One story has dominated the French news for the past five days but you may not have heard about it. The matter gripping the nation is the poor health of Johnny Hallyday.
The veteran rocker is emerging from an an induced coma in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Television crews have staked out the place for days, leading bulletins with sketchy, fact-free reports. Family and friends have flown to his bedside. Meanwhile in Paris, two hooded men have beaten up the celebrity surgeon who allegedly bungled an operation on Johnny for a slipped disk two weeks ago. There are mysteries around the whole affair. The tale of the ailing star, pushy managers and shady doctors is prompting comparisons with the Michael Jackson saga.
For beginners here, Hallyday, 66, is a former teen idol who has been France's native rock 'n roll hero for half a century. Jean-Philippe Smet, to use his real name, is a hard-living showman. Since the late 1950s, he has inhabited a pseudo-American persona that he invented as a youngster to cover US hits. "Le Johnny national" is a bit of a joke to the thinking classes and the young see him as a kitschy dinosaur. To President Sarkozy and legions of middle-aged fans, he is a cherished national treasure.
For people over 40, the idea of the l'inoxydable (rustproof) Johnnie in intensive care has been a sharp reminder of their own mortality. Sarkozy explained Johnny's role in the French collective memory to foreigners in Brussels last Friday. He told an EU summit press conference that he was relieved to hear that the singer was recovering from what we are told was an infected spine. His illness "provokes great emotion in France because he's a much-loved man and, for each of us, he represents a bit of our personal history: memories, feelings, songs, music," Sarkozy said.
The Hallyday health story is in keeping with the larger-than-life persona. He has exhausted himself this year with a gruelling seven-month "farewell" tour which he is still supposed to resume on January 8. He went into the Parc Monceau clinic in Paris for an operation on a slipped disk late last month and flew only four days later to Los Angeles. He collapsed soon after landing. Jean-Claude Camus, his impresario, accused Stéphane Delajoux, a young show-biz surgeon who operated on his disk, of "massacring" Hallyday. Within hours, Delajoux was beaten up. His lawyer accused the media of effectively having him lynched.
Like much around the Hallyday story, we have no idea what the attack was about. Secrecy has surrounded his hospital stay, with not a single medical communiqué on his condition. Internet rumours say of course that he is dead. News has trickled out via Camus, Laeticia, his latest young wife [above], and celebrity friends who have visited him. The latest to fly out was Nathalie Baye, the actress, with whom he had a daughter.
Fingers are pointing at Camus, a tough businessman, for pushing Hallyday too hard. Despite his lifetime sale of over 100 million records, Hallyday is said to need the money to pay past bills and keep his entourage in the luxury to which they are accustomed. Like many stars before him, Hallyday has a reputation for being manipulated by the people around him. He is said to have lost a lot of money over the years. The public is also not told why France's national institution divides his non-working time between homes in LA, Saint Barts' in the Caribbean and Gstaad, Switzerland. The reason is that he needs to stay out of France to retain non-resident status to avoid income tax. He has been domiciled in Switzerland for the past three years.
 [Picture: France was shocked to see the mighty Johnny in a wheelchair at LAX]
Johnny said recently that he was weary of his role as the guitar-slinging, Harley-driving rebel. "I have had enough playing Johnny Hallyday," he said at the outset of his tour last May. "I want more and more to be Jean-Philippe Smet."
Franck Nouchi, a Le Monde columnist, made a good point this afternoon. The "sacred union" of the nation at Johnny's bedside says more about France than all Sarkozy's great debate over the country's identity, Nouchi wrote.
The insurance experts and lawyers are now preparing for battle over the big losses expected from the likely cancellation of the next stretch of his booked-out farewell tour. Will the surgeon be blamed or will Johnny be deemed irresponsible for taking a Los Angeles flight straight after an operation?
It seemed for a while that this year's Goncourt literary prize came and went without the usual row or scandal. Now we have one, of a sort.
There was general approval last week when France's most prestigious book award went to Marie NDiaye, 42, a Senegalese-French novelist. No woman had won the Goncourt for a decade, she is the first female black laureate and her winning book Trois Femmes Puissantes (Three Powerful Women) was a best-seller.
