporting in 2020, Explanatory Reporting in 2021, Illustrated Reporting and Commentary in 2022 and Editorial Writing in 2023. He is currently president of the Overseas Press Club of America. Kraft was born in Kansas City, Mo., and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Kansas State University.

Fads, Fashion and Foolery for 1994

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