It's almost Bastille day and Paris has started the holiday shutdown so it's a good time for a few tips on being cool in the French capital this summer.
The style of the season is called nouveau modeste
Le look for women: retro and slightly ethnic. The Sarouel (left picture) is tendance again this year, along with white everything and creole loop earrings. Footwear: espadrilles Castaner [below]. My teenage daughter and her western Paris friends also carry big hand-bags permanently on the crook of their elbows [picture: Parisienne teen look]
Sunglasses (men and women). Persol only. Classic Italian marque long ago adopted by French. Never, of course, to be perched on top of the head
 
Men: Anything as long as it does not include any of the following offences: sneakers/trainers, sandals, shorts, trousers with big appliqué pockets, t-shirts with logos or slogans, back-packs, shoulder bags, or, heaven forbid, man capris [criminal offender on Champs Elysées in picture below]. Simple rule: Paris is an elegant northern city not a Med package resort 
Dog: English bulldog, known as le bouledogue anglais. The Jack Russell terrier is ending its reign as favoured four-legged accessory. 
Car: Toyota IQ. Replaced the Smart as chic Paris wheels. Do not be seen near any 4x4 (SUV).
Parking: give your keys to one of the hundreds of voituriers (valet parking attendants) who have multiplied around hip cafes and restaurants. You don't have to be a customer, just tip well.
Top transport: bicycle. Le Vélib, the city's self-service bikes are great but very 2007. An electric Solex is chic but a fixie [below] is better. The fixed-gear bicyclette is now fashionable even for women.
Public transport: The municipal autobus is to be preferred to the smelly Métro, especially in light summer traffic. It's a more pleasant conveyance and you see the city.
Films: Any with late comedy stars Louis de Funès, Jacques Tati or Bourvil [Picture: de Funès and Bourvil in le Corniaud] 
Places to be seen: La Réserve (rare book collection) at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The terrace of Le Café de l'Alma on the avenue de la Bourdonnais [those two cited as top snob spots in Figaroscope] Sunday brunch at the Neuilly-sur-Seine market.
Places not to be seen: The Champs Elysées, the Eiffel tower, the Fifth arrondissement, Paris Plage or anywhere along the central Seine banks. Any cafés and brasseries that display English-language menus or claim to have English-speaking waiters.
Where Parisians holiday this year: Inland rural regions like Picardy, Lorraine, Ardèche and the Cévennes. Provence and the Mediterranean coast are to be avoided like la peste.
Parisian pastimes on holiday: Fishing, bicycling, jeux de société (board games), listening to vinyl records, barbecue.
France has a rich tradition of dictionaries and encyclopedias and the publishers are not giving up in the face of the competition from the internet. Tomorrow sees the publication of the latest Petit Larousse, a dictionary-reference book which has been part of French family life since Pierre Larousse invented it in 1905.
The Petit Larousse is serious and known for its fine illustrations but it is not set in stone like the dictionary of the august Académie Française, the official guardian of the language. It keeps pace with trends and mirrors the prevailing culture. So it's always interesting to note the new expressions and the people whom it adds to its new editions. The arrivals this year include Audrey Tautou, Barack Obama and George Clooney.
The inclusion of show-biz personalities is part of "la pipolisation" of French life. That word, which means celebrity culture and originated in the 1990s from the US People magazine, is one of 150 new terms in the Larousse dictionary section. There are a few from Belgium, Quebec and other parts, and some, like barré (crazy, eccentric) are current French slang but many, inevitably, have been adopted from American
They include buzz, burn-out, geek, fantasy (in the sense of Tolkien-style, nordic mythology entertainment), peer-to-peer, caster (meaning to cast in the theatre sense), blacklister (to blacklist), clubbeur/clubbeuse and toxique, in the sense of waste or loans. The new toxique is one of many examples of English usage being overlaid on old French words. A typical classic example is réaliser, which took on the English sense of to realize as well as its French meaning of to carry out. (The shift took place in the 1920s, according learned commentators below)
This may drop out of the language as fashion passes. Larousse is not sanctifying language like the Académie, whose dictionary is a safe half century or so behind the times. It just tries to reflect current use.
You can understand why French embraces American jargon when it encapsulates a sense for which nothing native has been invented. English has done that with dozens of French words (chic, chagrin, nuance, frisson...) over the past couple of centuries. Le buzz sounds ugly in French but it is a single syllable which French takes a mouthful to render as "rumeur, retentissement médiatique, notamment autour de ce qui est perçu comme étant à la pointe de la mode" as Larousse puts it.
But a lot of the English borrowing is superfluous or silly. Gilles Vigneault, a venerable Quebec singer-poet, was making the point on Europe1 radio this morning. Why say burn-out when there is a perfectly good French word for it, épuisement (exhaustion), he said. My list of recent silly franglais would include relooker (to make over), le fooding (a restaurant fashion involving modern cuisine and trendy décor) and sur-booké (booked out). All have been registered by Larousse.
To get back to less topical matters, this edition marks the 120th anniversary of La Semeuse (the sower), the illustration of a woman blowing dandelion seeds in the wind, which Larousse adopted for his publishing house in 1890 [Dandelion, an English borrowing from the French dent-de-lion, or lion's tooth]. And here is one of the famous nature illustrations: from le Petit Larousse.
Here's an item that is more gossip than news. Carla Bruni and her husband are house-hunting and they have taken a tour of the celebrated apartment of the late Yves Saint Laurent on the rue Babylone in the 7th arrondissement on the Left Bank. What makes it piquant is that Mick Jagger, Bruni's old flame, owns a flat in the same building.
Bruni is an heiress and former supermodel who is worth about 20 million euros, according to the popular estimate. Sarkozy has much less. It seems unlikely, though, that he would move into such a sumptuous pad when he is trying to shed his bling-bling image. But they did inspect the premises recently as part of their search for a new abode, an informed friend tells me.
The Rolling Stones singer has a flat two floors up from Saint Laurent's vast garden duplex, refurbished in Art Deco style, which was home to the spectacular art trove which he collected with Pierre Bergé, his partner. The works were sold for 373 million euros at auction in February [picture above before the sale]. The apartment is not officially on the market yet, but it is estimated at up to 10 million euros.
The couple have been looking for lodgings more suitable than the town house that Bruni rents in the Villa Montmorency, an ultra-chic private street in the 16th arrondissement. Sarkozy moved in there after their marriage 15 months ago. Neighbours in the millionaires' ghetto off the Avenue Mozart are displeased by the security personnel and official vehicles which have disturb their quiet existence around the clock.
The couple are reported over the past month to have inspected other properties, including a former Carmelite monastery nearby in the 16th. The YSL flat would suit Sarkozy better because it is in an open street in the 7th district which is home to Parliament and ministries and is just across the Seine from to the palace.
The Saint Laurent apartment would have special appeal to Bruni because she was a friend and one of the couturier's favourite models. On his death last year the new Première Dame de France said that he had "made sublime not just the beauty but also the strength of women."
On his election in 2007, Sarkozy declared assets of 2.153 million euros, but he lost a big chunk of that in his divorce settlement with Cécilia Ciganer, who left him for another man six months after his election. Sarkozy and Bruni signed a wedding contract under which each retained the title to their their existing assets while sharing those acquired after their marriage.
According to various memoirs of the time, the young Bruni enjoyed a lengthy liaison with Jagger from the early 1990s when he was married to Jerry Hall. The couple have kept in touch. Sir Mick has attended Bruni's concerts and Franck Demules, her personal assistant, wrote in a biography published last week that the British singer occupies the rank of "God" in her list of friends.
Jagger figured in Bruni's opening flirt with Sarkozy when whey were introduced for the first time at the house of Jacques Séguéla, a mutual friend, in November 2007. According to the account by Séguéla, a veteran advertising man, Bruni taunted Sarko, saying: “When it comes to the celebrity press, you are an amateur. My time with Mick was secret for eight years. We went to all the world capitals and we were never photographed once." The President riposted with the now immortal line: "How could you have stayed eight years with a man who has such ridiculous legs?"
[below: the presidential couple in the Elysée palace posing for Vanity Fair magazine last year]
The personal drivers of the past two French Presidents have caused a stir in recent years with indiscreet memoirs that reported on their master's lurid private lives. The latest exercise in the drive-and-tell genre is by Carla Bruni's chauffeur-assistant.
But Franck Demules, known as Franky, offers a reversal of the usual sensation. While the civil servant chauffeurs of Presidents Miterrand and Chirac spilled the beans on their bosses' amorous antics, Demules describes life in the showbiz world of sex, drugs and rock n'roll while making France's première dame sound like a saint.
Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, both former lovers, feature among the stars in the biography of Demules, who has worked for the past decade as confidant, driver, personal assistant and fixer for Bruni. In Un Petit Tour en Enfer (A Little Trip in Hell) Demules, 43, a former actor and cocaine addict who spent time in prison for fraud, reveals no secrets but he offers a glimpse of life in a world far removed from the decorum of the Elysée palace. Bruni and Sarkozy, whom she met and married over the winter of 2007-8, emerge as saviours of the man who describes himself as "the queen's devoted musketeer".
Sarkozy called in Demules when he returned from a rehabilitation course in Canada last February and "in a kind way told me to think of the future." The President advised him to throw himself into work: "If you knew, Franck, how much effort I had to put in in order to get here," said Sarkozy.
Demules returned to the bottle and suffered depression last year after Bruni's marriage sidelined him as her minder-in-chief. Bruni signed him into a clinic near Paris on the recommendation of her friend Marianne Faithful, the British singer. She then proposed a New Year's stay in "her friend Eric Clapton's (rehab) centre in the Caribbean." His English was not good enough so he went to Quebec.
Demules, the victim of long-term sexual abuse as a child, describes how Carla and Valéeria, her actress sister, gave him lodging and work in the mid-1990s after his young wife had died of Aids. Soon Bruni had entrusted him with her credit card and her secrets, he writes. Among other things, the Brunis paid for the schooling of his daughter, now 19 and Carla helped him overcome drug and alcohol addiction.
Demules writes with affection for Raphael Enthoven, the philosopher who was Bruni's last partner and father of their son. He describes Endhoven's "ballsy" courage in a brawl which they had with two strangers in an underground car park. Bruni's entourage has a list of friends classed by order of importance. "Mick Jagger is God," says Demules. The chief Rolling Stone behaves like a perfect gentleman at Bruni's concerts, he says. He contrasts him with Karl Lagerfeld, the Chanel designer, who sweeps up with an entourage and demands movie-star treatment.
Serving Bruni has its tough moments, he says. One was taking Naomi Campbell shopping. On a visit to Au Bon Marché, the Left Bank department store, the former supermodel was so fierce that no-one dared talk to her, he writes.
Demules describes the shock and disapproval among friends in the leftwing entourage when Bruni began her romance with France's defiantly rightwing president. "It was violent. You would have thought I was a traitor to the cause," he writes. Since then, former anti-Sarkozy members of the circle have been asking him to intervene for presidential favours.
Franky organised the President's first birthday party after his marriage. He says that he still feels uncomfortable working with the presidential body guards, all police officers. "At the beginning it stressed me. Even if you have nothing to feel guilty about, you are always a bit scared that you might have forgotten something," he writes.
Demules realised that his boss and the President were in love when he dropped her off in the rain at the Elysée one rainy afternoon in the zinter last year. The President telephoned him and invited him to drive in with his battered car and dog. "I was impressed. The president received me divinely, offering me sausage that he had brought back from Corsica."
Bruni has redeemed him, writes Demules. "Without Carla, some people would not have talked to me. I would have stayed the former junky whose wife died of Aids, the crazy, uncontrollable guy."
Bruni has given her blessing to the book, but warned him "they'll try to make it about me, but don't be pushed around." The premiere dame talked in the latest Paris Match about her attachment to her Franky. "When I got married I never imagined for a second that I would let him go. Even if I am now very protected, there is a heap of personal and intimate things that I do not dare ask of the palace personnel or the security officers."
 After Audrey Tautou's appointment as the new face of Chanel, Dior have come up with a new male ambassador. He's the one in the picture, a 31-year-old actor who is known as sublimely handsome. Younger readers, don't worry if you've never heard of Alain Delon (like some of my colleagues in London today). The picture of him posing in Saint Tropez was taken in 1966.
Dior are about to use the image of the moody Delon at the height of his seductive power to sell Eau Sauvage, the men's cologne which it launched that year. "The picture has not aged and it will enable us to reach men who remember Delon at that period and a younger clientèle which will be charmed by his rebel, irrevent look," Dior told le Figaro.
Delon, a monstre sacré who is in his 74th year; is still going strong after 88 films. He made fun of his notorious self-importance a couple of years ago playing Julius Caesar in the mega-euro comedy Astérix and the Olympic Games. He replied in the film to "Hail Caesar" with the salute: "Avé moi!" [picture]
Known for this mégalo character, Delon likes referring to himself in the third person. He cried scandal last year when he dropped out of the Journal du Dimanche ranking of the 50 most admired French people. The pollsters had failed to include him in the list of candidates, he said. "There were names there that should not have been there if Delon was not there."
Dior's photo; taken by Jean-Marie Périer, is meant to evoke the golden days when Delon largely played himself starring as the smouldering, dangerous hero in movies by René Clément, Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, 1963), Michelangelo Antonioni, Jacques Deray, Henri Verneuil and other directors. He was romantically involved with a string of beautiful actresses, including Jane Fonda, Romy Schneider, Monica Vitti and Mireille Darc. Always a star more than an actor, he missed out on the nouvelle vague film movement of the early 1960s. In 1966, when the photo was taken, he was co-starring with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer and Leslie Caron in Clement's wartime classic Is Paris Burning?
Unlike other actors whose style moved with the times as they aged, Delon seems to have stayed in those pre-1968 years when, as a global hearthrob, he stood for Gallic insouciance, dash and danger. The nostalgia picture will work in France, but I wonder how it will play in the world beyond.
[Picture: Delon now]
Get ready for a deluge of Chanel. In an astute bit of marketing, the Paris fashion and perfume company is about to relaunch its No.5 scent with a new muse: Audrey Tautou.
The actress with the girl-next-door looks replaces Nicole Kidman, who has been Chanel's ambassador-model since 2004. There have been only four or five such égéries, or muses, since 1921 when Coco Chanel invented the heady scent that became the world's best-seller. Marilyn Monroe [below], the first after Chanel herself, ensured its fortunes in the United States in 1954 when she was asked what she wore in bed: "Why, Chanel No.5, of course."
Tautou's role as Amélie (In France known as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) in 2001 made her the world's most famous young French actress. Chanel's move is clever because Tautou is about to star as the company's founder and the perfume's inventor in a would-be block-buster film which opens this week.
Coco Avant Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine, is the most lavish among recent films and mini-series on the woman who was fashion's version of Picasso or Stravinsky. The new movie focuses on the young Gabrielle Chanel [Top picture]. It is the latest in a trail of French biopics trying to match La Môme, the Edith Piaf film that won last year's best actress Oscar for Marion Cotillard. [Coco trailer here]
Chanel hired Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who directed Tautou in Amélie and Un long Dimanche de Fiançailles, to shoot a commercial. Ridley Scott, Luc Besson and Baz Luhrmann did the same for previous Chanel muses.
[Kidman]
Jeunet said Chanel's brief consisted of only three words: mystère, frisson, émotion. He scripted a sepia-tinted, atmospheric yarn about an encounter between travelling strangers. From those words you know that we are talking about the Orient Express or an ocean steamer. For Jeunet it was the Express. He filmed for three weeks with a crew of 250 on locations from Paris to Istanbul. Luxury goods, it seems, cannot get enough of steam(y) romance. Only last year Catherine Deneuve perched on a suitcase beside the same train for Louis Vuitton.
In the Jeunet advert, a whiff of Chanel 5 enables Travis Davenport, an an American model, to find the mysterious reporter (Tautou) who was on the express to Istanbul. The couple finally embrace to the strains of Billy Holiday's I'm a Fool to Want You. The idea of tracing a woman by scent is apt for Chanel No.5 because it was one of the first "parfums à sillage", perfumes that leave a wake. Unlike the floral-based scents of the time, Chanel's product contained chemical aldehydes that gave the jasmin-based essence its lingering effect. Only three people know the formula, according to Chanel.
[Bouquet]
Both Fontaine and Jeunet have been saying that Tautou is the very incarnation of Mademoislle Chanel and the actress agrees. She told L'Express this week that she had always identified with the pioneering couturière. They had similar rural backgrounds and physique. Chanel believed in independence for women, said Tautou. "That's a view that I share."
In the trade, they say that Chanel has made a smart move cashing on the big movie and using a star whose approachable style will attract younger women to its venerable scent. The Coco film opens in France on Wednesday and the commercial airs on May 5. And note: I managed to write the above without using the icon word.
![Bronzes_chinois[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e45ab28a4-400wi)
France often quotes a 1995 pop song by Alain Bashung called Ma petite entreprise ne connais pas la crise -- The crisis isn't touching my little business.
The title could be sung by the art market today after the spectacular sale of theYves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé collection. The three-day auction at the Grand Palais has defied the economic gloom and brought in 373 million euros, breaking several world records.
The song does not apply to the petite entreprise of Franco-Chinese relations. Beijing is using the sale of those two little Chinese animal heads to further its punishment of President Sarkozy for his antics last year around Tibet and the Beijing Olympics. The hare and the rat, stolen when the British and French sacked Beijing in 1860, went for 14 million euros each to anonymous bidders despite China's attempts to block the sale. Jackie Chan, the Kung Fu actor, jumped in on Beijing's side today. Here is my story.
Back to the rest of the art. The sight of all those bidders flush with their millions has not cheered France much as the bleak times hit home but it is being greeted as as a triumph by Sarkozy's government. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, called the auction in the Grand Palais a "a world success which shows that Paris is one of the major centres for the international art market."
In a market that is apparently withstanding the slump, you would expect works by Matisse, de Chirico and Degas to notch up records. For example, Matisse's 1911 oil "Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose" [right], fetched 32 million euros, the sale's highest price and a record for the painter whose collages inspired Saint Laurent's designs.
![YSL-fauteuil-dragon_large[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e83fe28a4-300wi)
But how about this elephant-like arm-chair from the early 20th century Art Deco era? The squat, very worn, brown leather seat by the Irish designer Eileen Gray sold for 21.9 million euros. Souren Melikian, the veteran expert at the International Herald Tribune, said today that this was "a price that was until now utterly unimaginable for any piece of Art Deco furniture."
Crisis or no crisis, the Paris auction had shown that there had been no change since the days of bubbling optimism, he said. "The prodigious vitality of the art market across the board cannot be doubted for a second. If the goods are there, the prices rise higher than ever before."
To close, we can admire this piece by Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor. It was made from stacked wood blocks between 1914-1917 and entitled "Madame L.R.". It sold for 26 million euros -- 33 million US dollars.
The end is nigh for Rachida Dati, the troublesome glamour figure of the French government. For months, Dati, 43, the symbol of ethnic diversity in President Sarkozy's cabinet, has been clinging on to her job as Justice Minister in the face of a revolt by the judges under her command.
Two weeks ago, the birth of a baby and her return to work five days later seemed to have won a reprieve for the former presidential favourite (see below for the latest on the paternity mystery). But last night she agreed under Sarkozy's pressure to run for next June's elections to European Parliament.
As second place on the Paris region list of Sarkozy's UMP party, Dati will be guaranteed a seat. This will offer an elegant exit for the furiously ambitious, politically inept emblem of Sarkozy's promotion of non-white personnel. According to Le Figaro, Dati will wait until the election before resigning. Sarkozy has also guaranteed her a senior role in the party, it said.
Dati refused to say anything about her future today but Sarkozy made clear that she is on the way out. He will need a more consensual figure in charge of Justice to handle the resistance from the judiciary when he applies his promise to abolish the institution of investigating judge later this year.
Dati had hoped that she could follow French precedent and stay on in the government after winning a Euro-Parliament seat. The young Sarkozy once did that.However Sarko said this afternoon that he expects all his party's candidates to take up the seats they win.
A mixture of Cinderella and Cruella de Vil, Dati has both fascinated and irritated with her abrasive ways, good looks, sexy outfits and indifference to the conventions of the ruling elite. As we've seen here before, she was protected because she was the creation of Sarkozy until she fell out of favour. Her return to the ministry days after a Caesarian delivery was an act of devotion and desperation. It also deepened her unpopularity. Last week, before turning the ministry dining room into a nursery for Zohra, her baby, she announced that Sarko had assured her that she was keeping her job for 2009. That seems to have been an illustration of a cynical saying among French politicians that "promises commit only those who receive them." [Les promesses n'engagent que ceux qui les reçoivent]
For all her antipathique side, Dati, the daughter of Moroccan and Algerian working class parents, draws sympathy as a rather lonely figure. Sheer persistence took her from obscurity to a very senior government post despite her lack of political experience and minimal professional qualification. Marianne, a very Sarkophobic news weekly, painted a bitter-sweet portrait of her this week under the headline: "Rachida Dati: Why women hate her." The answer was that "She embodies at the same time the image of the superwoman and the archetype of the woman who has put her fate in the hands of one man...The king made her and he can unmake her." That's pretty accurate.
The mystery persists over Zohra's father. The names of several business tycoons are still doing the rounds, as is that of José-Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister [below]. Aznar issued a denial months ago. On a visit to Paris today, he was tackled on the subject by Europe 1 radio.
"This is a libel," he said. "This question does not exist. It has never existed." He is taking legal action against people spreading the rumour he added.
Meanwhile, Dati's baby has become a running gag for Nicolas Canteloup, the political impersonator who has a popular morning slot on Europe 1. On Monday, he reported that Zohra Dati had resigned from her post as minister's daughter, becoming the 12th member of the entourage of the impossible Madame Dati to give notice this year.
 Here's a picture of a courageous super-woman. No, it's not. It shows a bad mother and disgrace to the feminist cause. The argument has been raging since the unexpected return to work of Rachida Dati, the French Justice Minister. Only five days earlier, she gave birth to her first baby -- by caesarean section. The father's identity remains a state secret. More on that below
Dati, 43, the glamour-figure of President Sarkozy's government, left her clinic in the 16th arrondissement yesterday morning. In freezing weather, the single mother showed Zohra, her baby, to admirers (picture below). An hour later, she turned up looking trim in stiletto heels and a tight suit for the weekly cabinet session. Sarko opened by contratulating "la jeune maman" -- the young mummy.
The very image-conscious Dati was pulling off one her stunts. Her decision to forego the standard three-month maternity leave was ridiculed by those who see her as a pushy, over-promoted favourite of the President. Her admirers saw her return as typical of the pluck that took her from a childhood on the immigrant housing estates to one of the highest government posts.
Everyone understood that Dati, who is deemed to be a disastrous minister, was desperate to keep her job and be there when Sarkozy announced his radical plan to abolish the institution of investigating judges (last post). The argument is whether she has set a bad example for women and is neglecting her daughter.
In the media, blogs and internet forums, the criticism is outweighing the approval. "Dati is doing a disservice to the women's cause," Sophie de Menthon, a feminist businesswoman, told Metro newspaper. "She is driving herself to a point that women who have children know is superhuman. Instinctively and not rationally, I abhor this."
Claude Askolovitch, Editor of the Journal du Dimanche, tore into Dati in his daily breakfast commenatary on Europe 1 radio. She was betraying the women who had fought for their rights by giving the impression that maternity leave is a luxury option, he said. It had been a mistake to see Dati as an icon of ethnic diversity because her case was unique. "She is a solitary character.. and even in happiness, she often inspires a little sadness."
Catherine Nay, a veteran journalist who wrote the authoritative biography on Sarkozy, said Dati was making a mistake because she was stirring up yet another row over her behaviour. "There is in her action an excessive determination to stay in power... It is not clear that being modern means being rushed and reckless," said Nay.
Luc Chatel, the minister who acts as government spokesman, defended Dati. "Rachida has always said that to be a mother was the greatest of happinesses, but at the same time that she had important duties that she would continue to fulfill," he said.
Everyone is bored with the Dati soap opera -- or so we are supposed to believe. A poll on the media in La Croix newspaper today ranked her as one of the subjects which the public believes is over-reported. Yet the internet is full of Dati and she repeatedly scores as a profitable cover story for magazines -- both news and celebrity. So a lot of people are intrigued by her.
It's obvious that the Dati saga has a lot of good old-fashioned ingredients: power, sex and rags-to-riches. Dati is a Cinderella who was elevated from obscurity as the prince's favourite and became a force in her own right. (She talked her way into Sarkozy's staff when he was Interior Minister and she was serving as a junior investigating judge in the suburbs.)
She has flouted decorum -- indulging a taste for showing off in luxury brands and posing for fashion shoots at the same time as imposing Sarko's harsh new sentencing rules and a painful overhaul of the justice system. She is deeply unpopular among her judges and civil servants whom she commands. For a while she was Sarko's social escort. Now he is said to regard her as incompetent but is unable to bring himself to remove her, if only because she is such a symbol. After having the baby and loyally come back to work, she is almost unsackable.
On the matter of le père, the media have been mainly silent this week, while the internet has been full of a picture of François Sarkozy, the President's younger brother. He visited Dati in the maternity clinic over the weekend. Today, Paris Match magazine confirmed that Dati had spent Christmas eve at the home of Andrée Sarkozy, the President's mother. It also published a picture of Madame Sarkozy visiting Dati's clinic. No further explanation was given.
The names of other possible fathers are still circulating. José-Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, is first among them despite his public denials last autumn. Then there is a suggestion that Dati, who was very keen to have a first child and in her 43rd year, simply chose an anonymous donor.
Until lately, France's luxury brands were claiming relative immunity from the slump that has hit purveyors of more common goods. Demand for the high end was holding up, driven by the nouveaux riches of Russia, China and other emerging powers, they said.
The denial has faded over the past month, as the now suffering Russians and Asians have stayed away from the boutiques of the Paris Golden triangle and from the luxury districts of London and New York. French luxury business in Japan has positively slumped.
LVMH, the biggest luxe conglomerate, has just cancelled a plan for a huge Louis Vuitton megastore in Tokyo's Ginza district. Profits in the 170 billion euro world luxury market are still expected to be substantial this year but LVMH has lost 44 percent of its share value in 2008. Richemont, the Swiss owner of Cartier and Montblanc, has suffered a similar share slide.
The latest signs of trouble have come from Chanel, one of the grandest of fashion names. A week ago, the firm, which is privately owned and secretive about its affairs, called off a glitzy travelling art show as it was about to arrive in London from New York. Now we hear that Chanel is to lay off 200 of its French staff.
Over the weekend, the house unions reported that the firm is dismissing all of its 200 personnel who are on fixed-term or temporary work contracts. Sixteen of them work in the firm's historic home in the rue Cambon where the late Coco Chanel dreamt up her little black dresses and No 5 perfume in the 1920s. The company employs 16,000 worldwide. "In the little world of luxury goods, the news has had the impact of a bombshell," said le Parisien.
By coincidence, French television is tonight showing the first part of an Italian-American miniseries on the life of the pioneering Paris couturière. Shirley MacLaine plays the older Chanel. Coco Chanel is suddenly movie material. Two other new biopics -- one starring Audrey Tatou -- are to reach cinemas in coming months. [picture Audrey Tautou in forthcoming Coco before Chanel]
The trouble at Chanel is mirrored across a French-led luxury industry which enjoyed an historic boom with sales growth of about 10 percent a year since 2003. The experts are predicting about a four percent decline in sales in 2009. Not everyone is suffering to the same degree. Swiss watchmakers have been hardest hit while Hermès, the Paris leather goods and silk-square firm, has seen its share price rise by nearly 16 percent this year and it expects about a 10 percent sales growth.
Most of the leaders of les marques de grand luxe say that they are sanguine about what they hope will be a soft landing. But some in the trade believe that times will be hard after a decade in which greed and easy money led to hubris. That's the view of Alain Nemarq, Chairman of Mauboussin, a Place Vendôme jewellery firm which has taken the risk of diluting its exclusive image by offering lower priced items.
The luxury world had gone wild in pursuit of the idea that nothing could be too expensive and no profit margin too exorbitant, Nemarq wrote in le Figaro. Some firms had been ticketing their goods at ten times the cost price he said. "It is the end of the rapture, the crash of the hubris...The pursuit of exclusive trophies... is finished. We will now return to reason, decency and discretion."
While much of the industry believes that the key to survival lies in maintaining exclusivity, Mauboussin has created a stir by reaching for a wider market, opening new, less expensive, shops, in Manhattan and Tokyo. "Let us resolutely drop our profit margins and offer affordable luxury products," said Nemarq. The alternative would be fire sales and empty shops, he predicted.
It's hard not to see his point. In my ignorance, I am still reeling from the price of the standard Burberry scarf that my daughter requested for her 15th birthday last month (don't ask).
The Sarkozys have taken to the law-courts again. The President failed to get a judge to ban a voodoo doll in his image last month. Today, Carla Bruni's lawyers were in court in the French Indian Ocean island of La Réunion demanding heavy damages against a firm that put her naked likeness on a bag.
Madame Sarkozy is seeking 50,000 euros for the "moral offence" and a further 75,000 euros in damages to her professional image as a model-singer. Pardon, a beach-wear firm, took the liberty of printing a drawing of a well-known nude portrait of France's Première Dame on its jokey three-euro cloth bag. A speech bubble had her saying: "My guy should have bought me Pardon."
The firm, which specialises in provocation and has a couple of outlets in France and on the internet, took fright and promised to burn all 10,000 of the offending bags, but that was not enough for Bruni's lawyers. A court hearing went ahead in Saint-Denis, the Reunion capital, and a verdict is due on Thursday.
Pardon should have known better. Bruni and Sarko are quick to sue when someone attempts to cash in on their images. Bruni won 60,000 euros a few months ago after a successful prosecution of Ryanair for putting the couple in an advert (She gave the money to charity, she says). That was for damages to her professional image. The court awarded only one euro for the alleged moral damage that it had caused her.
The lawyer for the clothes firm told the court that "no-one recognised Carla Bruni in the drawing on the bag." He also wondered why Madame Sarkozy had not sued Christie's auction house in New York for selling the original 1993 nude photograph last April on behalf of the photographer, Michel Comte. The picture, taken for an Aids awareness campaign, went to a Chinese collector for 91,000 dollars -- twenty times more than its pre-sale estimate.
President Sarkozy, a lawyer by profession, has turned out to be by far the most litigious head of state in modern French history. His predecessors kept a regal distance above abuses of their image -- though, like François Mitterrand, they sometimes resorted to dirtier means of revenge than the courts.
While Nicolas Sarkozy has been off sorting out Europe for the past couple of days, le microcosme -- the Paris political and media world -- has been chattering about another subject: his trouble with women.
When he was elected, Sarko appointed 13 female ministers. Three of them caused a splash because of their exotic origins, beauty or leftwing origins. None had political experience. These are Rachida Dati, 43, the Justice Minister, whose working class parents came from Algeria and Morocco; Rama Yade, 32, the Senegalese-born junior Minister for Human Rights, and Fadela Amara, 44, the Minister for the Inner City.
Amara, a tough-talking activist of north African back-ground, has failed to make a mark in the rightwing government. But Sarkozy's problem stems from the two glamorous protegées. Dati has been a disaster in her senior and sensitive post and Yade has committed repeated insubordination. The two icons of Sarkozy's "rainbow cabinet" are in disgrace yet he has proved unable to sack or transfer them.
[picture above: the pair at Windsor on Sarkozy's visit to the Queen last March].
So we have another chance to examine the President's well-known Achilles heel. Super Sarko may be an alpha male chief executive but he is putty in the hands of women. The point was made a couple of years ago by Simone Veil, the political grande dame who legalised abortion in the 1970s. "In the presence of women, Nicolas is a child," she said.
Yade, who was a civil servant before her elevation, has repeatedly spoken out of turn yet each time she has been forgiven. She has just refused an order from Sarkozy to leave her post to lead his UMP party in the European Parliament. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, humiliated her in public on Wednesday, saying that it had been a mistake to create the Human rights post. He spoke of her unpleasantly in the past tense.
Yade's biggest public gaffe was condemning Sarkozy's invitation to Muammar Gadaffi to visit Paris. The Libyan leader "must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can wipe the blood of his crimes," said Yade.
Yade [left] has also taken a few swipes at her rival favourite at the royal court. She recently put down Dati, saying that she "is only interested in dresses and parties."
Dati, who previously worked on Sarkozy's staff, has offended just about everyone. She has infuriated judges, prison guards and lawyers with the ruthless way that she has imposed reforms. Once adored, she has become a figure of media mockery for her blunders, her high spending on designer clothes and official jets and her delusions of grandeur.
When Barack Obama won the presidency, she commanded the French embassy in Washington to get his mobile number so she could phone him. The Elysée ordered her to calm down. Sarkozy has put Dati under political house arrest and banned her from the media.
On Thursday he was incandescent after she was said by Le Point, a respectable news weekly, to have boasted that she was unsackable because she knew about past political corruption involving Sarkozy. Dati has denied this in an angry letter to the magazine (here)
The unmarried Dati has two strong cards. She is the star symbol of the ethnic diversity upon which Sarkozy places great store. She is also expecting a baby in February. She has refused to name the father and says that she plans only brief maternity leave. Sacking or demoting the new mother would not look good. (Guessing the father has been a Paris parlour game for the past few months.)
The President's need for the favour of strong women is a constant in his biography. The trait can be tracked from his fatherless up-bringing by a formidable mother through to his dependence on Cecilia, the wife who left him in pieces last year and his lightning remariage to Carla Bruni last February.
It can also explain his fraught relations with Angela Merkel. The reserved German Chancellor is cold to Sarkozy's compulsion to dominate through charm.
In Temoignage (Testimony), a hastily written pre-election memoir, Sarkozy wrote in gushing teerms of of his admiration for women and the need, when dealing with them, to "dare to say sensitive things without being sentimental". He added: "Women generate drive in their own way. They have their own ways of thinking and acting."
Yazmina Reza, the playright who followed Sarkozy throughout his campaign, depicted him as both a bully and a little boy eager to please. Isabelle Balkany, a Paris suburban politician and friend, describes him as "un séducteur -- a seducer or a charmer -- whom it is hard for a woman to resist."
Sarkozy finds it hard to say no to women or incur their displeasure, according to those who know him. "This is the case even when they go beyond the limits in the eyes of most other people," said Caroline Derrien and Candide Nedelec, authors of Sarkozy et les femmes: Un homme sous influence (Sarkozy and women: a man under the influence). The pair describe the President as a "like a big self-centred teenager who is very proud of his political and private conquests".
The latest influence is the supermodel-singer whom he married in February. Bruni, who hails from rich artistic circles, has swayed the authoritarian president towards her leftwing thinking. She persuaded him to cancel the extradition to Italy of an alleged former terrorist last month and she encouraged him to slap down Dati last week when she proposed locking up 12-year-old delinquents.
Dati's fall from grace is dated to Sarkozy's romance with Bruni last winter. In a widely reported incident, Bruni is said to have teased Dati one evening as they walked past the Presidential bedroom in the palace. "You would have liked to be there wouldn't you," Bruni said. That tale sounded far-fetched when it came out in a book earlier this year, but I have heard from good sources that it was true.
In some places -- including Britain and the USA -- beauty pageants are no longer deemed suitable for prime time on main networks. Happily -- or I should probably say unfortunately -- that's not the case for France.
On Saturday night eight million people -- that's 13 percent of the population -- watched the Miss France contest, a jamboree that makes few concessions to feminist principles and is strong on soap opera. The young women parade in high heels in both one and two-piece swim-suits as the commentator praises their charms and talents [bottom picture]. The contestants tell us of their ambitions. Miss Pays de Loire, for example, hoped to "invest myself in humanitarian charities as a representative of elegance."
It's supposed to be family fun and there is usually a feud to keep up the interest. Tensions are soothed by Jean-Pierre Foucault, the oily compère, but the whole thing is ruled by Geneviève de Fontenay, a dragon who is known as "the lady with the hat" [right in the top picture].
De Fontenay, 76, has managed Miss France since 1953 and has been its boss since 1981. Without her, it's likely that the whole kitschy exercise would collapse. This year's drama arose from de Fontenay's banishment of Valérie Bègue, the 2008 Miss France after a former boyfriend circulated photographs of her in less than chaste poses. 
The unfortunate Bègue, from the French island of La Réunion, had kept her title, but she was exiled to los Angeles last Thursday to keep her away from the show where she was supposed to crown her successor. TF1, the host network, wanted her there but de Fontenay over-ruled them. They got their own back when Foucault announced on air that de Fontenay had vetoed the popular Bègue and the crowd booed the lady with the hat.
The winner this year, picked by judges and popular telephone vote, was Chloé Mortaud, a 19-year-old student from the southwestern Ariège département. Like some previous Miss Frances (It's Miss France, not Mademoiselle) she is of mixed race. She is also the first to hold dual French and US citizenship. Her African-American Mother came from Mississippi. Mortaud, who is studying business and had already been crowned Miss Albigeois-Midi Pyrénées, said she deserved the national crown because "with a smile I will transmit happiness to people." She also seized l'air du temps and made the most of her mixed race in her pre-decision pitch. "This polyvalency is an advantage," she said.
As the press talked about the Obama effect yesterday, Mortaud said she would be an ambassadress for racial tolerance. "I want to go to people and explain to them that fear of the other is unfounded. I want to incarnate today’s French diversity".
While Mortaud starts her year of glory, de Fontenay has moved on to another battle. She is fighting rebellion by Guadeloupe, the French Caribbean territory. The island has had the effrontery to send a dissident Miss Guadeloupe to the Miss World pageant in South Africa next week. "She is illegitimate", says de Fontenay. Guadeloupe is part of her Miss France empire and France is to be represented in Johannesbourg by the second runner-up to the banished Ms Bègue from 2008.
De Fontenay usually gets her way, so I hope the insurgent from Guadeloupe is watching her back. Yes this is all frivolous stuff -- despite the millions of euros tied up in the exercise. It's taken with a pinch of salt here, although France has fewer qualms than some other places when it comes to patronising women. As an example of that, I just heard Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a recent Prime Minister, defend Rachida Dati, 41, the embattled Justice Minister, on the radio, calling her "une fille exceptionnelle" -- an exceptional girl.
The Miss World contest, launched in London in 1951, has become an off-shore exercise in recent years, being staged in China, Africa and so on. But don't forget that about 2.5 billion people are expected to watch it next week. To close on a memory, one of my first assignments as a journalist was to report backstage from a Miss World contest in the Albert Hall. It was a morally confusing mission of course.
[Below: swimsuits for Miss France 2009]
It's always impressive how quickly France adopts a fashion. One day no-one is wearing ballerine shoes, then everyone is (à la Carla Bruni). We are now in the midst of a new sartorial craze -- le gilet jaune, or the high-visibility vest.
You may remember how the state ran a tongue-in-cheek campaign that used Karl Lagerfeld to publicise a new law requiring fluorescent safety vests to be carried inside all vehicles. "It's yellow, it's ugly and it goes with nothing, but it can save your life," said Karl.
The fashion icon did the trick. Suddenly Day-Glo is everywhere. Paris cyclists, who had always eschewed safety gear as un-chic still don't wear helmets much, but yellow is their new black. The same applies to scooter riders, protest marchers and people handing out leaflets.
That's obviously commendable. More cyclists can now be seen in the winter gloom. But the really odd manifestation of the gilet jaune is a fashion for draping them around front car seats.
It seems to have started because people believed that the new law requires them to be visible, not stashed in the glove-box or seat pocket. Some mistakenly thought that this would prevent police from stopping them to check their compliance (They are still stopped because they have to carry a triangle as well). Now, somewhere about one in ten cars are sporting the yellow vest look, according to quick surveys around the country. They are more prevalent in the provinces than Paris. The gilet jaune around the seat has become the new version of the nodding dog on the rear shelf or the furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror.
The fad is annoying many people and it is now seen as a joke. It has become a defining symbol of "beaufitude" -- naffness in UK English -- like Bluetooth earpieces or wearing mobile phones on the belt or the tourists who carry bottles of water around Paris.
The gilet-on-display fashion is so irritating that there are now about 200 groups on Facebook devoted to fighting it. There are 70,000 members in the biggest one, called Contre les cons qui foutent leur gilet jaune fluo sur le siège auto [Against the plonkers who stick their yellow fluorescent vest on the car seat]. Watch an anti-gilet jaune squad in street action here.
Some newspapers have studied the phenomenon. La Charente Libre, based in the west, found that drivers thought the vest was fun on the seat because it "brightens things up". Other were doing it "because everyone else is doing it." Their prize went to the man in a green Citroen Xsara who had equipped both front seats with yellow vests and had two more on the back seat on top of a Johnnny Hallyday towel.
Hallyday, France's rock'n roll monument, is himself a high-grade symbol of beaufitude. Nicolas Sarkozy is a big Hallyday fan but we don't know yet if the President has fitted a yellow vest on the seat of the black Mercedes 4x4 (SUV) which he drives about town. Black SUVs are of course another symbol of heavy-duty beaufitude, but I'm getting off the point.
 [Below: fashionable chien parisien]
 A lump of lead from a dusty drawer in a Paris museum has enabled French experts to solve a long-standing mystery.
The size of a pigeon's egg, the piece turned out to be a casting of the legendary Blue Diamond, the centre-piece of the crown jewels of pre-revolutionary France. The diamond, bought by Louis XIV in the 17th century, vanished when looters stole King Louis XVI's treasures in the heat of the revolution in 1792. The find in the Paris Museum of Natural History has in turn enabled researchers to prove that the long-lost blue diamond is one and the same as the Hope Diamond, a star exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC [in picture]
It had long been suspected that the Hope, which was given to the Smithsonian in 1958 by the jeweller Harry Winston and which is said to carry a fatal curse, came from the Diamant Bleu that was looted in Paris in 1792. This has now been confirmed by François Farges, the chief mineralogist with the Paris museum. He has concluded that the Hope is the cut-down heart of the 69-carat Indian diamond that the Sun King bought in the mid-17th century.
[The lead casting of Blue Diamond]
The breakthrough came when Farges and his team were rummaging through thousands of ancient items in the museum. They were intrigued by lot number 50,165, the lead casting. It was tagged as "replica of a blue diamond belonging to Monsieur Hoppe of London". Jewellers used to keep lead castings of stones that they cut.
The replica matched period pictures of the long-lost royal gem. The French team compared it to computer measurements of the Hope sent from Washington and found that the US stone fitted perfectly inside the Blue Diamond. "It is more than a hypothesis," said Farges. "We have carried out analyses by scanner and laser, which have been validated by experts in gemology."
Suspicions were first aroused in 1812, when a massive blue stone of 45.54 carats turned up in London in the hands of Daniel Eliason, a diamond merchant. Until now, Henry Philip Hope, a City banker, only appeared as the diamond's owner in 1839.
The lead casting now links Hope to the plundered diamond, which was originally bought in the 17th century by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, an adventurer, from the ruler of Golconda, in what is now the Indian state of Hyderabad.
Farges says that he did not sleep for two weeks after the discovery of the casting. He pieced together what he believes was the trail of the gem, which in the early 18th century had become part of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a concoction of gold, diamonds and rubies that was made for Louis XV [Pictured here].
The diamond, reputed to have been the most dazzling ever seen, was smuggled to London where it was acquired by Hope and crudely recut, shearing off 23.5 carats as well as its original lustre, says Farges. Eliason was just a front for Hope, says the mineralogist. He has just published his findings in the peer-review journal Revue de Gemmologie.
The Hope diamond changed hands many times after the banker's death. It came to Paris and was owned for a time by Pierre Cartier, the jeweller, before reaching the United States in 1911. The tale of a curse arose from the real or imagined sticky ends of some of its owners, including Louis XVI and Tavernier. The king ended up of course on the guillotine. The adventurer who brought it to France was said to have stolen it from a statue of the goddess Sita. He was later torn to pieces by wolves in Russia, according to the legend.
The Paris museum has made a replica of the royal diamond out of zirconium. It is hoping that a wealthy patron might pay for a synthetic diamond version. Farges does not expect France to ask for its stone back. Napoleon Bonaparte delared crimes of the revolutionary period exempt from prosecution in 1804.
"The diamond has been recut, which means that the one in Smithsonian is in effect a completely different stone," Farges adds.
[below: how the Hope was cut from the King's Blue Diamond]
 It's hard not to feel sorry for Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister and glamorous protegée -- at least until now -- of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Dati, who is expecting a baby in a few weeks time, is unpopular with just about everyone. Judges, lawyers and court personnel see her as arrogant and heavy-handed.
On Tuesday, 536 judges signed a protest letter demanding that she apologize in public for her conduct and "incoherent policies". Sarkozy is said to have run out of patience with the woman whom he appointed as a symbol of success for non-white immigrant France. Dati depicts herself as Sarko's loyal soldier but he refused to give her any support at a Cabinet meeting yesterday. The President has been especially annoyed by Dati's fondness for posing in glossy magazines wearing expensive designer gear. Last month, he told the whole cabinet to avoid appearances in evening dress or luxurious contexts. His "anti-bling" order was intended to avoid offending people at a time of economic hardship.
So Sarko cannot be pleased by the fuss over the pictures above. The lefthand portrait of Dati appeared across le Figaro's front page yesterday. Today, L'Express.fr found that le Figaro, the most pro-Sarkozy newspaper, had erased the expensive ring that Dati was wearing in the original. It was identified as a grey gold and diamond item from Chaumet, the Paris jewellers, which costs 15,600 euros. Le Figaro insists that there was no political intent behind the retouching. Paris Match claimed the same thing when it slimmed down Sarko's naked torso in a beach shot last year.
Debora Altman, Figaro's Photo Editor, says that it was an honest error of judgment. Her team removed the ring to stop it monopolising a picture that was being used to illustrate the revolt of the judges, she said.
The unmarried Dati, whose working class parents came from Algeria and Morocco, plans to take only one week off to give birth to the baby. That is 15 weeks less than the maternity leave that is offered to all French women. She has refused to name the father and no-one has come forward. Two politicians -- Jose Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, and Bernard Laporte, the Sports Minister -- have publicly denied paternity. That has helped fuel the frenzy of gossip, which I am indulging in here. Dati has been close to two captains of French industry over the past couple of years, as well as Aznar.
Sarkozy is expected to reshuffle his Cabinet in January. It is likely that he will move Dati -- who was a judge herself -- out of Justice. But he is thought unwilling to lose one of the icons of his government so may give her another job.
[Below: The Chaumet ring, called Liens (links)]
Purists here have jumped on my headline "la belle France" over the post on wind farms. The French don't say that, I was told. So let's be pedantic and look at the odd things that happen when one language borrows from the other.
I used la belle France advisedly. The expression is old but it is used internationally and it conveys a whiff of Frenchness, like Zut alors! which no-one says much either. It is one of a long list of French words and expressions that are current in English but not in France. The same happens the other way round, or lycée de Versailles, as the kids here say [footnote*].
A friend was complaining the other day that her job requires her to 'faire du phoning' -- making prospective sales calls. She had just had her brushing and was talking about a new restaurant fad called le fooding. These coinages can be useful. I find myself talking about 'un best of' because it's a good term for selected hits. We'll soon have le best of de Sarko 2008. Le smoking (tuxedo to Americans) has long been more concise than the British dinner jacket or black tie. The French media have become très people lately. The word, meaning celebrity culture, presumably came from People, the doyen of US celeb magazines.
In the other direction, a recent Times editorial was headlined Plus ça change. A Parisian colleague asked me what that meant. The proverb plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, is standard in English but has fallen out of common use here. The same goes for déjà vu and crème de la crème (You say le gratin -- the grilled cheese topping a dish -- for crème de la crème)
Then there are the errors. When I write bon vivant in an article , it is "corrected" in the newspaper to read bon viveur, conforming to the English usage. Educated Brits say "chacun a son goût" (each has his/her taste) although the French expression is "(à) chacun son goût" (to each, his/her taste).
The Eurovision song contest has added a Gallic joke to the English language: nul points. It's not French. Here, when a contestant scores nil, they say "zero pointé".
Many meanings have changed over the years. In France, une entrée is now the starter or appetizer, while Americans use it to mean main dish. The entrée originally came between the two when people ate more courses.
People stopped saying sacré bleu! around world war two, but the exclamation lives on in British newspapers and entertainment, along with zut alors! In similar manner, Englishmen in French cartoons always exclaim Damned! and greet their friends by saying "how do you do".
French gave a lot of food words to the world but doesn't use all of them itself. A Napoleon is an item of pâtisserie in some English-speaking places as well as Russia and parts of Europe. In France it's a mille-feuille (thousand leaves). Unlike the English-speaking world, France has no restauranteurs. It has only restaurateurs, which literally means restorers.
Clothes are an old field for linguistic confusion. Un slip are men's underpants (shorts). A brassière is un soutien-gorge. And there's no space to go into all the dangerous faux-amis like préservatif meaning condom. The New York Times committed a howler not long ago when it quoted Nicolas Sarkozy as saying that he had been deceived by someone. He had talked about his déception -- which means disappointment.
The two languages have been borrowing from one-another for a thousand years. Sometimes the same word gets imported twice. Vanguard, meaning the front of an army, came from avant-garde long ago. In the late 19th century it was re-imported as avant-garde, with an arty sense. English tends to mangle French words when it absorbs them. Une discothèque is still called that in its homeland while it became a disco in English.
And then, for enthusiasts who are still with me, there is the way that imported words change the sense of the original language. To the anger of the Académie Française this has been pretty much one-way lately, with French-rooted English words re-crossing the Channel and devouring their ancestors.
The verb supporter in French (to bear or put up with) has acquired the additional English meaning of backing a team or a cause. Réaliser (to fulfill or carry out) is being used instead of se rendre compte, as in "je n'ai pas réalise que j'étais un loser (I didn't realise I was a loser).
There is an embarras du choix for scoring points in the language business. Or should that be embarras de choix? Please add the words that I've missed from this résumé.
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* Lycée de Versailles is an old rhyming substitute for vice-versa (pronounced veesay-versa) .
Update: In response to comments below, this is une clef anglaise -- an English key -- which is monkey wrench in American and adjustable spanner in Britain.
Nicolas Sarkozy had a hard time in Normandy yesterday trying to convince workers at a Renault car factory that he was a regular guy who understood their fear of losing their jobs. That might be because of photographs such as this one.
The picture, from this week's Paris Match magazine, speaks for itself. Times are hard and the French are worried for their livelihoods yet their president is posing for glamour pictures with Carla Bruni, his wife, in the Carlyle hotel in New York City. In the picture, taken by Pascal Rostain, Bruni's regular photographer, Sarko seems to be aiming for something between the Great Gatsby and Al Capone, as played by Robert de Niro. In the one below, captioned "Alone in the world in Manhattan", Sarko seems to be the hero in a romantic comedy. The text even talks about the couple's "Manhattan escapade".
It is hard to grasp the logic which drives Sarko to show off like this. In recent months he had toned down the "bling-bling", his instinct for exhibitionism, after the pollsters told him that it accounted for a big part of his unpopularity. He even put it out that he spent his evenings on his collection of ancient manuscripts and postage stamps. But people close to Sarko say that he is on something of a high these days, revelling in his role as crisis manager and trouble-shooter for Europe.
He was reported this week to have been boasting in private that he had "stopped the Red Army" on its advance to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, last August. His European mini-summit on the financial crash last Saturday produced almost nothing but Super Sarko visibly enjoyed his job as chairman -- which he holds a current steward of the European Union's rotating presidency.
The excitement of battle seems to have got the better of Sarko's judgment and that of his image advisers. Having luxurious fun in New York, the source of the financial mayhem that has hit Europe, is surely not a great idea. It hardly matches the censorious terms with which Sarko damned Wall Street greed in a speech in Toulon two days after his return from New York. It is especially surprising since the president ordered his ministers last month to stop appearing in glamour shots in the celebrity press. "In times like these, I don't want to see pictures of anyone at fancy events in dinner jackets (tuxedos) and long Dior dresses," he was reported to have told the cabinet. The main target was taken to be Rachida Dati, his Justice Minister.
It is interesting to muse on what Charles de Gaulle would have made of the behaviour of the fifth man to follow him in the presidency. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Fifth Republic, the presidential regime that was tailor-made for the old wartime saviour. The system was deliberately monarchical to get away from decades of parliamentary paralysis. But Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle led an austere life, even paying for their own telephone calls at the Elysée Palace, or so it is said. These pictures suggest that Nicolas and Carla are enjoying life at the other extreme.
France has just notched up two royal weddings within eight months and you might say that speed was an element of both. Jean Sarkozy, 22, second son of the President, exchanged vows at his local town hall late yesterday with Jessica Sebaoun, 20, his long-time girlfriend.
An ugly episode involving French anti-semitism preceeded the wedding, of which more below.
Sarko senior was at the Neuilly mairie for the simple civil ceremony along with Carla Bruni, his third wife, whom he married last February. There were 100 guests, many from the money, politics and show-biz set that Jean and his dad frequent. Among them was Doc Gynéco, the louche rap singer and Sarkozy supporter who starred in a post here the other day.
Sarko senior married Bruni in haste, three months after meeting her. In contrast, his glamorous son has known his bride, heiress to the Darty retail fortune, since schooldays in Neuilly, his dad's political fiefdom. "I promised you at 16 that I would marry you before I was 26," Jean told Jessica at the ceremony. "Well, I have done it sooner." To quash rumours, Paris Match magazine was authorised to tell readers today that the new Madame Sarkozy is not expecting a baby.
In Jean's case, the speed applies to his meteoric leap to stardom in his own right over the past year. Pierre Sarkozy, 23, his brother, leads a quiet life as a rap music producer (I'm not making this up) but Jean is in a big rush, just like his father was.
Jean is known sometimes as Monsieur Fils -- a play on the title held by the king's brother (the previous king's second son) in royal days. But the prince insists that he is working his way up the ladder as a humble commoner.
Continue reading "Sarkozy's golden boy gets married " »
 We are losing track of all the deceased French celebrities whose lives are being turned into cinematic nostalgia trips. French film-makers have discovered a taste for the American-style "bio-pic", and it's doing it rather well.
The fad was opened by La Môme (called La Vie en Rose abroad), a souped-up version of the melodramatic life of Edith Piaf. Even before that film became an international hit and Marion Cotillard won her Best Actress Oscar for the part last spring, a string of other bio-pics were in the works. After Piaf came Sagan, Diane Kurys' biography of Françoise Sagan, the self-destructive author of the teenage novel Bonjour Tristesse.
That movie, starring Sylvie Testud, was the last film that Nicolas Sarkozy went to the cinema to see, according to Carla Bruni, his wife. The latest in the genre is to be a version of the sad life of Romy Schneider, the Franco-Austrian actress who died in 1982 at the age of 42.
No fewer than three biopics are about to recount the meteoric rise of an orphaned Parisian hatmaker called Coco Chanel. The biggest of them is likely to be Coco Avant Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine and starring Audrey Tautou (above), which is due out next year.
Out next month is a life of Michel Colucci, the subversive comic known as Coluche who was killed on his motor cycle in 1986 at the age of 42. Then comes is Ennemi Public Numéro Un, starring Vincent Cassel, the tale of Jacques Mesrine, a gangster who was shot dead in an ambush by Paris police in 1979.
Continue reading "Celebrity lives, the French new wave" »
Carla Bruni was on the radio this morning sounding defensive about the sales of her new album, Comme si de rien n'était (titled Simply in English).
President Sarkozy's new wife enjoyed spectacular worldwide publicity on the album's release in July and Naive, her label, insists that the record is doing well. Over 300,000 copies have been sold, they say, 140,000 of them outside France. The CD reached the number one spot for French albums for a week in mid-August but is now back down at ninth.
There have been rumours in the trade that the record is not exactly flying out of the shops, even taking the morose market into account. The official figures correspond to CDs shipped to stores. Le Parisien newspaper got hold of the actual sales yesterday. A total of 80,657 have been bought by French customers in the first seven weeks of release, not the official 160,000, and sales are slowing.
Given the novelty effect of the first lady's record and the huge promotion by French and international media, that figure is quite modest. "The artist would have been entitled to expect better for both good and bad reasons," said le Parisien. "No record has ever been so talked about, or fed so much speculation and shaped firm opinions before it was heard." Patrick Zelnik, chief executive of Naive, calls the record "not a triumph but a success."
Bruni's long interview on Europe 1 radio was part of an attempt to restart sales with a fresh round of promotion. This includes a singing appearance in Britain on September 16 on the BBC TV show Later ... with Jools Holland.
Here's what she told Marc-Olivier Fogiel on Europe 1 radio this morning: "I don't get involved in figures much. ... In one month you don't know the figures for an album. And it's already quite something to manage to release an album these days, whoever you are. ... Whatever the number of people who have had the kindness or curiosity to go and buy it, it's a miracle. Then, summer is a doomed season for everything that's music etcetera... You have to know that an album takes months and months to reach the ears and hearts of people."
Bruni also said that she recognised that giving the disc to every member of her husband's council of ministers for their summer listening might have been a little questionable. The gift raised media eyebrows, as did her use of the Elysée Palace roof for a cover portrait of her for Vanity Fair (above). Annie Leibowitz took the shot for an article timed for the record release.
Bruni may be smash hit for the celebrity press, but her image as a sensitive leftwing singer-composer has suffered from her over-exposure. The public and critics who enjoyed the first album of the Franco-Italian super-model are not generally fans of her rightwing husband. The critics have been quite rude about the third album, sung in the breathy mumbling tones that are her trademark. Bakchich, an irreverent news site, has just called it flabby, old-fashioned and "the ideal gift for the next grandmothers' day."
Nicolas Canteloup, the best current comic impersonator, has a running gag in which he imitates her as near inaudible. He mocked Bruni to her face on Europe 1 this morning, with a sketch claiming that she had won an award for boosting the sales of hearing aids. Bruni gave a cool performance, managing to brush off Fogiel's cheeky questions, such as "Would you have fallen in love with Nicolas Sarkozy if he wasn't president of France?"
While I'm at it, Bruni, 40, also said that she and Sarkozy are hoping to produce a baby. Since I'm already guilty of writing a bit of froth today, I might as well mention another piece of unconfirmed gossip that has been doing the rounds and even made it into Libération this morning. They say that Rachida Dati, 42, the Justice Minister, and glamour figure among Sarkozy's ministers, has a first baby on the way.
 It was clever to use a fashion icon for the latest attempt to make French roads less lethal. From July 1, high visibility vests must be carried within reach of the occupants of all cars (not in the boot). Emergency triangles are also to become compulsory.
In the posters, Karl Lagerfeld says: "It's yellow, it's ugly and it goes with nothing, but it can save your life." The advert adopts the playful tone that France until recently used in campaigns to cajole its citizens into driving less homicidally.
I have always suspected that France has shunned the yellow vests because they are not cool. The 74-year-old Chanel designer, wearing his new line of sunglasses in the dark, makes them look less ringard, or naff. "Karl is doing this entirely free of course," his assistant told le Parisien today. "He adored the concept and the slogan... His appearance is how he likes it, not where you would expect him to be, with a bit of self mockery."
France has come late to safety measures that have long been in force in more northern countries. Automatic speed cameras only arrived fIve years ago. French cyclists have only lately begun wearing helmets and yellow gilets and these are still rare. You do not look chic pedalling a vélib bike through Paris with Day-glo gear and a funny hat -- especially since British conservative politicians adopted the look.
Only in the past year have police begun wearing bright jackets to direct traffic on the Place de l'Opéra below our office. They used to be hard to spot amid dense traffic in the intersection and they were invisible at night. The Gendarmerie motorcycle police still do not wear high-visibility jackets on patrol.
A police clampdown and ubiquitous speed cameras succeeded in bringing France's very high road death toll down by 10 percent a year from 2002-2006. A visitor from the old days would be amazed to see how fear of radar has slowed the traffic on the motorways almost down to the 130kph (81mph) limit . The British and Dutch tourists now stick out as the roadhogs as they hurtle down the autoroutes in the knowledge that they won't have to pay any fine. One British man was stopped twice in Normandy last weekend cruising at 230 kph (144 mph). They confiscated his Ferrari on the spot the second time.
But French drivers have not much modified their brutal manners in traffic and the figures show them going back to their old dangerous habits. Figures released yesterday put the drop in deaths for 2007 at only 1.9 percent, with 4,260 people killed. There was a 5.4 rise in injuries. This puts France eighth in the European safety league, with 85 road deaths per million inhabitants per year, according to the latest EU stats. Malta, a small island, is the safest, followed by the Dutch, whose country often seems like one big traffic jam.
France was offered another teaser today ahead of the July 21 release of the new album by Carla Bruni, the singer-model whose marriage to President Sarkozy has made her one of the music industry's hottest properties.
The album of 14 songs, mainly written by Bruni with help from her friends, is being guarded by Naive records like a state secret. They gave a first listen to a safe audience -- le Figaro newspaper, which is the most pro-Sarko outlet in the French media.
Bruno Dicale, their music critic, proclaimed her opus a stunning success. If only the world could appreciate Bruni's new songs on their own merit rather than viewing them as the effort of France's first lady, he said. But, feeding the unhealthy interest which he deplores, Dicale quoted a couple of new lines that will excite interest.
Here they are. In the song Ma Came, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, Bruni sings: "
You are my fix,
More deadly than Afghan heroin
More dangerous than Colombian white
In a song called Une enfant, Bruni sings:
I am a child
Despite my 40 years
Despite My 30 Lovers
A child.
Dicale says the song, set to a Schumann lied, is of "a touching immodesty". It is one of the summits in an album which Bruni delivers with her "bewitching, fragile and dense voice". Her style is more French chanson with a dash of Beatles, and less American folk than her previous two albums, he adds.
Bruni's people say that 95 percent of the mainly autobiographical numbers were written before she met Sarko last November. That will not stop the analysis to which they will be subjected. The mention of only 30 lovers will doubtless raise eyebrows, given Ms Bruni's colourful past and her description of herself as a lioness who "could never be monogamous".
In the latest of her promotional interviews today, Bruni says again that she only wants to be appreciated as an artist but she is aware that her status as Mrs Sarkozy will distort things.
Judging by the superlatives already doing the rounds, Bruni need have no fears of about the mainstream media. In its interview today, VSD magazine is breathless in its admiration of the monarch's new consort. "Serene...diaphanous and creative... the elegance of pop without the fatality of overdose..." and so on. She is donating her royalties to humanitarian causes and she is impatient to find a new role for herself in this field, she tells VSD.
In the interview "Carlita", as Sarko calls her, quotes Nietzsche and says that she does not trust people who do not like music. "Music is the expression of feelings. Human beings and nature make it."
A lot more of this awaits us. The US Vanity Fair is running a cover on her in August, with the portrait done, of course, by Annie Leibowitz. She is also to feature in a BBC documentary.
The Elysée Palace is thrilled with the success that Bruni is enjoying in French public opinion. A poll for this week's Journal du Dimanche found that 68 percent approved of her -- compared with only 35 percent for Sarko. The President's team is banking on "the Carla effect" as he gradually restores his image in the eyes of his citizens.
Paris shopkeepers are feeling the bite of Chinese anger over French gestures in favour of Tibet and human rights. In April, after the Olympic flame's bumpy trip through Paris, Chinese shoppers boycotted local branches of the Carrefour chain. Now Chinese tourists are staying away from Paris. The department stores and luxury goods shops are reporting a sharp drop in sales.
No-one wants to estimate the loss, but the shopkeepers of the Boulevard Haussmann and the Champs Elysées say they are worried about their vanishing Chinese customers.
One specialist travel firm tells us that business has dried up completely and a group of 80 newly-married Chinese have cancelled a stay in a chateau at the last minute. "The Chinese travel firms have not received an official boycott order but there are numerous internet blogs, especially in Beijing, in which big Chinese tour operators are discouraging Chinese travellers from going to Paris," said Philippe Yao of China Comfort Travel.
The French government is convinced that tour agencies in Beijing have been told to take France off their European itineraries. The Chinese government denies this. French officials say the freeze was ordered by Guo Jinlong, the mayor of Beijing. He was incensed when Bertrand Delanoe, the Paris Mayor, made the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen of the city.
Continue reading "Paris stores miss their Chinese customers" »
You don't usually think of fashion and wine-making as part of the soldier's life and especially that of the French Foreign Legion. It was touching to see a contingent of légionnaires at the Saint Roch church for the funeral of Yves Saint Laurent yesterday [my newspaper story]. The honour guard was there among the glamour crowd because Saint Laurent was a Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, the second highest rank in the state decoration (the two legions have no direct link).
On the wine front, the Foreign Legion has just announced that it is to sell to the public the product of its magnificent vineyard at Puyloubier, in Provence. The 40 hectare estate, home for 100 invalid legionnaires, is on the slopes of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, known to the world from Cézanne's paintings. The old soldiers produce 300,000 bottles a year of red, white and rosé under the Côtes de Provence appellation. Until now these have supplied Legion messes around the world. One of the traditions of the corps is that the men dine well, even in the toughest conditions. I discovered this at dinner with Legion officers during the siege of Sarajevo in 1993. We were served the legion wine in fine regimental glasses while mortar shells were exploding nearby (that was three years before Hillary Clinton's fantasy sniper episode).
The wine, being sold under the label Esprit de Corps, is the product of "the cult of the mission and the love of a job well done which is dear to all légionnaires," says the Ministry of Defence. Income will help the estate care for its residents, former soldiers who are physical invalids of have difficulties in adjusting to civilian life. Explaining the existence of its estate, the Legion quotes one of its sacred rules: "Tu n'abandonnes jamais les tiens, ni au combat ni dans la vie -- you never abandon one of your own, neither in battle nor in life.
Given the Legion's reputation for fierce discipline, it's interesting to see how it describes its rosé:
Rien d’audacieux n’existe sans la désobéissance aux règles. Cet aphorisme traduit parfaitement les intentions du vin rosé de la Légion étrangère.
Nothing bold exists without disobeying the rules. This saying perfectly translates the intentions of the Foreign Legion's vin rosé.
[Old légionnaire tends the Provence vines. Beards are Legion tradition]
France is in mourning for a hero today. Yves Saint Laurent, who died last night at the age of 71, was not just a fashion designer. He was part of history and one of the biggest French influences on the world in the latter part of the 20th century.
Old colleagues and admirers were in tears on radio phone-ins this morning, remembering "Monsieur" as they called the former boy genius who took over from Christian Dior at the age of 21.
For the Paris fashion establishment, the YSL era really ended in 2002, when the reclusive couturier retired. His death, from a brain tumour, ended a life that seemed to have brought little happiness. He suffered from chronic depression. Despite his immense success, he remained a fragile soul to the end.
Extremely shy, he hardly ever talked to the press. At his farewell press conference in 2002 he offered a rare glimpse of himself. "I've known fear and terrible solitude. Tranquilizers and drugs, those phoney friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."
Continue reading "France says adieu to Yves Saint Laurent " »
Carla Bruni, the Italian model and singer, has not put a foot wrong since she married Nicolas Sarkozy last February. Her new demure, regal style has all but effaced the sulphurous she-cat image that she cultivated in her previous existence. Her presence has helped toned down the brash, over-excited side of the French president. On their London trip in March, the British media melted before her in adoration.
Bruni's first solo act as first lady is coming up with the release of her new album on July 21. It's called "Comme si de rien n'était" (As if nothing happened). One of the tracks is a love song called "Ma Came", which translates as my dope, or my junk.
The only line that has emerged so far goes: “My guy, I roll him up and smoke him." The Elysée Palace is said to be worried that the song, with its drug slang, is unseemly for a première dame. Sarko's people are putting it around that Monsieur le Président is not the guy in the song and that Bruni, whose past conquests included well-known rock stars, wrote it long before she met him.
Continue reading "Carla Bruni's new pot song" »
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John,
Sorry for still having some white people around.Are we still allowed to display old postcards, pictures of our grand-parents, see our former kings queens eventhough they were all white? If you have a problem with Europe being mainly white, Africa being mainly black, China being mainly asian, then i am afraid you'll have to deal with it and... suffer...Maybe you have a problem with skin colours?
You remind me some politicians claiming after loosing an election "We are right, the people is wrong, let's change the people!"
Daniel Strohl,
Et pourquoi voulez vous me changer mon biotope à moi que j'ai? Vais-je me plaindre des concerts, des bateaux sur les canaux, ou de l'accent charmant des habitants de Strasbourg en des termes aussi violents? Je pense que vos mots ont dépassé votre pensée. Les parisiens ont-ils encore le droit d'organiser des évènements sur Paris ou bien n'est-ce réservé qu'aux provinciaux en province? Les parisiens vous semblent "rances"? Je ne n'aventurerai pas sur ce terrain là...
Posted by: Dominique | 17 Jul 2009 18:17:21
"Touché" (DOMINIQUE II)
LOL !
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 17:11:22
DOMINIQUE II,
Per pure coincidence, we watched a "retransmission" of Dr.Knock on TV may be 3 or 4 days ago (on cable TV - can't remember the channel).
A perfect complement to an article about (the well and purposely organised) waste of money in our Sécurité Sociale system :
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sante/2009/07/18/01004-20090718ARTFIG00001-medicaments-des-milliards-d-euros-gaspilles-.php
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 17:04:54
"and France's moderate drinking habits" (CHARLES)
LOL - reminds of some recent poster comments on various more or less exotic drinking habits :).
"which will throw all these central Paris bobos and their stale view ..." (JOHN)
Let us hope so - mais ils vont essayer de s'accrocher :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 16:51:29
(demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year, but I'm not sure what's the tower is doing there).
Surtout qu'elle est agressivement placée sous le menton de l'ondine volante.
Posted by: DODO | 17 Jul 2009 16:40:30
.....I'm sure Cabu will have a nice pension until his last quiet days drawing such rubbish. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 17 Jul 2009 12:41:42
Excellent comment Robert! Délicieusement politiquement incorrect. A chaque action répond la réaction. Loi physique implacable qui fait que le jeune révolutionnaire (Paix-au-Vietnam) devienne généralement un vieux conservateur (Bobo)
Posted by: DODO | 17 Jul 2009 16:30:09
RM
you've explained the lack of comment on countering the vandalism, and the dismissive tone of remarks about 'hard to discover in the middle of the night,' other excuses for not pursuing perpetrators.it almost excuses the abuse, the price society pays for pissing off various societal sub-groups because of lack of opportunity, gross inequity of wealth, etc.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 15:12:58
What's shocking in this picture is the whity-white Aryan woman that they chose. It completely negates the ethnic diversity of the Parisian population. But then it's typical of Delanoë's municipality, which has unfortunately ruled this city since 2001. Their waspish and Amélie-clichéesque boboism is sickening. I can't wait for Nicolas Sarkozy to finally create a Greater Paris including the ethnic and working-class suburbs which will throw all these central Paris bobos and their stale view of the city into the dustbin of history.
Posted by: John | 17 Jul 2009 15:05:38
[demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year] CB
is 'poster woman' flying or diving? no matter, esther williams 'lives.'
the only good thing i can think of about one-piece suits is not having to look at navel rings/studs, or those defiling, small 'gremlin,' or rose, tattoos peeking out above the suit line.
how do you do 'topless' in a one piece suit? the upper portion of the suit hanging down at the waist? hmmmm, not the 'look' you'd want to emphasize.
Paris Plage: cool idea. CB, will you be taking your pastey-white (i presume) British form, and sandwiches, over there from time to time? Take SPF 30 or above.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 14:51:49
RICK my anecdote on the U-Boot (which I can substantiate on request) was not meant as random entertainment nor as a profound view of potential parallel histories. It was to be read in the same breath as the previous sentences: "I wouldn't have posted the pics but you were fair game. Enough with the posturing." (said pics being HRH the Duke of Edimburgh and the Missus on the best of terms with the distinguished Chancellor of the Third Kingdom).
My point, which was clear to anybody with average command of standard English, was that you do not, and should not, enjoy immunity from taunts about appeasement and ill-placed sympathies, because only a very thin hull or a leaking gasket spared you the dire straits we floundered in.
We were not a weak, cowardly populace as opposed to you, a proudly fighting nation; we were very similar human beings in slightly different circumstances. And Sir Winston, who perfectly perceived this, had the genius and the unique ability to mold the circumstances so the English had no choice but to stand proud. In so doing, he took the only path to the good side's victory and I am unreservedly thankful to him.
(Layman's summary: I was not delving in non-realized theoretic possibilities, but in historical fact, ie the status of opinion and political tendencies in Britain before and at the beginning of the war).
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:51:44
ROCKET "Whereas in the case of French soldiers, both men and women no hygienic products necessary. (very wide grin)"
LOL it is clear Daniel had opened himself to your well prepared and well delivered broadside. Touché.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:14:56
RICK "persecution fantasies, (...) xenophobia, ‘esprit de clocher’, localism, infantilism, and so on"
Are you morphing into the blog's Dr Knock, head shrink variety?
(I won't insult you by explaining to you who Dr. Knock is).
It's so much easier to slap pathological-sounding labels on arguments than to address them...
I know, I know: René's post contained no arguments. That's your standard and rather tiresome summary of anything that riles. Find something else... it's especially ludicrous in that case. René certainly held an opinion, but he made his points with clarity, supported them with fact and remained courteous throughout. (The last one is why I'm not promoting him to honorary Frenchman).
Meeting his post with such undeserved contempt may help you vent your bile, a laudable end per se, but your own credibility isn't enhanced a single bit.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:04:25
Thanks Azloon - yes you are right in principle: Democracy is to be valued. But my problem is that France has a long history of extreme division and when the figures are that close it leaves a lot of people disgruntled as we have seen lately. It would have been better if they had been more like 60% - 40% something decisive even though I still wouldnt have liked the outcome (smile). Anyway we shall see at the next parliamentary and presidential elections. I just hope by then that the *Socialist* party has got itself together so there are real differences of policy. Democracy is about choice and if there is no real difference (look at Con servative and New Labour policies over the last 20 years broadly speaking) then there is no real choice. Anyway as you say keep hoping!
Posted by: thinknoworpaylater | 17 Jul 2009 14:02:25
[since old hand posters like myself and others know your name and address] Daniel
Thanks for reminding me. Just knowing this helps keep me from going completely overboard. and we 'old salts' don't want to become 'all wet.' :)
Rick, indeed.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 13:54:18
"consistently monochromous' -- Dom2
i love it when you talk that way to me.....
'probably sincere'
faint praise, indeed. but better than a stick in the eye. :)
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 13:34:27
As Charles Bremner has hinted, the official poster campaign purporting to dissuade vandalism on Vélibs is woefully inadequate. In fact, it encompasses the contradictions of modern-day political thinking on multiple levels.
Cabu, who drew the poster, is one of the French icons of May-68 rebelliousness. He spent decades using his (real) talent to depict, in his cartoons, long-haired youngsters making fun of old farts : teachers, army officers, priests, bosses and politicians.
Unfettered freedom was good ; authority was bad.
Cabu's character "mon beauf" acquired such celebrity that he coined a new word into the French language.
Cabu's "beauf" was the brother-in-law ("beau-frère") of the young, cool and leftist narrator.
His "beauf" was the anti-hero : middle-aged, working-class, ugly, vulgar, loud-mouthed, and, especially, right-wing and racist.
"Mon beauf" spent hours at the bistro du coin drinking Ricard, ranting about law and order and criticising excessive immigration.
Cabu's young, easy-going and likeable hero (presumably himself) seemed constantly appalled by his beauf's dreadful inclinations. The cute, blonde young things with short skirts and pointing tits who always seemed to surround the hero helped ram the message home : racist right-wingers don't get laid.
(How do I know they were blonde, since the cartoons are black and white ? Don't ask. That's obvious.)
Now, everybody in France understands what "un beauf" means : a middle-aged reactionary, pleased with himself, disparaging the young and ranting about law and order.
The irony is even greater, since Cabu's character evolved into a second-generation "beauf", more in line with modern times. This born-again, upmarket beauf' sports a ponytail and flashes his wealth around.
He's dangerously close to the "bobo", the bourgeois-bohême who, surprise, suprise, is the prime user of Vélibs.
Now Cabu seems to be on the Paris mayoral payroll : he has a regular column in the free municipal magazine, drawing cartoons as tame and unfunny as the Vélib poster.
Of course, the Paris mayor is socialist. I suppose that might be viewed as an excuse.
Also, note the downright stupidity of the poster's argument : don't attack Vélibs, because they can't defend themselves.
This shows how deeply out of touch our elites are with modern-day reality. If anything, such an argument will encourage vandals, not the other way round.
Haven't they noticed that the traditional, Western, French, Christian sense of honor, borne out of Middle-Ages chivalry, that this poster is appealing to, has completely disappeared ?
When was the last time hoodlum violence followed those time-honoured rules : you will fight one-on-one, you won't attack from behind, you won't hit a man on the ground, you won't hurt the weak, the old, the handicapped, or, God forbid, the women ?
Did not those snotty intellectuals and politicians notice that the rules for street violence have been turned on their head ?
Did not they notice that the rules now are : you will attack ten to one, you will hit from behind, you will make your victim fall, you will kick him in the head when he's on the ground, you will jump on his head with both feet, you will preferrably target the weak, hit the women, hit the old, hit and torture the handicapped ?
Did they not notice that the rules of chivalry have been replaced by the rules of Muslim warfare and African barbary, thanks to 40 years of uninterrupted immigration, of "anti-racist" propaganda and policy ?
If those rules stopped at Vélib vandalism, we'd be very fortunate.
Now that those old leftists are beginning to fathom the consequences of the hostile and deadly immigration they have foisted upon us, all they manage to do in order to repair their mistakes is use our money, from our taxes, to distribute to their friends who'll draw some lame propaganda posters.
I'm sure Cabu will have a nice pension until his last quiet days drawing such rubbish. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 17 Jul 2009 12:41:42
Oh la la - quelle belle phrase - vraiment formidable - "est-ce que le pays a les moyens de ses ambitions"? Really, when you come to think about it, it could apply to practically any other European country and European leader, and to Gordon and New Lab more than most. Helas, trois fois helas, l'Angleterre n'a plus les moyens des ambitions de New Lab. Cher Premier Ministre, que vous le vouliez ou non, vous devrez tres bientot couper les defences publiques, et tout le monde le sait- ca a deja commence- sauf vous. Cher Monsieur Brown, le pays n'a plus les moyens de vos ambitions. Excusez, je vous prie, le manque d'accents - mon PC est plutot New Lab et n'a pas les moyens de ses ambitions- graves, aigues ou petit chapeau circonflexe.
Posted by: Marguerite | 17 Jul 2009 12:24:20
They tried this too in Dublin's docklands for the last couple of years, but being typical Irish summers it rained every day and was a washout
Posted by: Evening Herault | 17 Jul 2009 11:42:27
"No, DOMINIQUE 2, to stop France looking foolish - something her friends DON'T want!" [RICK]
Gardez moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m'en charge.
("Protect me from my friends. I'll take care of my enemies").
Yes, ho ho, but unfunny, undignified too. The sheer capacity some French bloggers have for making for making fools of themselves is a source of constant wonderment.... and great disappointment.
Elsewhere, I wrote two long pieces to YOU. You quote for one (above). They were written in a sense of earnest seriousness. In return I get a snide aside.
Please understand this, PIERRE, I wrote “to stop France looking foolish”. That fact stands, no matter how often you scoff. In the big wide world out there, a lot of people don’t have much time for the French. Undeceive yourself. And recognise a friend.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 10:18:43
The Paris scheme is truly excellent and its a shame so many bikes are being lost. To be honest its not really a French phonnomeon if you put schemes things like this in big cities where people with huge degrees of wealth live side by side your always going to get people inclined to steal or vandalise such things, its just the way it is whethet in London, New York Paris or wherever. I'm suprised there's been such problems in Norway though can't account for that.
Posted by: sct | 17 Jul 2009 10:17:24
RH OMEA
2. And the idea that any American, where most every violent crime rate far exceeds that in France
If you are speaking about violent crime your appreciation is erroneous and this since the early 2000s
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/266umtwb.asp
en français
http://laurent.mucchielli.free.fr/france-usa.htm
which goes deeper into the phenomenon of criminality. So your remarks about criminality should really be checked before you are certain that you hold the absolute truth (stereotyped of course)
A few years back Le Figaro did a long piece on this subject.
But as DOM2 said
We laugh at ourselves much more, and much more cruelly, than you could even dream. I suppose that he also meant that France's own offer a critical eye also.
But lest one of "sang impur" dare raise their voice in opposition to the "esprit de corps" and "pensé unique" of "il ne faut pas affoler les français" then we hear many crying foul.
Posted by: rocket | 17 Jul 2009 09:36:21
"No, DOMINIQUE 2, to stop France looking foolish - something her friends DON'T want!" RICK
Gardez moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m'en charge.
("Protect me from my friends. I'll take care of my enemies")
Posted by: Pierre | 17 Jul 2009 09:35:34
STEPHANE (a bit late) AFAIK a troll is somebody who gets his jollies by incensing fellow bloggers with outrageous posts, which generally have nothing in common with his true opinions (if he has any). AZLOON's posts are consistently monochromous, thus probably sincere, and he's not the most obdurate basher - I'm not even sure I would qualify him as a basher, more as an honestly prejudiced product of his education and environment.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 08:38:03
‘There was a German U-Boote commander who had to be promoted to a land-based posting after he underwent a deep nervous breakdown: a torpedo he launched was one of the many pieces of defective ordnance the Kriegsmarine had in its arsenals... and the target was a dreadnought with Churchill onboard. But for a rusty gasket or a leaking joint, you might now be in thrall of Lord Halifax, Prince of Peace and Gauleiter von der See.’ [DOM2]
Whether this is true or not is a matter of profound insignificance. The past is cluttered with ‘what ifs’.
On the other hand this kind of recourse to the realms of theoretic possibilities – non-realised – is richly illustrative of the state of your troubled psyche.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 08:11:09
‘RENE MOYA : wow, was that a cavalry charge or carpet bombing? you sure don't take prisoners. A pleasure to meet you, sir.’ [DOMINIQUE II]
It takes one to know one. DOM2, herewith your diagnosis:
Denial. Ego defence mechanisms are psychological strategies brought into play by various people to cope with reality and to maintain self-image. The observed features include:
persecution fantasies, morbid fear of straight questions, rationalisation, (deliberate) misunderstanding, misquoting, bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, shooting the messenger, projection, moral cowardice, obfuscation, narrow-mindedness, wishful thinking, mythomania, provocation, the ‘smear and sneer’, hypocrisy (‘cheap and cheerful’), hypocrisy (advanced, tangled), deceit, self-deceit, delusional vanity, ‘fool’s paradise’ syndrome, ‘exceptionalist’ delusions, morbid inability to admit to mistakes, recourse to not-entirely-convincing-or-comprehensible American demotic mode of speech, narrow vision, lacunae in comprehension of standard English, anxiety-projection on near-to-hand ‘hate object’, minimal self-awareness (‘figure of fun’ syndrome), retreat into Oblomovian womb-substitute, compensatory tactics ( ‘Francophonie’), xenophobia, ‘esprit de clocher’, localism, infantilism, and so on... oh, and chickening out of straightforward questions (bis).
Now, how many of these boxes do you tick? Sorry, pal, but your credibility is shot to hell.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:59:20
"the infrastructure in the United States is not crumbling."
Remember what I was saying the other day about believing that 'saying it makes it so'?
"For example, the inter-state highway system is proably the best in the world."
Do not confuse the extent of the system with the quality of the roads. (The Autopista in Spain is first rate. I hear that the Autobahn is something to behold.) The Interstates I've been driving in various parts of the US in the last couple of years are in bad shape. In a couple of places it is downright dangerous. It has not always been this way. Billions have been spent on improvements, while far too little has been spent on maintenance.
"The infrastructure falling down bit was way over exaggerated by politicians from the Left"
Fox or Limbaugh, no doubt. Bridges? School buildings? Power grid?
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 17 Jul 2009 07:40:46
AZLOON, I presume that the first two paragraphs of your most recent posting were not intended for me. We MUST continue to disagree like this and set - as I know you will agree - a fine example in the art of reconciliation.
For the last two paragraphs, thanks.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:13:48
‘CHARLES - I am, as you know, not David Moorcroft, nor he I.
However he (David Moorcroft) makes a very fair point.
A very fair point indeed.’ [DOT KING]
As, usual, DOT KING is her own worst enemy. A few months ago, I complained about her antics. These actions make her ‘fair game’, now and in the future.
‘‘I do not post under anything other than my own name (except I was Henry Wilt briefly last week only to take the p-ss, quite gently, out of Rick as a teacher*’ [DOT KING] Beneath contempt. Worse, the problem of assumed identities again rears its head. (Henry Wilt from the Tom Sharpe novels) In this writer’s case, we’re into anonymity and poison-pen territory. How charming! Like the Yanks, I can take this kind of thing, but can’t help wondering: ‘What if it had been someone else?’’
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:02:49
"They convey a reaction against the problems of mobility in general." -- Bruno Martzloff
I think he is referring to the difficulty of getting around in a large city. So many people spend a couple of hours each day going to and from work and doing other errands, which can be tiring and frustrating and sometimes infuriating. People may lash out at the bicycles because they are seen as taking money away from the metro, buses and roadway improvements, which would more directly improve the lives of the vandals.
How respectful of pedestrians are bicyclists in Paris? I have been run over and knocked to the ground three times in Boston, each time while walking down the sidewalk.
I imagine that it is difficult to know if the vandalism is being done by various types of people for various reasons, or if there are a handful of people doing most of the destruction. A dedicated few can wreak a great deal of havoc, as with graffiti.
In fighting graffiti in New York, the metro found that if no train which had been painted left the yard, the graffiti artists derived no pleasure from their work. Eventually, most of them lost interest, and went on to other venues where their work would be seen.
In Australia or New Zealand, they have tried insinuating that men who drive too fast have small penises. I have heard how well this has worked.
Others perception of one's act seems to be important in anti-social behavior. Maybe the ad campaigns should focus more on only losers vandalize bikes, or cool people ride bikes, or girls don't date boys who do such things.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 17 Jul 2009 06:45:16
To all those forlorn French (and French-loving) souls who are offended by my remarks, let me try to establish my bona fides as an admirer of things French. I came to this blog as a lifelong admirer of French culture which began when I first encountered the wonderful word of french film as a teenager. If this is 'trolling,' I plead guilty.
So Let Us Now Praise the French:
Agnes Varda, whose wonderful film autobiography is just opening here, is one of the world's truly great film makers, and she only happens to be a woman. And she had the good taste and good fortune to marry another of the planet's true film masters, Jacques Demy. The French invented great film making, and the world is in its debt.
Nuclear Power. The French fearlessly surged forward in this fleld when the rest of the world cowered. It will now reap the benefit of being the 'go to' country for all things nuclear which is as it should be. Chapeau.
Health Care. French citizens can rest easily knowing that their health care is provided for, and high quality health care at that. Not having to face debilitating anxiety, as many do in the u.s., about catastrophic illness, the French can pursue their life interests with more zest and assurance. The country also has world-class pharmacological research and development.
Cultural Preservation. With a culture worth preserving, the French do this as no other country. And the natural beauty of France is taken seriously and protected. A great example for others.
Innovational Financial Instruments. France has been ahead of much of the rest of the world in the development of sophisticated derivative instruments used in risk management. It's regulatory approach to its financial services industry is an example the u.s. might well have followed (and may yet:)) A nod to you, Daniel.
This may or may not dissuade you from your impression of some of us inveterate critics of contemporary French goings-on as cretinous French bashers. Some of us actually like the place. And we take our cue for our criticism from Voltaire, and our deep solace from Montaigne
I believe that if this were a blog about Fiji, we'd be talking now about Fiji-bashers. Please lighten up a bit. Life is short.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 02:24:35
DON -
And how is California doing?
Posted by: christopher muir | 17 Jul 2009 02:23:43
1. Discussing bike theft as if it were a uniquely French tendency is bollocks. In Holland, bicycle theft is as normal and expected as the sunrise. The expression quoted in a WSJ article concerning the composition of the canals below the water line was:
"een derde Modder
een derde Water en
een derde Fiets"
2. And the idea that any American, where most every violent crime rate far exceeds that in France - while many LE budgets have been slashed, has any moral high ground from which to lecture about enforcing the law is laughable at best.
Posted by: RH Omea | 17 Jul 2009 00:40:32
GILL,
Bona fides is also used occasionally in French. However, one would not use it (or its translation "bonne foi") to say that a word or expression is correct because it is listed and defined in a recognised dictionary.
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 00:21:11
AZLOON,
No major problem with French bashing or whatever bashing, as long as it is not morbidly obsessional and not courageously :) anonymous.
Fortunately, you don't fill these criteria since old hand posters like myself and others know your name and address and know also that you are not morbidly persuaded that you alone (along with your country) hold the universal truth :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 00:09:07
The 14th July always produces mixed feelings. There is the toy soldiers' bit like the parade of tanks and bridge layers in my local High street or our miniature Joan of Arc military parade in front of the statue in my street (8th May).
But it might be worth reflecting on the ambiguity of the situation : a French army and navy with its aristocratic officers still in a very anti-British tradition. No meaningful participation in World War II (the soldiers were all made German prisoners). Yet a Franco-German axis it is said (German president was there too). Yet an army that put down immediately after the war the Algerian, Vietnamese etc populations using Gestapo torture methods. I would like to think that modern France is that creator of republican freedoms.
In, case in any one thinks the Sarkozy interview was an exceptional example of bad French journalism, remember the exploitation by Giscard and Mitterrand of journalists who could be on very intimate and private relations with the same politician (the French word is 'couché'). On the other hand French viewers who look around their channels can find excellent discussion programmes for the happy few (C dans l'air, or the excellent parliamentary channel LCP AN.
,
Posted by: paul | 16 Jul 2009 23:29:14
DANIEL,
I had thought perhaps that nous was only UK English and not American English but I was obviously wrong. It is in the Oxford English Dictionary which I think proves its bona fides (bonne foi in French?)
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:59:18
The problem in Paris must be related to the fact that it houses a large proportion of the under-priveleged in relation to the highly priveleged but I cannot understand why Norway should have the worst vandalism. I am sure if this scheme is introduced in London, as has been mooted, we would also see a high level of vandalism.
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:51:02
RENE C MOYA AND STEPHANE,
I know that Azloon is old enough and big enough to look after himself but I cannot ignore your comments. Azloon made valid comments on Charles' article and asked some equally valid questions. You, however, have contributed nothing constructive to the discussion and I am not even sure if you have read Azloon's comments in their proper context. All you have done is to criticise another blogger for no readily apparent reason. Who are the trolls?
Sorry, Charles I do not normally get this uptight but this incensed me.
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:42:44
On a more practical note, I've been using Velibs in Paris since the beginning.
The system was horrendously complex to work out on the first time, but once you'd went through the hoops once, it was OK.
However, there has been a dreadful fall in the quality of service since the system was launched. The proportion of out of order bikes, docking posts or even whole stations is staggering.
Vandalism is bad enough, but it's not the only culprit. Many bikes obviously in working order are locked onto their posts, with a red light signalling that the computer won't release them. Sometimes, half of all the bikes on a given station are unavailable because of that.
It's not uncommon for a whole station to be out of order, because of a mysterious computer glitch.
There's also one particularly irritating and now frequent failure -- or should I say deliberate scam ?
If you pay by the day as I do, the machine gives you a ticket. You need it if you want to take advantage of your "subscription", which enables you to as many further free rides as you wish during the next 24 hours, provided they last less than 30 minutes.
More and more often, the expected ticket does not appear at all. If you wait too long for a ticket that refuses to come out, you've lost your 1 euro : you are entitled to begin the process all over again for free -- except that you need to punch in your client number, which is supposed to be printed on the ticket, which doesn't exist.
Knowing the French, I suspect some foul play is at work there.
I'm about to give up Velibs altogether.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 16 Jul 2009 22:27:14
And then you surpassed yourself, RENE:
‘I've got to say, Charlemagne, that this post by itself--and the tendentious Europhobia it displays--is more than enough to get me off reading your blog, and almost enough to get me off reading the Europhobic, Psycophantic/America-Praising Economist as a whole.’
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 22:09:44
On March 12 of this year a RENE C MOYA addressed the European correspondent of ‘The Economist’ as follows:
‘Charlemagne, Your logic is impecable(-ly stupid).’
‘...but did The Economist hire you because there was a gap in the 'tortured logic' department?’
Needless to add, you continued in this way for a long time. You’ve got ‘form’, boy.
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 22:06:23
"I don't really know what that means."
A delightful understatment by our favorite British correspondent.
Actually, he's far too polite to give it straight to you : most French sociologists, and 100 % of those who get quoted in the media, are half-wits on the state payroll churning out leftist propaganda -- and that's in the rare cases where anyone can make some sense out of their pronouncements.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 16 Jul 2009 21:56:50
DAISY "Perhaps the french [sic] should learn to lighten up a bit and poke fun at themselves. If they did, others wouldn't have to do it for them."
Ma petite Marguerite, perhaps you should learn some French and peruse some French media. We laugh at ourselves much more, and much more cruelly, than you could even dream. Why, think you guys actually keep bleating Sarko is the best ever thing that happened to France... when he is the most mocked man in the country.
What we find unpleasant and boring is the endless repetition of prejudiced stereotypes which only advertise the inanity of those who mouth them with such naive self-assurance. And what makes these inanities unpleasant is not that they hurt our pride, which they don't; it is that they end up building a wrong, adversarial, despicable picture of a great people we always liked and admired.
Now, Daisy dear, do feel free to "poke fun" at us. As long as it is - you know? witty. Funny. To the point. Otherwise, don't be surprised if you're booed. And, it now appears, from both sides of the pond.
Posted by: Dominique II | 16 Jul 2009 21:50:32
RENE MOYA : wow, was that a cavalry charge or carpet bombing? you sure don't take prisoners. A pleasure to meet you, sir.
Posted by: Dominique II | 16 Jul 2009 21:35:50
p.s. to Daniel
You can't be oblivious to the fact that there is liable to be more french-bashing on a blog about France that there is to be A-S bashing. Just the way it is. If we had met on a blog about Fiji, we'd be arguing about Fiji-bashing. :)
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:26:03
[Azloon, may be you are not the best placed to qualify a person or a nation as being hypersensitive - I remember some of your reactions which one could have qualified as "réactions de vierge outragée" :)).]
sans doute, c'est vrai. why am i supposed to 'best placed to qualify' in order to spout off? that' no fun.
and do i have to be insensitive myself in order to accused others of excessive sensitivity? not possible :)
Rick, my comment about Indian troops was truly simpleminded, in keeping with my simple mind. Marching 'british style' means behaving marginally like those who are occasionally derided by he French. that' all. about u.s. troops? just another potentially controversial invitation. no big deal, or deep meaning.
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:23:00
'the xenophobia of some half-wits'
'Perhaps WASPs could stop being so self-righteous. That includes you, in case there is any doubt.'
STEPHANE, are you applying for the post of judge or the accused?
By the way, you have a nice line in reasoned argument - not.
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 21:12:12
Daniel
"The reason why the American army deems it necessary to have more personnel in logistics than for instance the French army is now fully clear for me: they have to transport all the extra stuff needed by their lady warriors - creams, powders, mirrors, combs, mobile showers with huge water reserves, hair dryers with powerful generators to feed them adequately in the desert and so on :). I am not sure whether the yield is optimum..."
Whereas in the case of French soldiers, both men and women no hygienic products necessary. (very wide grin)
Posted by: rocket | 16 Jul 2009 21:10:16
[Perhaps the french should learn to lighten up a bit and poke fun at themselves. If they did, others wouldn't have to do it for them] Daisy
Daisy, your check is in the mail. :)
and, of course, as usual, you are spot on !
But don't expect widespread French 'lightening' soon. it's a bit endemic, but mercifully not universally accurate, witness several French posters here, Dominique II being a prominent example (he will probably disavow any praise from me out of concern for his reputation :)).
-----------
To: Rene C. Moya
Rene, I welcome your characterization of me, unflattering though it is. You've got spunk, a good brain and write well.
But, of course, as we all are from time to time, you're dead wrong in this matter.
You said:
[And then of course you round on the French by obliquely suggesting they're either law-breakers ('...a population that thinks taking your boss prisoner is just fine.') or too watery to hold criminals to account] Rene
'Lawbreakers' is a perfect description of the French in the matter of sequestration (what the rest of the world calls 'hostage-taking'), and it's done with a wink of the eye from police. If you had participated on this Blog as long as i have, you might recall CB's piece that cited a poll showing more than 50% of all French approve of 'sequestration.' Enough said?
And as for bicycle vandalism? Is it not fair, and completely logical, to inquire of about law enforcement efforts to catch offenders? You may not be a particularly curious person. I am.
I obviously feel no compunction about defending France's reputation, or the u.s.'s for that matter. Stupid is stupid, wherever it occurs, and there's no known cure for stupid. If you want a tamer blog, a little more polite, and sugar-coated, may I suggest La Petite Anglaise.
---------
[But on most blogs and chatrooms the likes of Azloon are just called trolls] Stephane
About other chatrooms/blogs, I wouldn't know since I participate in none of them, and never have. I've been here two and half years and have made my share of outrageous comments. But my reading of the various definitions of 'troll' leads me to believe I don't quite achieve a level of troll pathology.
But I'll accept your verdict if enough other posters here agree with you. You're off to a good start with Ms. Moya, and Jay Whachamacallit.
BTW, are you aware that you are not required to read the posts of those who annoy you? This isn't a school exam. You won't be tested on everything printed here. :)
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:03:20
[I wonder, Azloon, how you manage to have nothing better to do than come to this blog just to make snotty comments about the French. …. Because that's a sure-fire way of getting the generally high-quality public services the French have...as opposed to, say, a decrepit train network as in the UK, or a crumbling public infrastructure as in the United States. - Rene C. Moya]
Rene, the infrastructure in the United States is not crumbling. For example, the inter-state highway system is proably the best in the world. The infrastructure falling down bit was way over exaggerated by politicians from the Left to get the Obama stimulus bill passed a few months ago.
You think the French have “generally high-quality public services”? Tell that to the 15,000 older people who died in ONE month in France a few years ago (Aug. 2003). That would be equivalent to 75,000 older people dying in one month in the United States. Not even close.
Or how about the deficit of 200,000 people willing to work in the French health care system.
http://www.webinfrance.com/france-hopes-to-recruit-200000-young-people-over-5-years-to-hospital-jobs-in-france-221.html
For two generations young French people have been avoiding going into probably the most important of the public services in France. If it is so ‘high quality” then why are they avoiding it like the plague?
Or the fact that the average age of a French surgeon is over 55 or that they periodically go into exile in Spain or Britain (strike). Why is this? Or the fact that almost no new drugs, diagnostic procedures, surgical procedures have been developed in France over the past two generations. The U.S. produces 80% of the world’s new drugs, diagnostic procedures (e.g. MRI scanners) etc.
You might want to read several books by French authors who have detailed the many, many years of America bashing by the French. (“Anti-Americanism” by Revel, “The American Enemy – History of French anti-Americanism” by Philippe Roger.)
The criticism of the French by Americans is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the bashing the Americans have taken from the French for many decades. Think I am
exaggerating? Read those books and contradtict the facts that they recount and document copiously. Revel was a member of the Academie Francaise and hardly a Francophobe.
Wouldn’t you do better to get your facts straight before going after Azloon? Just a suggestion.
Posted by: Don | 16 Jul 2009 20:28:20