But then the media dug up her less than glowing views on President Sarkozy. NDiaye went to live in Berlin in 2007 "in large part because of Sarkozy," she told les Inrockuptibles, an arts magazine, last August. "I find the police state, vulgar atmosphere detestable. I find Besson, Hortefeux, those people, monstruous. That refers to Eric Besson, Sarkozy's Minister for Immigration and National Identity, and Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister and close Sarkozy friend.
That was too much for Eric Raoult, a prominent MP for Sarko's Union for a Popular Movement. He tabled a parliamentary question to Frédérick Mitterrand, the Culture Minister, asking whether "the duty of a person who defends the literary colours of France should not be to show a certain respect towards its institutions." Her remarks insulted ministers of the Republic and the head of state, he said. A Goncourt laureate should observe un devoir de réserve, the obligation of discretion that is required of servants of the state.
The Goncourt crew hit back today, saying their prize winners have never been bound by a duty of respect for the state and its leader. Christian Paul, a Socialist MP, weighed in, accusing Raoult of "ignoble intimidation... an execrable form of censorship."
But now NDiaye has spoilt the fun by trying to soften her words. On Europe 1 radio today she said she did not mean to cause offence. "I don't like saying things like that. It was very excessive. I do not want to look like I was fleeing some kind of unbearable tyranny," she said. "For a while, I have found the atmosphere in France to be quite depressing, rather morose. It seemed that Berlin is more exciting."
We are waiting for a response from Frédo Mitterrand, who has not said much in public since the media last month dug up his adventures as a sex tourist in Thailand. In the meantime, Sarkozy has been brushing up on his Goncourt winners. He has just finished "re-reading" A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. There was a big row in 1919 when Proust won the prize because he had not fought in the Great War.
Thursday update: Mitterrand has entered the fray, not very courageously. He has refused to take sides. "Writers who receive the Prix Goncourt have the right to say what they like," he said. "Eric Raoult, a friend and a very estimable man, has the right as a citizen and a parliamentarian to say what he thinks."
PS, on the subject of the Great War, did anyone notice that Carla Bruni seemed to be wearing high-than-usual heels and really towered over the President at today's Armistice Day ceremony with Angela Merkel ? And why wasn't she wearing a hat:
The term banana republic has been used by a couple of French friends in reaction to the news from Paris this week. They were referring to the high-handed way that France's ruler and his caste have been behaving in two or three current matters.The latest involves an astonishing act of nepotism by Nicolas Sarkozy. His barons are about to elevate Jean Sarkozy, the President's 23-year-old, undergraduate son, to a powerful and prized executive post.
More below, but first the other items. We have already visited the Clearstream trial here. As the case grinds on, at great expense to the people, it looks more than ever like a revenge play staged by President Sarkozy to demolish Dominique de Villepin, his erstwhile rival.
Royal revenge is more civilised than in the old days. When King Louis XIV decided, in similar fashion, to punish the noble Nicolas Fouquet, the Villepin of his day, he threw him into jail and let him rot. Villepin is not in jail. He is cocking a snook at Sarko by running in the Paris 20 kilometres foot-race today. His alleged crime -- abetting an amateurish and ineffective scheme to smear Sarkozy -- should never have been sent to a court. That's not just my opinion. It came today from Eva Joly, a formidable former investigating judge who specialised in corruption in high places. "The conflict between Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin should be settled on the political field and not in a court," she told le Parisien. Huge resources had been wasted in indulging the president's whim, including the full-time work of two judges and teams of investigators for five years, she said.
Then there is l'affaire Mitterrand [last post]. Sarkozy and the Paris thinking class has decreed the matter closed, a case of circulez, il n'y a rien à voir ['Move along, there's nothing to see' -- an old police expression]. Frédo submitted to his television grilling on Thursday night. He denied that he had ever paid for under-age prostitutes. All the "boys" he bought on visits to Bangkok were consenting adults, he said. He also condemned sex-tourism. That's that then, it's over, said the Sarkozy camp.
The serious media have sided with them, depicting Mitterrand as the victim of a witch-hunt by scurrilous muck-raisers. But the affair has left a bad taste. The fact remains that Sarkozy appointed a senior minister who, he knew at the time, had written about his exploits as a Bangkok sex tourist. People outside le microcosme, as the Paris chattering classes are known, are not impressed and they are telling their members of parliament. Paris gay activists are also angry, they told today's JDD newspaper, because Mitterrand has tarnished homosexuality by at least appearing to associate it with paedophilia and prostitution
And then to Prince Jean, Sarko's second son. He is to be appointed chairman of the Epad, the public agency which runs La Défense, the big business district on the west side of Paris. La Défense, an island of corporate towers that is seeking to rival the City of London, is in the heart of Sarkoland, the Hauts-de-Seine département which includes Neuilly, the President's fiefdom. Sarko Junior, who is repeating his second year of undergraduate law at the Sorbonne, was elected to a Neuilly seat on the notoriously sleaze-ridden departement council last year. He was immediately given the job of heading Dad's Union for a Popular Movement on the body.
Even Sarkozy stalwarts are embarrassed by the decision to catapault le Dauphin to the head of Epad, which oversees a billion euros of annual spending.Patrick Devedjian,a cabinet minister and retiring Epad boss, is bitter. To avoid lèse majesté, he voiced his thoughts with a quotation from Corneille, the 17th century dramatist. "For souls nobly born, valour does not await the passing of years."
The opposition are talking about dynasty-building. Putting Jean in charge of la Défense is part of Sarkozy's scheme for taking control of a new Greater Paris, say the Socialists who run both the city and the regional council. Sarkozy senior was boss of the Epad right up to his election in 2007. Young Jean says that he is qualified for the job "because I know all the issues" (see video below of FR3 tv news report) and he dismisses criticism as "pointless and frankly facile".
An internet petition is calling on Jean to do the decent thing and get his degree and some experience in life before rising to high responsibility. But we are told that Sarkozy père is determined to put the lad in the job. He will get the post in December at about the same as the dynasty enlarges. Jean's heiress wife is expecting the President's first grandchild in the same month.
The Polanski case may end up costing the job of Frédéric Mitterrand, the popular nephew of the late president who became Nicolas Sarkozy's Culture Minister four months ago.
You may have heard that Frédo, as he is known, been hit by a nasty boomerang. His outspoken defence of Roman Polanski on the paedophile charges last week opened a boulevard for the far right National Front to recall the minister's own past as a practitioner of gay sex tourism.
[Mitterrand has spoken on TV this evening, See update below]
This is a very French, or at least southern European, affair because in the protestant political cultures of the north, Mitterrand, 62, would never have landed his job. His sulphurous autobiography, published in 2005, would have made it unthinkable.
Sarkozy appointed Mitterrand, a presenter of television arts programmes, knowing that his book, La Mauvaise Vie (The Bad Life), recounted his visits to brothels in Thailand where he said he paid for sex with boys. Sarkozy, who read the book in June, said this summer that he found it "brave and full of talent". In nominating the new Culture Minister, he was following the French tradition that the private lives of public figures are not a matter for public discussion. He should have known from his own much-reported love life that the old rules that protect the elite are breaking down. 
When Mitterrand took office, everyone (including us) mentioned his homosexuality and alluded to the critically admired memoir, but very few raised the details. These have blown up in Mitterrand's face, thanks to Marine Le Pen, heiress to her father's xenophobic Front National. She read out extracts on television on Monday night. "I got into the habit of paying for boys," said one line. "The profusion of very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide."
There is much more of this lurid stuff. Mitterrand himself calls it sordid. He writes, in Proustian style,of the exquisite pleasure of paying for sex. He refers to the Thai male prostitutes as garçons and sometimes gosses (kids). You could feel the embarrassment in the political world as Sarkozy administration and the mainstream opposition flinched from touching a cause launched by the unspeakable far right. The Socialists finally jumped in yesterday and condemned Mitterrand without calling for resignation. Today's main newspapers could still only bring themselves to give the affair minor mention.
Mitterrand has tried to take the high ground, saying: "If the National Front drags me through the mud, it is an honour. If a leftwing MP drags me through the mud, he should be ashamed." Sarkozy's team have tried to divert attention to the Front and invoked the old private-life defence. Xavier Darcos, a senior minister, said this morning: "It is the private life of a man which is in question, not the minister." Darcos also cited the literary defence -- that an author's words do not necessarily report reality. Sarkozy's advisers are talking about gutter tactics by the Front and a vile smear campaign.
These arguments do not wash. You can feel the tide turning. Mitterrand, a troubled soul with a gentle style, insisted on television after the book's publication that he never had anything to do with "little boys". But the damage has been done. France now knows that the holder of one the most prestigious government posts is an avowed practitioner of gay sex tourism.
It is unfair that Mitterrand is being crucified over a four-year-old book. And if a minister confessed to spending time with prostitutes in the past, there would be little fuss in broad-minded France. It is the suspicion of paedophilia that makes the difference. The possible involvement of children, that ultimate crime of our times, suggests that Frédo may be heading for the political guillotine.
Mitterrand is going on the main tv news tonight to account for himself. He is an eloquent and familiar figure after three decades as a television favourite and he will benefit from sympathy. It is possible that he will save his skin. Sarkozy will be very reluctant to fire a star appointee in response to a National Front campaign -- greatly amplified by the internet. But Mitterrand is now damaged goods and Sarko does not like that in his ministers.
Update: On TF1 television tonight, Mitterrand delivered an indignant but confusing defence. His memoirs were partly fictional, he said. He conceded that he had paid "boys" for sex in Thailand but insisted that they were all consenting adults. He abhorred sex tourism and was outraged by the notion that he was advocating paedophilia. Sarkozy had full confidence in him, and so on. The appearance was highly emotional but it has not cleared the air.
If you wanted to parody a Carla Bruni website it would be hard to do better than the real thing which has just opened. The new showcase for the chanteuse-supermodel looks like a caricature of the persona which President Sarkozy's image minders have shaped for the new première dame since their marriage early last year.
Opened yesterday to great fanfare, carlabrunisarkosy.org has been unable to keep up with demand. It froze for much of the day, but now works in sticky fashion.
In impeccable pastel tones, Bruni is cast as a caring, free-spirited but demure artiste and patroness of noble causes. Portraits of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suukyi, the Burmese opposition leader, are among the heros in Carla's gallery. Her other acquaintances, such as the Obamas and Sarah Brown, the wife of the British Prime Minister, appear in rather odd line drawings. The home page is topped by an interview with Jean-Paul Gaultier, the fashion designer.
A gushing Paris Match-style biography notes that the single name Carla now suffices to identify the French first lady the world over.
"Born at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement, she questions the contradictions that afflict all self-assured people in this period," it says.(What does that that mean ? She lives with one of the world's most self-assured men). Then they drag in that good old tabloid invention, "a close friend", who notes: “She may not have been a suffragette or invented the miniskirt, but she is the very epitome of the modern woman in the way she approaches the world”,
The first lady's hectic first two years with the President are sketched thus:
What memories will France’s current First Lady take away with her? Her state visit to the UK making her title official? Her trip to Burkina Faso after taking up her functions as ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS? The shot fired just a few metres away at Tel-Aviv airport on leaving Israel? This exposure to the cameras in life and death situations is unavoidable for anyone who has to face history with a cool head and a smile on their lips.
The site -- much slicker than Ségolène Royal's disastrous new internet base -- is meant to publicise Bruni's charity work in France and her post as ambassador for the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
It comes in French and English versions -- with a few adjustments in the translation. For example, Bruni was "born into a wealthy family of Italian industrialists" in the English one, but "into a rich family" in the French. Bruni's showbiz friends get a mention. There are links to Bob Dylan, Cindy Lauper and the Rolling Stones, to whose leader she was once especially close.
An "A to Z" of Carla mixes causes and first lady-like pursuits with some light nods to themes that have not helped her husband. For example, "Bling bling", the showy style which Sarkozy brought to the presidency, is dismissed as an invention of the media. It gets a mention above Sarah Brown, wife of Britain's Prime Minister.
The delicate, sugary site, with its emphasis on fashion and hip causes, fits the mission that the Elysée Palace has conferred on Bruni -- that of antidote to her brash, combative husband. Occasional web visitors may find it pleasant enough. The trouble is that bland corporate-style communication of this type does not work in a medium which prizes spontaneity and sharpness. Reaction on the French web to the Bruni site today has been contempt. "Nauseating...propaganda...they take us for fools..." was one of the more caustic lines.
Those wishing to visit Carla Bruni the singer can always go to her old site, carlabruni.com .
Super Sarko is also benefiting from a web remake. Under the direction of Nicolas Princen, its 25-year-old manager, the presidential site has loosened up a little. This week they are featuring a "making of" video from behind the scenes of a television interview with Sarkozy in New York last month. It neglected to include the scene in which Sarkozy tore a strip off Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, in front of the television crews. Sarkozy's official Facebook entry is being freshened and a Twitter account has been opened for the President's visit to the Copenhagen environment summit in December. Twittering is still not deemed presidential activity, so staff will be pecking out the copy.
Few nations have cultivated beauty and its attendant artifice as much as France. Now it could become the first country to impose health-warnings on all published photographs that have been retouched.
A parliamentarian from President Sarkozy's UMP party has tabled a bill that would require a "photo retouched" label on every improved picture that appears in advertising, the media or product-wrapping. Failure to signal Photoshopping or other enhancement would be punished with a 37,500 euro fine.
The idea is to end the "erroneous representation of the human body", says Valérie Boyer, an MP for the Marseilles area, who is behind the proposed law. The perfect images of women and also men in advertising and magazine portraits can drive people to despair and anorexia, says Boyer, who is a longtime campaigner in this field.
"These pictures can lead people to believe in realities which very often do not exist... There is a form of indecency in making people believe that only a certain category of humanity can attain perfection, without yellow teeth or love handles."
It's uncertain whether Boyer's bill, which has the signature of 50 other members, will reach a vote in parliament, but she has won applause from mental health advocates and drawn attention to the fact that most photographs -- except on news pages -- have been doctored. Celebrities expect electronic flattery whenever they sit for a picture. Elle Macpherson is said to travel with her own retouch artist.
The fashion world says that Boyer's law is laughable. Improving on nature has been part of the beauty business since time immemorial, they say. Michèle Fitoussi, a journalist on Elle magazine, joked on RTL radio: "While we're at it, why not write 'They have had their breasts redone and had a rib removed'."
France witnessed an egregious case this summer when Paris Match produced a feature on Sharon Stone. Under the headline "I'm 50 and so what!", the actress (who's actually 51) posed topless on the cover and across several pages, flaunting a flawless physique that a 20-year-old could barely dream of. The magazine cover, on all news stands in France, was pure provocation unless you knew that you were not looking at reality.
For men, the recent Vuitton adverts starring Sean Connery had a similar effect. It is very hard to believe that that is really the waistline of the 79-year-old former Bond.
Match was mocked a couple of years ago for tightening up Sarkozy's midriff in shots of the bare-topped President (This summer he did the job for the paparazzi by sucking in his stomach when they showed up).
Retouching of course remains taboo in the serious news business. There have been scandals when the rules have been broken. Photographers have been dismissed from news agencies for giving a little electronic tweak to shots of war and disasters. But given the ease of electronic fiddling I wonder how long the news industry can resist the temptation.
Below: a video which shows the wizardry of today's glamour trade
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Ségolène Royal, the Socialist runner-up in the last Presidential election, gets flakier by the day. Followers still see her semi-mystical persona as the best hope for the self-destructing French opposition. Others see her as a fading diva. She did little to help herself this week with a revamped internet site.
Hoots of laughter greeted the launch on Tuesday of the new-look home of Désirs d'Avenir, her personal brand (screen grab above). Cheesy and old-fashioned, it looked like something invented by a cult. "Is Ségo in a relationship with Tom Cruise?" wondered one commentator. Another called it "digital suicide". "It's like a leap 10 years into the past," said Rue89.com. Spoofs like this appeared [thanks DODO].
Royal's team has scrambled to undo the damage, producing a makeshift replacement which you will find now on desirsdavenir.com . According to L'Express magazine, the amateurish site was put together by André Hadjez, Royal's new companion [below in picture]. A 40,000 euro bill for building it was sent to Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late Yves Saint-Laurent, who is Royal's main source of finance, said L'Express. People are wondering what has happened to Royal because she used the net so skilfully to beat her Socialist rivals in 2006 and win the nomination to take on Nicolas Sarkozy.
Royal is not going to leave the scene. She is certain that her destiny is to unseat Sarko in 2012 and she is manoeuvering flat out to undermine Martine Aubry, who won the party leadership last November. The latest episode is a book by two journalists claiming that Aubry won the leadership by fraud.
It must be a little galling for Royal to see that some polls now put her behind François Hollande, the uncharismatic last party leader who is the father of their four children. Coming soon: Paris Match is to appear in court for publishing this cover picture of Royal and Hadjez, who is in the property and board game business, on holiday together.
Back on the eternal theme of franglais, here is the latest effort by the French state to fight off the American-English invasion from le web, or rather...la toile.
The Ministry of Culture's language agency, or police as we Anglo-Saxons usually call them, have issued a glossary of indigenous terms to replace the jargon that French IT people and civilian internautes are so quick to embrace. All employees of the state -- which means over a quarter of the work force -- are legally obliged to use these terms at work and in public communications rather than the English original.
You must say un fouineur (and presumably also une fouineuse) and not hacker. You are put on hold by un numéro d’assistance or d'urgence and not un hotline. "These new French terms are not yet widespread," says the DGLF, the language directorate. "The more people use them, the more easily they will enter usage and the quicker they will become familiar and seem always to have existed."
That may sound a little Orwellian but, as we have seen before, the rear-guard language campaign of recent decades has had some success. Over the years, clever French coinages have driven out some English terms and even improved on them. Ordinateur, invented by an IBM engineer in the 1950s, prevented France joining the computer bandwagon. Ordinateur was good because it contains the Latin religious sense of Creator (someone who ordains).
Informatique covers computing and Information Technology more succinctly than anything in English. Logiciel is more elegant than software, though I've noticed people reverting to the English because it sounds cooler. However the state-ordered courriel has not replaced email (known just as mail or even mèl) despite its use in state radio and television and media such as Le Monde.
The language guardians are up against fashion. The English (usually American) terms sound more hip even when there are perfectly good old French words for the same thing. Worm is used though ver is the same thing. The French, with its more abstract -- and elegant -- construction, comes over as a little quaint. It is also usually longer, which is the killer. There is little chance that people will adopt logiciel espion instead of spyware, message incendiaire instead of flame or canular instead of hoax.
The language authority reminded its civil service audience that failure to use French risks widening the fracture numérique (digital divide) which separates the initiated from the less privileged. "Let us not forget: equal rights and opportunity are a function of language [passent par la langue]."
The morale of the language troops was somewhat undermined earlier this month by their own boss, Frédéric Mitterrand, the Culture Minister. Talking at a political gathering, Mitterrand said that it was "time to stop this ridiculous anti-Americanism". "It is not because one eats Big Macs and wears jeans, that one cannot read Paul Valéry." Maybe, but I wish they would ban the latest vogue import -- le buzz. It is impossible to switch on any media without hearing someone going on about le dernier buzz, usually involving un pipole* of some kind.
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* a celebrity, derived originally from People magazine
Complete glossary from the language agency (.pdf) here
The video below has just blown up in the face of Brice Hortefeux, the French Interior Minister and close friend of President Sarkozy. In it, Hortefeux is bantering with Amin, a young party activist of Algerian origin from Sarkozy's UMP party. Apparently talking about France's north African immigrant population, the minister cracks a joke: “When there’s one that’s all right. It’s when there are a lot of them that there are problems.” [more of the exchange below]
That was enough to trigger a full-scale outcry from the Socialist opposition, anti-racist groups, editorialists and so on. The exchange, which has turned into a YouTube hit, is the top national news item this morning. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Madonna, has just called for Hortefeux's resignation.
Hortefeux has come up with clumsy attempts to extract himself. He was, he claimed, not talking about Arabs, but talking about Auvergnats, people from the Auvergne, because both he Amin hail from the central France region.
The mini-scandal will blow over, but it it is damaging because it plays to the racist reputation that clings to Hortefeux from his days as Sarkozy's first minister for Immigration and National Identity. It also reinforces the ugly image that has clung to Sarkozy's administration despite his appointment of ministers from the immigrant banlieues. Before the new incident, Rachida Dati and other former Sarkozy appointees from the minorities had complained that Hortefeux was condescending towards them.
Since becoming Interior Minister, which includes the job of chief of police, in the summer, Hortefeux has been trying to shed his sulphurous image. To show he meant business, last month he sacked a prefect -- top state official -- for complaining that the chaotic security measures at Orly airport were "like being in Africa". The black personnel complained to the police. Today the dismissed prefect, Paul Girot de Langlade, was crowing on the radio. "I hope he joins me soon."
Amin is insisting that he did not feel insulted or "disrespected" by the minister's banter. Hortefeux says that he said nothing about anyone's north African origins. The fuss is being overplayed, but his explanation does not wash. The exchange in the video tells you about the old-fashioned attitude in sections of the the UMP -- formerly the Gaullist -- party towards the underclass descended from immigrants from the former colonies.
A woman introduces Hortefeux to Amin, saying "he eats pig and drinks beer".
Hortefeux jokes: "So he doesn't fit the stereotype at all." [Il ne correspond pas du tout au prototype, alors]
 President Sarkozy has been caught again compensating for his modest stature. Last June, you may remember, he was snapped standing on a stool to match the height of President Obama during the D-Day ceremonies in Normandy (picture below). This time, we hear that a busload of short people was driven in to stand behind the President when he visited a factory.
Sarkozy's appearance at the Faurecia firm near the Normandy town of Caligny last Thursday was a photo-opportunity for the national television news (picture above). It was designed to show a dynamic Sarkozy, back from the summer break, making a speech to eager workers at the automotive parts plant.
A Belgian television crew decided to show how the Elysée Palace stage-manages these events. It filmed volunteers being driven in from other Faurecia plants as extras to stand around the president. They were picked because they were not taller than Sarkozy's five feet five inches, said Jean-Philippe Schaller, the RTBF tv reporter. Watch on the video below as he asks one of the white-coated volunteers if height was a factor in their casting. "Yes," she says. He persists: "You had to be no taller than the president ?" The employee replies: "Voilà" (That's it).
The Elysée has taken 24 hours to react to the RTBF report -- after it was picked up by the French media. They dismissed the story as "totally preposterous and grotesque" -- but did not actually deny it. The Faurecia company also denied ensuring a low-level crowd, but one of the firm's trade union leaders contradicted this, saying the report is accurate. "We are certain, from sure and reliable sources, that this demand did not come out of the head of a manager at Faurecia and that it absolutely was a request from the Elysée," said Jose De Sa Moreira of the CFDT, one of France's main unions. "Only short people could appear beside the President," he said.
"The request, or order, was given to the top management of Faurecia. As union leaders we just ensured that the people approached were not coerced and that they were not chosen on the grounds of colour or age..." he added.
It's possible that this story is the product of mischief from local anti-Sarkozy forces. One worker said the whole company had been talking about the height restriction in the run-up to the presidential visit. So it could have been a rumour that started it all. But the tale is plausible for anyone who has watched the elaborate way that Sarkozy's appearances are organised.
The French presidency is not much different from the American one or the British Prime Minister's office when it comes to stage-managing appearances. Nothing is left to chance. A prefect -- the local governor -- was sacked a few months ago after police failed to keep demonstrators out of earshot during a Sarkozy visit to a provincial factory. But picking a short crowd does seem to be taking things a little far.
Sarkozy's sensitivity over his petite taille is normal enough. But he sets himself up for mockery with attempts to compensate for it. His stack-heeled loafers are a running joke with cartoonists and comedians.
Height seems to be a criterion for membership of Sarkozy's government. There are few tall men. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, and Jean-Louis Borloo, who the super-minister for the environment and transport, are pint-sized. François Fillon, the Prime Minister, is of modest height.
Carla Bruni, who stands nearly five inches taller than her husband, grumbled this summer that people paid too much attention to the fact that she always wore completely flat soles in his presence. "I understand that the media prefer to talk about my pumps more than my global foundation or the fight against illiteracy," she said.
Sarkozy is not the only one to stage-manage appearances. Last month, Luc Chatel, the Education Minister and government spokesman, was caught in the act when he visited a supermarket at Villeneuve-le-Roi, southeast of Paris.
The aisles, normally quiet on an August afternoon, were suddenly full of well-dressed middle-class shoppers who showered praise on a government price freeze on school supplies. It turned out that the women were all from the UMP, Sarkozy's party, and had been driven in for the occasion.
[Below, Belgian tv report on Sarkozy's short crowd]
[Tuesday update: The state consumer standards agency (DGCCRF) said today that it has opened an investigation into shattering iPhones after a total of six French owners reported spontaneous self-destruction.]
What is it about the south of France that makes iPhones self-destruct ? For the second time in a month, a resident of the French Mediterranean region is claiming that an Apple phone blew up in his hands.
The other day, Romain Kolega, an 18-year-old from Aix-en-Provence, said he had been injured when his girlfriend's iPhone went 'crackle and pop like a deep-fryer' and sent shards of screen into his face.
Today, Yassine Bouhadi [above], a 26-year-old security guard at a supermarket at Villevieille, near Nîmes, reported that his iPhone made a noise like a mirror shattering. "I was texting my girl friend like I do every day when the phone made a noise like 'schplok'. A little bit of screen hit me in the eye and I had to remove it with a tweezer," said Bouhadi.
Bouhadi's misfortune made the front page in Midi Libre, the main paper in the Languedoc Roussillon [in picture]. "I wasn't telephoning and I hadn't been using it for a long period. I was just sending a text message," said Bouhadi. 
Judging from the comments on the paper's site, readers are not convinced by this latest tale of iPhone combustion. For a start, the newspaper talks of the phone imploding and the picture looks as if something hit the screen. Bouhadi says he paid 600 euros for the phone -- the full price without a service subscription -- which also sounds a little unusual.
But who knows? Perhaps the hot dry weather of the French Midi does not agree with the iPhone's lithium ion battery. "Exploding" Apple gadgets have turned into a jolly summer saga. KIRO, a Seattle-based television station, reported 15 cases of batteries causing iFires, as I suppose we should call the syndrome. Another French owner reported an iPhone flambé and cars in Holland and Sweden may have been set on fire by rogue Apples.
Apple was cast as the bad guy after little Ellie Stanborough's iPod Touch self-destructed in Liverpool. Her father said it hissed, became very hot and jumped 10 feet in the air as the screen exploded. He then accused Apple of trying to buy his silence when they refused to pay compensation until he promise not to publicise the incident.
Apple says that there is nothing wrong. Last week, the European Commission muscled in. "Apple considers that these are isolated incidents," said the EU's executive agency. "They don't consider that there's a general problem, and are seeking more information on the reported cases and will carry out any necessary tests."
Since Apple inspires devotion among the faithful and suspicion among Macnostics, the idea of flaming i-devices was bound to cause a stir. A writer for Businessweek.com accused the media of ganging up against Apple. All kinds of electrical devices, from lamps to MP3 players, can cause fires and the handful ascribed to Apple are a minute share of the millions of gadgets that the company has sold, he said. That argument has earned a counterblast from people who are suspicious of Apple's power and mystique.
For the sake of anecdote, I have used my Macbook and Nano in the southern France sun often over the past month without the slightest hiss or pop. But then my PC-devoted son-in-law says I have gone over to the sect. Now let me tell you about this great little device that turns the Nano into an excellent sound recorder..... (it drew suspicious looks from the electro-sensitive people whom I interviewed in the south last week -- see last post).
Get ready for some Anglo-Saxon gloating. We hear today that France is giving up its four-year struggle to keep the barbarians of Google from Gallic gates, at least in their literary form.
"Google has won", said the headline in La Tribune, a business daily. It reported that the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) -- the national library -- is on the verge of a deal under which Google will add its stocks to its controversial digital library.
The pact will mark a big climb-down because the BNF led the counter-attack that was noisily launched by President Chirac in early 2005 against what France saw as a dangerous new American imperialism. That spring, