Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Summer blogging pause

Posting will be sporadic for the next couple of weeks. I'm in my place in the Cévennes hills enjoying the almost unplugged life. There is no broadband, no mobile phone cover and newspapers are a 20-minute drive away. Goats are grazing in the field outside this window, which is a change from the traffic on the Place de l'Opéra. The southern summer has been unusually cool and wet, so the grass is not yellow and there is water in the spring. Sarko and Co seem quite far away. 

I'll be moderating comments twice a day and will have a little more time than usual to respond.     

French bad guys and an American in Paris

French actors have been making good money in recent years playing the villain for Hollywood. In the latest case, the fourth Die Hard, Bruce Willis lays waste to a gang of assassins who for some inexplicable reason are Frenchmen. Gallic bad-guys have been up against the American heros in a string of recent hits, including Matrix Reloaded, Mission Impossible, S.W.A.T., Catwoman, Da Vinci Code and Oceans 12 [see the montage of méchants français below].

Now, four years after the feud over Iraq, the tide is turning. Look at Ratatouille, the animated US summer success that is set in Paris. All right, the hero is a French rat, but he is lovable. Hollywood seems to have overdosed on nasty Frenchmen and Paris is returning to its role as capital of romance and mirror for Americans to inspect their own neuroses. One sign is the re-release of Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci's 1973 cult film starring Marlon Brando as a depressed American.

That lets me introduce Two Days in Paris, a great new comedy about the culture clash when an American discovers the French. The film is a treat because, for once, the joke is on both sides. Julie Delpy, the Parisian actress, wrote, directed and stars in the film. She uses her knowledge from 15 years living in the US to nail the clichés and mock the misunderstandings between French and Americans.

Easy riding around Paris

  Thousands of Parisians discovered a new pleasure yesterday -- cruising legally along the bus lanes that have snarled up traffic in recent years by curbing the road space. Their vehicles were not cars, but stately grey bicycles.

Sunday was the start of Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's Révolution de la Bicyclette, the scheme to tame the traffic by turning Paris into what might be called The City of Bike[June post]. Day one of the Vélib scheme, in which 10,600 bikes are available for next to nothing, was a great success. In six hours, the bikes had been borrowed 22,500 times. I joined other Parisians and visitors freewheeling in the sunshine down the boulevards -- and sweating up the hills in 30 degree (86 farenheit) temperatures. 

Crowds had gathered around many of the 750 high-tech stations when they went live, releasing their gleaming grey velos for one euro to anyone with a credit card or a pre-registered subscription.

French media tweak taboos

  This picture is an example of "vulgar voyeurism". That is the view of Jean-Pierre Mignard, the lawyer of Ségolène Royal. Maître Mignard has just gone to court on behalf of the former Socialist presidential candidate to demand that Paris Match recall this week's edition and pay damages.

Match splashed pictures of Royal on holiday in Corsica on its cover and inside pages. The pictures, according to Royal, are a gross invasion of her privacy. "This is photographic harassment," she said. 

Here we have another example of the conflict between France's legally-enforced tradition of privacy and increasing curiosity over the lives of politicians and celebrities.

More on Match in a second, but the latest Royal pique over intrusion has coincided with an interesting media sortie into parallel but more delicate territory. This involves Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the popular Socialist and chief rival to Royal for the presidential nomination.

Stop being beastly to Parisians

Perhaps it's the execrable July weather, but Paris is in a bad mood. The rain seems to be making everyone rattier than usual. Take the man at our newspaper kiosk. He usually shrugs and turns his back when tourists ask him for directions. Yesterday, he was swearing at at them.

The kiosk man is a prime candidate for re-education under the city's new friendliness programme. This latest in many attempts to teach Parisians to smile at strangers was launched with fanfare by the municipal tourist authority this week. Tuesday was declared the first Day of Tourism. Mayor Betrand Delanoe attended festivities by the Eiffel Tower, visitors were shown round neighbourhoods by residents and the media alerted France once again to its poor reputation for accueil -- welcoming people.

A charter has been issued for the Parisians and the visitor [printed below]. The Parisian, for example, pledges to "take time to give information to visitors" and the tourist promises to try to get into the spirit of the town.

We've been around the "rude French" track with several postings already, but this gives me a chance to speak up for Parisians.

Nobody Says No To Sarko

Spectators of French politics are being entertained by a lurid show. This tragicomedy  could be entitled Meltdown on the Left Bank. The master of ceremonies is of course Nicolas Sarkozy and the setting is the Rue Solferino, home of what is left of French Socialism. 

The party that is led by François Hollande, the estranged partner of Ségolène Royal, is in panic over endless raids in its higher ranks by the radical rightwing president. The predatory tactics of "Super-Sarko" are now raising doubts about the very survival of the party that was built in the 1970s by the late François Mitterrand and suffered its third successive presidential defeat with Royal's candidacy in May.

Sarkozy was not content with poaching the popular Dr Bernard Kouchner and five other leftwing figures for his government of "ouverture", or opening. He has continued in brazen fashion to woo more Socialist stars and some of them are falling to his charm. The latest is Jack Lang, the long-serving culture tsar of leftwing governments. Lang today stormed out of the Socialist leadership, resigning his position as a national secretary, after being threatened with suspension if he signs up with Sarkozy. 

Why Frenchwomen enjoy housework

  We all know that women still do most of the household chores despite over three decades of supposed equality between the sexes. A French researcher has just produced an interesting book that seeks to explain why women have not asserted their rights in the home like they have at work.

Part of the answer, according François de Singly, a Paris sociologist, is that women wield power over their partners by retaining their traditional role of maîtresse de maison.  "The unequal split of chores has the effect of making the man dependent. While the man benefits from the service of his companion, he loses a little of his mastery over his world."

It is a sacrifice that men are of course happy to make. "The man's loss of autonomy inside conjugal life is not equivalent to the loss of independence that stems from the woman's overload of domestic chores," Singly concludes in L'Injustice Ménagère (Household injustice). "Most men accept being disposessed of a role in building the shared life in order to avoid the work it requires."

Singly and colleagues from the CNRS, the state research institute, use case studies and statistics to show that women have not made housework a priority while they imposed a revolution in male attitudes in other domains.

The funny side of the Tour de France

It's the time of year again when France observes a modern tradition: the lament over drug-taking by riders in the Tour de France.

The 94th edition of the world's biggest cycle race starts on Saturday in London. For the geographically alert, yes, the British capital is not in France, but the three-week test of human endurance sometimes visits neighbouring territory before finishing on the Champs Elysées. This is the first time in London for the great Tour caravan.

The event is once again over-shadowed by the endless scandal over doping. Floyd Landis, last year's winner, is fighting an implausible campaign to retain the title that was cast into doubt when he failed a drug test. Suspicion lingers over Lance Armstrong, the American who won every year from 1999 to 2005. In the past month, former riders have confessed to using EPO (erythropoietin), the favourite doping agent for would-be wearers of the Yellow Jersey. 

The latest wheeze to clean up the sport is a pledge of purity that riders must sign for the International Cycling Union. If they do not publicly reject performance-enhancing drugs, they do not ride. Most have complied.

That's the background for this video. Among all the hand-wringing and media debate, a couple of enterprising song-writers have scored a hit with a joke song on the joys of doping.  Posing as a Mexican mariachi cycle team, they sing in French and Spanish:  "EPO te quiero, grace à toi je serai numero uno" ["EPO I love you, thanks to you I will be number one"]

EPO TE QUIERO - LAPLAGE

Le jogging n'est pas français, Monsieur le Président

As a correspondent, you try to avoid reinforcing national stereotypes but sometimes the French don't let us. Where else, for example, would people argue that jogging is a capitalist pastime that is designed to undermine serious thought and democracy? 

The matter has been burning up blog space on the internet and the mainstream media since Nicolas Sarkozy brought his running habit to the Elysée Palace and used it to hone his image as a new-style dynamic president. "Is jogging rightwing?" asked a headline in Libération last Thursday.

On television, Alain Finkielkraut, one of the big philosophers from the 1968 generation, begged Sarko to stop jogging and start walking. "Western civilisation, in its best sense, was born with the promenade. Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation," said Finkielkraut [video clip].

[Philosopher denounces Sarkozy jogging]

Jogging leaders have been common since President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, but until Speedy Sarko won office, French heads of state shunned physical exertion in public. Imagine Charles de Gaulle in running shorts.  The late Francois Mitterrand was partial to a round of golf, but the reflective stroll was his public recreation. The film on his final days last year was titled Le promeneur du Champs de Mars. Jacques Chirac was famous for his energy, but in public he moved at walking pace, always in suit and tie.