France feuds over May 1968

Everyone likes to celebrate memories, but in France old dates are often the stuff of bad blood. We are heading into one of those moments with the looming 40th anniversary of May 1968.

It was a cataclysmic year everywhere, with the Vietnam war and political assassination in the USA, the Soviet suppression of the Prague spring and... umm... pop festivals and demos in the swinging Britain of Harold Wilson.

As often, France staged its upheaval as dramatic street theatre. The student revolt on the Left Bank captured the world's attention in the usual French fashion, but it fizzled after a month. It failed to excite the workers for more than a couple of weeks of strikes and, after wobbling, President de Gaulle restored order. But the country would never be the same. 

With the anniversary on the horizon, les enfants de mai soixante-huit are fighting over its legacy. For one side, it was a disaster that dislocated society, destroyed moral values and unleashed a culture of selfishness. For the other, it was a liberation that unshackled France, freeing it from hypocrisy and conformity. 

The first camp is represented by that cheeky-looking young man in the 1968 picture above. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German student, was the leader who symbolised the mutiny whose fun side was captured by its slogans. "Il est interdit d'interdire" (It's forbidden to forbid) said one. Another was "Sous les pavés, la plage" (Under the cobble-stones is the beach). "Danny the Red" is now Green leader in the European Parliament but he hasn't changed much.

On the other side, we have.... Nicolas Sarkozy, the President who whipped up the crowds in his campaign last year blaming May '68 for all the ills of France and promising to "liquidate its legacy".

While Parisian students were ripping up the cobblestones to throw at the CRS police, young Sarko was a 13-year-old in bourgeois western Paris. He hated the revolt and was already a budding politician. His mother had to ask his school to stop him leaving class to join the conservative counter-march up the Champs Elysées. Last year, under the influence of Henri Guaino, his speech-writer and ideas man, Sarko used May '68 as a whip to lash the "immoral", lazy left-wing thinking that he sees as the root of France's malaise.

"May '68 imposed intellectual and moral relativism. The heritage of May 68 imposed the idea that everything has the same value, that there is no difference between good and evil, between the true and the false, between beauty and ugliness," Sarko told a crowd in the Bercy stadium last April.

May '68 was, he said, responsible for: political cynicism, short-turn profit-seeking by the financial world, distaste for hard work, the decay of French education, moral hypocrisy, "hatred of the family, hatred of society, the nation, the Republic"... and so on.

For Sarkozy, the horrors of May '68 were summed up in another of the famous slogans that decked the Sorbonne university walls: "Vivre sans contrainte et jouir sans entrave." (Live without limits and enjoy without restraint)? 

That was just election talk and it went down well with the rightwing whom he was courting hard late in the campaign. We have not heard much of its since, which is not surprising since Sarkozy has coopted some big soixante-huitards into his administration. Chief among them is Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, who as a young humanitarian founded the Médecins-sans-Frontières charity.

Another reason might be that Sarko is himself such a product of that age of self-indulgence. His recent soap opera, in which Cécilia Sarkozy has been replaced in three months by Carla Bruni (sorry, to get back onto this), is pure "legacy of May '68".

So it was fun to hear the ever-puckish Danny the Red, now 62, sticking in the knife this morning. Here's what he said on France-Inter radio. 

"Carla's boyfriend felt obliged during his campaign to say nonsense about '68. Now I see that '68 has arrived at the Elysée Palace. It's 'live without limits' for everyone, especially the President. Making a show out of your pleasures is perhaps a bad side of '68, but you use whatever legacy you need. Sarkozy is a frustrated soixante-huitard and he doesn't admit it. I feel very comfortable with myself. 1968 was formidable, but we're now in another age.

Another famous player from '68 has jumped into the legacy feud: Libération, the newspaper that was born in the aftermath of the revolt. The quirky leftwing daily has never really lost the subversive '68 spririt of its Maoist founders, who were financed by Jean-Paul Sartre. Under the headline Vive 68, it spent its first 10 pages last Friday revisiting a legend that took place before much of its staff were born [below].

Laurent Joffrin, the editor, who was 15 during les événements, set the tone.  "That joyous insurrection succeeded in its first aim: liberating the individual from the straightjacket of tradition. They will say that May '68 failed in its other aspiration of creating a more just society. That is true."

In case anyone's wondering, I watched the events of that May on black-and-white television at high-school in South Australia. To an impressionable teenager struggling to learn French, the barricades in the faraway Latin Quarter seemed incredibly romantic. I took off to Paris by myself the following year and enjoyed the thrill of sitting on the Boulevard Saint Germain while the CRS fired teargas at squads of pavé-wielding students.  I think Françoise Hardy was singing just around the corner. I'll stop because this is not a nostalgia trip.

Comments

[Daisy]

Charles, maybe you should tell us about your trip to Paris in '69. It sounds interesting... more so than the current soap opera, which has no romance to it whatsoever.

[john o'doe]

It was all about sex. I wasn't around at the time but I did hear the evenements de mai 68 were triggered by randy male students at Nanterre University protesting against the ban on entering the female student residences for dialectical discussions.

[azloon]

in 1968, i was living in sabadell, an industrial suburb of barcelona. a few months after the may uprising, i was driving to london for my brother's wedding, taking a route thru andorra to buy tax-free wedding gifts (cuban cigars, cashmere sweaters, champagne and cognac). after crossing into france in my 'beat up' volkswagen bug, covered with road tar (that's another story), i was stopped by CRS police and my car searched. i was worried that my stash of purchased items might be confiscated (they were hidden under the seats) but the police were obviously concerned with other things, plastic explosives they told me. when they had satisfied themselves that i posed no present danger to la republique (robbie the red?), i offered each of them a cuban cigar which they immediately and happily accepted.

[Mary Chin]

"Vivre sans contrainte et jouir sans entrave." (Live without limits and enjoy without restraint)

"Jouir" can also mean "to come", as in an orgasm. Play on words, and an overly innocent translation?

[Not overly innocent. There's just no English word that covers both senses, unless you can suggest one. CB]

[Emlyn]

I don't quite know what polite translation to propose but "enjoy" does not convey the full meaning of "jouir", which is definitely sexual in this context.

[Maggie G]

I think this is going to be an interesting topic. It strikes me as refreshing and new and I'm looking forward to reading everybody's comments.

I don't have anything very appropriate to say myself, though. I'll have to wait for somebody more in the know to start the ball rolling.

My main memory of May 68 is the glee we felt in Canada that de Gaulle was getting a taste of his own medicine. He came over to Canada in 1967 during our centennial celebrations, when there were thousands of birthday events taking place across the country -- from the voyageur canoes (from all ten provinces, including Quebec) paddling the ancient fur trade routes across the country, to Expo 67 in Montreal, to all the gigantic bonfires of outhouses in small towns that had had modern waterworks systems installed that year as centennial projects.

De Gaulle came to this birthday party of ours (we were so proud to be Canadians that year), but he didn't wish us a happy birthday.

So we were pretty happy to see him having problems at home the next year.

I have a scrapbook here with three cartoon of de Gaulle cut from the newspaper in May 68.

One shows a giant poster of de Gaule with the words "Vive le Quebec Libre" at the bottom, with "le Quebec" crossed out and "la France" written in.

The second one shows de Gaulle sniffing at small clouds of black smoke wafting across the picture. At the bottom is written, "Is Paris burning?"

The third one is entitled "The world lecturer comes home" and shows de Gaulle in front of the tour Eiffel, receiving a cream pie in the face. His dropped suitcase has fallen open and books are spilling out: "How to Run Europe" by de Gaulle, "Independence for Quebec" by de Gaulle, "Down with Anglo-American Influence" by de Gaulle, "What to Do in Asia" by de Gaulle, "Grandeur for Latin Americans" by de Gaulle, "Independence for Rumania" by de Gaulle, "Down with the Pound and the Dollar" by de Gaulle, "Put the U.N. in its Place" by de Gaulle. (The cream pie is labelled "French crisis".)

There's also a comic strip cut from the funny page on May 3Oth, where Betty is saying to Archie, "It's true! Miss Grundy went to charm school!" and Archie replies, "She's about as charming as Charles de Gaulle" (there are two more squares to the cartoon -- this is just the bit about de Gaulle)

I had a paper route in 1968 (The Winnipeg Tribune), and these cartoons come from newspapers I delivered myself.

[dot king]

I wasn't in France in 1968 either, but saw what was going on from across La Manche. I hated the violence, always do, but I loved the inventiveness of the slogans.
I have a snapshot on my office wall here of graffiti that says "DITES-LE AVEC DES PAVES", taken some time after 1968, below it are a couple of posters for a rock concert and a parking meter (which must have been added later).
Also, not long after, I read a novel by Frank Yerby (can't remember the title) set in "les événements".
It's true, it did seem sort of romantic at the time - I suppose provided you weren't on the receiving end either of a CRS matraque or a student pavé.

[dot king]

"I had a paper route in 1968 (The Winnipeg Tribune), and these cartoons come from newspapers I delivered myself. " (Maggie)

I never had a paper-round (as we call them in the UK), but it was quite usual for children to earn pocketmoney by having one.
I once watched a programme about chld-exploitation on French TV (has therefore to be in the last 16 years) and was amazed to see the UK cited along with Taiwan, China, India as being a country rife with exploitation of minors for starvation wages!
How was it in Canada? In England you counted yourself lucky to have a paper-round, newsagents had waiting-lists.

[Joan Arles]

Reading that post, I knew that Charles was on to a good one and a lot of you oldies would come out of the woodwork. I'm a bit younger and I wish I had been around in 68. I moved to France 20 years later but as a small kid in Oregon, I was vaguely aware of things happening in France. It's odd how the kids nowadays take all their references from that period.... their music, their dress and so on. It's as if nothing new has been invented since the sixties.

[isobel]

Dot and Maggie G Apparently, from speaking to a newsagent near where I live in London it's really difficult to find children to do paper-rounds now - you often see retired people or eastern europeans doing them. Children in France don't seem to have jobs while at school (except for those helping out in parents' shops). I had a Saturday job from the age of 16 in a local department store and most of the others in my class did too. I really enjoyed it, still got my A levels and didn't feel exploited either!

[Rocket]

I love France but

Didn't Degaulle (The President of the Country)run away and hide in Germany for a few days in May 1968?

"Another reason might be that Sarko is himself such a product of that age of self-indulgence"

yeah right Charles, if you consider marriage a symbol of the '68 :)

[concedo nulli]

may 68 meant staying awake twenty-four hours a day, and being part of a truly romantic script. Oddly the seventies were far worse than the sixties (our liberated selves were unattractive; I don't remember falling in love in the 70's. The French scene became meaningless and boring with Giscard d'Estaing) By then a worm was eating at our hearts; maybe just the first realization of the horrors of the consuming society but then it felt as if may '68 was the cause.

[Blendi Progri]

Most people though seem very nostalgic about the late 60`s

[Paul Whitfield]

Actually, Liberation was founded in 1973!

[Thank you Paul. That's why I wrote "in the aftermath of" and not "in". CB]

[Daniel Strohl]

Rocket,

"Didn't Degaulle (The President of the Country)run away and hide in Germany for a few days in May 1968?

No, he didn't run away (he used an helicopter - LOL!). He had talks with general Massu, the commander of the French troops in Germany. After these talks, he came back to France.
And, as Charles puts it - "after wobbling, President de Gaulle restored order".

One should not forget that May 68 was almost a revolution, which could have succeeded by toppling the government (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_French_insurrection#The_events_of_May.

This is not very apparent in Charles' article, but the people who were "sur place" at that time did feel just that. And when the same (for instance my wife and me too) had to cast their ballots in May 2007, May 68 was not yet forgotten ...

And Dany le Rouge should better shut up - he was expelled to Germany End of May 68, where thanks to German sense for law and order, he behaved much better than in France. After some political marketing studies, seeing that there was no future for communism or revolution, he turned green ... He reminds me of a few French who became "résistants" only in 1943, after Stalingrad, when it became obvious that Germany would lose the war. But this is another story ...

[Valentin]

Looking back at Mai'68, the word "revolutionary" seems a bit odd to me.

In fact, there was no clear societal or political project - or even demand (except for calls for new elections), there was no kind of new force /regime preparing to take over, no worker coordination, no support from any political force.
Right now, from a distance, it looks more like an anti-authoritarian spirit asking for a right to manifest, reaction to the heavy-handed police interventions, and the usual anarchist streak characteristic to student actions.
From what I understood, the "revolutionary" part was more like what certain radio stations tried to convey.
And when De Gaulle called new elections, his party won an even larger majority than before, showing, if need was, "revolutionaries"'s lack of popular support.

[Mary Chin]

Re: translating "jouir" - here are some words that come close, but the phrase would need some grammatical tinkering: luxuriate, revel, wallow, indulge.

None have quite the defiant directness, coy archness and delicious frisson of "jouir", which is why languages are so much fun.

French tends to formulate ideas in the negative, while English does it in the affirmative. Instead of a word for word translation, how about:

Live boundlessly, come from bondage.

The sexual element is much more hidden though ...

[christopher muir]

Visiting Paris in 1969, I was shocked to see that the statues in the Tuelleries had been vandalised in the previous year by splashes of pink paint - apparently the work of “idealists” or possibly casseurs. That's a plainly stupid act. Perhaps there's something about the month of May. Thomas Dekker, the Elisabethan dramatist apparently had an affection for its thirty-one days - his verse might provide lyrics for a future Sarko-Bruni duet. There’s a spot in there for Cohn-Bendit, too.

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;
And then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg (Carla), thou shalt be my Summer's Queen.

[Terry]

"Another reason might be that Sarko is himself such a product of that age of self-indulgence. His recent soap opera, in which Cécilia Sarkozy has been replaced in three months by Carla Bruni (sorry, to get back onto this), is pure "legacy of May '68"."

Again, there seems to be a double standard here. Sarko divorced and remarried. Mitterand had a mistress and a love child that everyone knew about. My buddy Jack Chirac was a womanizer. Why is Sarko suddenly self indulgent? I wondered this out loud before-but has France gone Puritan on me?

BTW: I enjoyed reading about Daniel Bendit, who was France's answer to our Abbie Hoffman (a fellow alumnist I once met). They seemed to have similar senses of humor but followed different paths. Pete Townsend struck Abbie on his head at Woodstock. He later became a burned out junkie who "accidently" killed himself with 150 pills. Bendit went on to become a politician.

[Rocket]

Daniel

"One should not forget that May 68 was almost a revolution"

I know, which is very hard for me to understand how the country could have actually gotten to that point.

Know any good books I could read?

I still thank you for " La société de defiance"

[Rocket]

Terry

"Why is Sarko suddenly self indulgent? I wondered this out loud before-but has France gone Puritan on me?"

Problem is he flashed it in everyone's face.

He had this proud conquering look on his face a few times too many for the French, I believe.

He promised to be the President of purchasing power and then a few weeks ago he said that there was nothing he could do about that.

The race to get married and all the similarities Bruni-Cecilia IMHO made the French think that he was revengeful.

In other words he was saying to Cecilia "you won't do this to me, President of the French Republique".

[Actu75]

"I think Françoise Hardy was singing just around the corner. I'll stop because this is not a nostalgia trip."

Don't! La Nostalgie camarade, sang Gainsbourg. It would suit so well to a blogging exercise.

[Rocket]

Terry

Another reason the French are pissed

http://tinyurl.com/2advxr

Long live the First Lady of France!

[Valentin]

ROCKET:
"Problem is he flashed it in everyone's face.
He had this proud conquering look on his face a few times too many for the French, I believe."

That may explain why he's judged more harshly than the others.
That does not make him "self-indulgent".
He's less indulgent than the others because he did marry after all.

[Pierre Bernardi]

Mary Chin, "French tends to formulate ideas in the negative". What rot. (You see, that's a negative idea expressed in English).

During week-long initiation ceremonies at Sainte-Geneviève (they were banned nationally) my tortionnaires would make us chant "Plus j'en jouy, plus j'en josas!" as we did a bite-au-cul in the Rio Crado, covered in oil and ketchup, carrying a dummy and wearing an inflatable ring around our neck.

[Pierre Bernardi]

Come to think of it, we crawled through the rio crado. There wasn't room for anything else. The duck-chain was reserved for the courtyard.

[junior]

Don't trust anybody over 40.

[John Gregory Flinn]

Picking up from DANIEL STROHL, I think the "revolution" and the possiblilty of a coup, often associated with Mai'68, actually occurred earlier in France when it became obvious to all that De Gaulle considered 'Algérie n'ést pas Francaise'!
I was in Paris in the early 60s, and remember the sense of outrage when General Salan was incarcerated in the Santé Prison.
Venturing into that locality I can remember the noise of protest around the prison and the heavy presence of military, although I did'nt feel personally threatened.
But DANIEL, was'nt General Massu involved in the same plot?

[Terry]

Rocket:

Certainly he has folded like a cheap suit on the economic issues. But he married to this woman. She is his wife. Is he supposed to hide her?

The real question is....

What is the over/under bet on the length of their marriage?

[millier marc]

may 1968 was a great moment in my life , but also for all around me , firends ,family
my life started in 1968...

i was 16 in 1968

[Rocket]

Valentin

"He's less indulgent than the others because he did marry after all."

You've got to admit that he flashed it in the face of the French. Not really appropriate at a time when the average French person is trying to get more than 1.5% salary increase per year. The gold rolex and all. Yeh, we can say it's the system that keeps salaries low in France but he should have never promised to be the President of purchasing power and then just give it up in a New York minute.

I still do agree when and if he matures like a "fine wine" he will be the best person for the job. (next to the woman from the PS)

You don't go around flashing sh*t in the French people's face. Christ, even I know that.

PS Can I say "shit" on this blog?

[Valentin]

LOL no you can't Rocket, the blog-cleansing police will be right after you, aided by the language brigade :))

As to l'ami Sarko, you think Chirac wore a Casio watch? No, only no one was interested in it. Personally I didn't notice Sarko swinging his arm "casually" so that his sleeve slide down and uncover his Rolex.
The world just changed, the people-ization is more due to the media and to the population itself, than the celebs'.
If Sarko hadn't shown Carla, some paparazzi would have sooner or later framed him "au petit matin", just like English tabloids do with the royal family for a long time already.

[François DOUCHAIN]

In 68, i was in second year of Medecine, at the Paris faculty near Odeon.

I was very studious (well fashioned after several years at Reims's College of Jesuits..)

In Medecine we were very reluctant to revolt and stopped to work in the silence of the old Odeon "bibliothèque". Only it was too difficult to concentrate and breathe because the CRS and students were fighting in the Boulevard St Germain with tear gas. We first thought that the events were a pretext for the lazy students not to work and pass their examinations.

I remember the young Jean-Pierre Chevenement haranguing people on the Boul'mich, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Sorbonne and a very old man, the poetry and communist Louis Aragon, declaming to the "people" of the Boul Mich his last poem, "composed in the fever of the last revolutionnary night".

Another Friday evening was the "nuit des barricades". With some friends, walking near the Senate and the Jardin du Luxembourg, we were surprised by the absence of reaction from the police in front of the barricades built with cobble stones.

Everyone enjoyed themselves. The girls were all young and beautiful. We didn't stay near the barricades and returned to our collective students' rooms, at 1 am, in fear of being mopped up by the troops, like bad boys who have done a silly thing.

History was walking near us. Just the impression that these events were important and the fears of a civil war, living with the permanent rumor of intervention by the army "just at the gates of Paris". Don't forget that De Gaulle was military. Pompidou was THE man of the situation for the issue.

When I returned to my parents' home (at Laon, near Reims) two weeks later (when the trains were running again), I was surprised by the difference between Paris and "deep France" (la France profonde). They were horrified by the destruction of the streets and of Boul Mich trees (the present ones are the successors of those which were destroyed).

Sarko was a young boy in 68, and I suppose that his mother didn't let go to the "quartier Latin", as you said.

You saw it well, even if you were in South Australia.

Excellent analysis about his current behaviour and those events. Mine is the same.

And Have you seen this video of Anne Roumanoff?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x42bn9_sarkozy-bruni-epingles-par-anne-rou_politics

A good idea for an article if Hilary wins (the risks about Carla and Bill alone in a room just near the diplomatic one).

Perhaps difficult to translate: joke about "asperge" and "poireau", for example: two vegetables with a sexual signification.

[Note from CB: Welcome, François. And I suggest everyone has a look at that video. It has become cult viewing over the past week. Roumanoff does a fantastic monologue on Carla and Sarko on the Michel Drucker Sunday show. It was just after their coming out at Disneyland. Roumanoff's humour is cruel. The Disney staff were astonished, she says, because "it's the first time that Snow White has gone off with the dwarf". CB

[Rocket]

Ok

Today is a taxi strike in Paris. Your loyal servant has filmed a bit of it for you near Porte Maillot.

Interest level - near zilch but have a look anyway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZEgk3DP8UE

[Maggie G]

"I once watched a programme about chld-exploitation on French TV ...and was amazed to see the UK cited along with Taiwan, China, India as being a country rife with exploitation of minors" (Dot)

"Children in France don't seem to have jobs while at school" (Isabelle)

Yes, I tore some pages out of a VSD magazine a few years ago, with pictures of a boy working at a green grocer's in England -- pushing a pile of crates of lettuce or something, and it was labelled as "scandalous".

I think this is one of the biggest mistakes the French make -- "protecting" their children from "exploitation", but in reality denying them any opportunity to exercise a bit of responsibility.

I had my paper route for four years, starting from age 14. The mail truck brought the papers out from the city between 4 and 5 in the afternoon, and all the paperboys would be hanginging around behind the post office, waiting. Then we had to deliver the papers six days a week whether it was freezing cold, pouring rain or roasting hot. I remember trudging through a field of deep snow every day, on the north end of town, on the way to the home of my farthest customer (accompanied by our faithful dog Leda). (I loved it.)Every second Saturday morning I had to collect from all my customers, and once a month pay the bill that arrived from the Tribune. Any time we went away for a holiday, I had to line up a replacement.

Then there were other kids who had a job at the grocery store for a couple of hours after school, and on Saturdays, stocking shelves and bagging or delivering groceries.
And there were young boys who would drag their lawn mowers around town, cutting grass for all the old ladies, or shovelling snow in winter. And all the teenage girls had babysitting jobs (and still do today).

And look at the swimming pools in North America, with their dedicated teams of teenage lifeguards and swimming instructors. Starting at age sixteen you can be a lifeguard, on duty one evening a week, and one shift on the weekend, or teaching a class of children (or adults) to swim. These are fantastic jobs, giving REAL responsibility,that many kids aspire to. Compare this with the swimming pool in XXX village in France, where the lifeguard is an old guy with grey hair who has been doing the job for twenty years, and sits by the pool turning the pages of his newspaper.

In France most parents don't even seem to expect their kids to do the dishes or take out the garbage. The only thing that seems to count is homework. When we lived in Ottawa, the mother of my son's best friend was always phoning up to say, "Tell Sam to come home RIGHT NOW!! He hasn't done his chores!!" (Or she would call from work and say, "Ask Sam if he's done his chores yet.") I don't think this happens much in France.

I often think that if French teenagers were allowed to be responible, and earn a bit of money, there might not be quite so many cars burning every weekend across the country. It is especially the kids who don't do so well in school who profit from these small responsibilities.

Well, this doesn't have much to do with May 68. Or was it in May 68 that French kids lost the right to "work"?

[Daniel Strohl]

John Gregory,

Yes, general Massu was involved in the same plot. Neverteless, in 1968, he assured de Gaulle of his support. This is may be the reason why the revolt of May 68 didn't turn into a revolution - the left remembered that in 1958, the military had called de Gaulle to come back to power, threatening to use paratroopers and armoured forces against Paris if necessary. It was not necessary ...

Massu is quoted to have said to de Gaulle end of May 1968 : "Give me two divisions and tomorrow, you can take your breakfast on the boulevard Saint Germain". Apparently, the threat (and the fatigue of most of reasonable French with the "soixante-huitards") was enough to calm down things and "to restore order" (Charles).

For more details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Massu

[Rocket]

Maggie

I had paper routes too in Washington DC suburbs. A the cold and snow in Winter! I had morning newpaper routes. Before that I sold flower seeds then I worked construction sites. It does prepare you for future responsibility and takes pressure off the parents to subsidize the kids.

I even had a famous customer when I lived in Alexandria VA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Hill

I remember going to collect at the end of the month and he opened the door and I almost sh*t my pants. This was about 6 months after the assassination. The apartment was completely dark. Really spooky.

[Dominique]

I just heard that president Déby from Chad was going to give his pardon to the six infamous "Arche des zozos" in order to thank France for it's support.

Well, i don't agree! keep them in jail! The fact that the french army did help Déby does not make the Arche de Zoé innocent! That is a real shame.

Once upon a time, Sarko said that "Afrique de papa" was over. It is in fact over. Today's relations with Africa are worse than in Papa's times...

[Daniel Strohl]

Rocket,
"Know any good books I could read?
I still thank you for " La société de defiance"
Sorry, Rocket, I am not a fan of May 68. My memories of that time are ok for me!
Nice from you, Rocket, to thank me for "La société de défiance"! But somebody else on the blog did recommend this book - it was not me. And I can't remember who it was.

Terry,
You like Cohn Bendit’s humour. Hereafter a short anecdote about his (one-way) « humour » : a few years ago, he came back to Paris and there was a meeting somewhere in an university. One of the left wing participants threw him a cream pie in the face – Dany le Rouge did not appreciate the joke, which for him was almost akin to a « crime de lèse-majesté ».

[azloon]

[O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;
And then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg (Carla), thou shalt be my Summer's Queen.] Christopher Muir

ah, so elegant a sentiment combining the sexual theme of the '68 eruption and the month of the of year.

i offer another, courtesy of james taylor, who told an audience once of his father's doggerel about sex and spring:

hurray, hurray, the first of may,

outdoor fu*king starts today.

[dot king]

"a cream pie in the face – Dany le Rouge did not appreciate the joke, which for him was almost akin to a « crime de lèse-majesté ». "

Surely no-one delights in having a cream-pie thrust in their face, I wouldn't, would you Daniel, take it as a good joke? Les "Tarteurs" are into humiliation, not fun. It isn't even political.

[Maggie G]

Rocket,

Wow, that's pretty exciting! At first I wondered how you had never met him before, if he was your customer, but I suppose it was normally his wife who answered the door. It says he felt guilty and responsible till the end of his life, and you said the apartment was completely dark, so maybe he was suffering some kind of depression over it, and that's how he happened to be at home, and you got to meet him.

I guess you didn't ask him about it, eh?

I calculate you must have been eleven at the time.

[Rocket]

Maggie

"It says he felt guilty and responsible till the end of his life"

That's the least he can say.

So anyway, the story continues. he opens the door and I am face to face with Clint Hill.

"Paper boy" I said sheepishly and then his wife runs to replace him and pay me. He goes to the back of the living room as the front door opens into the living room, just a small entrance way between the front door and the living room and it's all dark except for one small lamp and I'll always remember his silhouette with his hands in his pockets, back to the front door staring out the living room window (it was evening and thus the sun had set)not moving in that dimly lit and tragic room. It was as if he was waiting for his life to pass by.

His kids went to my elementary school, but we didn't even think of being invited over to their apt and they never took invites after November 22 . I was 12 at the time. We work very young in the US and at the time that was an evening route. The Washington Star.

I never met him before because he was always traveling being the security attachment to the President.

here's a pic I took of Kennedy's grave about a week after the assassination

http://tinyurl.com/2gvvde

[Rocket]

I just thought up the dinner menu for the elysée when they have a state reception for foreign dignitaries. Tell me if you get the joke.
***********************************

entrée -Terrine de Foie Gras
Salade de Homard du Maine

plat principale - Canard Roti Sauce Montmorency

ASSIETTE DE FROMAGE

Déssert - Brownie(à prononcer comme en français) ou Bruni hi hi hi!

[azloon]

CB, so no doubt the story of her meeting a journalist at her door topless is certainly true. was it you? did you tell your girlfriend about it?

François DOUCHAIN (hello)
nice link ;)about the video of Anne Roumanoff.
------------------
As CB states, her humour is a bit cruel. British stand-up ( comedians) are cruel too... I guess, if said as a part of a bigger act, as a joke after joke it sounds a bit different and forgetable.

When the humour is mostly about one subject it can be cruel and vulgar.
But it has been like that since times immemorial, sarcasm and irony is the usual ` weapon` of the `little ones` agaisnt the rulers.
-------------------------------.
In a way we are a bit harsh on Sarko, he Only had 3 WIVES ( and a lover or two, after lunch. We must let the guy be and why not, encourage him to get out more, date often and be little experimental.)

In the big scale of things- and considering what other dudes in the past have done, Nicolai is a mere junior when love ( and wife collection) is concerned.
-----------------
just a non-comparative-sample ....

Was reading about Jahangir (the Mogul Emperor) and the Stats" are simply mind blowing (will c&p them below).
he ruled from 1605-1627 and had:

* A harem of 300 royal Wives
* 5.000 more women
* 1.000 young men for alternate pleasures.

He kept other `pets too` :

* 12.000 elephants
* 10.000 oxen
* 2.000 camels
* 3.000 deer
* 4.000 doogs
* 100 tame lions
* 500 buffalo
* 10.000 carrier pigeons.
=-----------------
... our beloved Nicki doesnt even have a goldfish!

[azloon]

[CB note: I'll let this one through with the link to the pictures of Bruni that have been doing the rounds for the past month. Big deal -- she's a model.]

what's she modeling?

[T. Tubby Endash]

Charles you must put a stronger warning on those pictures of Carla. They're not 'work friendly', well not friendly enough for the working environment in the UK. HR departments will have your blog readers on a written warning. That said, I'll have another look at them when I get home, they do look interesting.
[Thanks. On reflection, I've taken the link off. CB]

[EYGH]

Maggie G

I agree with you on French kids and lack of chores. But thank God, it is not true in all French families although too widespread.

But it was not always like that.

May 68 events did mark the start of a certain downfall of good sensensical, good manners education in France. How can parents who have no notion of basic education educate their kids correctly ?

As far as student jobs are concerned, the problem is different. When you see the length of school days and the load of homework the kids have, it seems obvious they can't possibly have an aside job.

Vacation time is a different story. Many students take a summer job but for highschoolers there isn't much available except kids care types of jobs (centres de loisirs, camps, colonies de vacances,...). It is obviously not enough.

[christopher muir]

I suppose that over many years photographer Helmut Newton's style had more or less inured us from the shock of the new, but when did the president and his maman know about these revealing photos of Carla Bruni? Probably a first for a first lady when it comes to public exposure.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Maggie says she had a paper route in Canada and Dot King says there are waiting lists for the paper-rounds in the UK. Does anyone remember seeing Guido Orlando in the 60's, selling The New York Herald Tribune every 31 July, the eve of his birthday, at l'Etoile every year, or see him in A bout de Souffle with J-P Belmondo and Jean Seberg, when he played the part of the news editor of that paper in Paris?
That was Guildo's first job in America, aged 12, which led him to Hollywood and his future as a Press agent, for he was the one who had the idea which made Greta Garbo famous, so if anyone is interested in the true story, from The Storyteller, today, go to COMMENT CENTRAL by Daniel Finkelstein "Did Garbo Really Want To Be Alone?" and scroll down to that lovely photograph of the gorgeous Greta, to see how he did it!

[azloon]

re carla pics (now removed)

[They're not 'work friendly', well not friendly enough for the working environment in the UK. HR departments will have your blog readers on a written warning.] T. Tubby Endash

it's such a pity when ogling naked photos of the french president's wife while at work is a no-no. i mean, you're viewing history here. this isn't some two-dollar bimbo we're talking about.

a $20,000,000 bimbo, maybe.....

[MCG]

For an English word with the doubleness of "jouir," try "die" as John Donne uses it:

All love is wonder; if we justly do
Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. . . .

[MCG]

Public architecture has suffered disastrously from the effects of May 1968. May 1968 was the end-point of the classical traditions of the Ecole Normale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. The system of ateliers limped on for a couple of years, but the Beaux-Arts stopped teaching the great tradition and started teaching modernism.

One visit to the new Bibliotheque Nationale is enough to demonstrate that post-1968 modernism has unhinged public architecture in France.

Sarko has embraced the fashions of the worst of the modernists. Witness his approval of Mayor Delanoe's proposal to insert twisted modernist towers into the fabric of Paris and his entertaining only modernist architects on the occasion of the opening of the Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine last fall.

[Pierre Bernardi]

Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier were hardly born in 1968. Le Grand Louvre, la Grande Arche, le Grand Palais, l'opéra Bastille, Bercy, Pompidou et la revitalisation du quartier de Tolbiac témoignent tous de la qualité de l'architecture publique. Passons sur la tour Montparnasse!

[MCG]

If the structures Pierre Bernard cites are the best post-1968 public architecture France can produce, I rest my case. Compare the Opera Bastille with the Beaux-Arts Opera Garnier. No contest. Compare the Pompidou with any Beaux-Arts museum. Compare the new Bibliotheque Nationale with the Beaux-Arts library buildings on the Richelieu site. One must weep.

As to the revitalization of Tolbiac, modesty is appropriate, especially since the awful Bibliotheque Nationale--for which I notice Mr. Bernard offers no defense--looms over it.

Unlike Beaux-Arts cities, Tolbiac is incoherent. The plan is an agglomeration of parcels. As to individual buildings, the simple chapel of Notre Dame de la Sagesse, by local architect Pierre-Louis Faloci, shows up the poor siting and excessive scale of everything else.

[Deborah]

TERRY
I agree:

The real question is....
What is the over/under bet on the length of their marriage?

I think it will last a year at the most ... you better tell me what you think so we can bet a bottle of champagne!

[Terry]

Deborah:

My bottle of Veuve Cliquot gives them 18 months. She'll enjoy the year of stardom, get bored and runoff with some other person who star has risen.

[Terry]

Maggie said:

"And look at the swimming pools in North America, with their dedicated teams of teenage lifeguards and swimming instructors. Starting at age sixteen you can be a lifeguard, on duty one evening a week, and one shift on the weekend, or teaching a class of children (or adults) to swim."

You are quite right. I did this from 15 through college. The most enjoyable job I ever had. Including the present one.

[azloon]

[You are quite right. I did this from 15 through college. The most enjoyable job I ever had. Including the present one.] Terry

that's likely because Terry got laid more regulary than in any other time of his life.

male lifeguards in the u.s. are 'chick magnets."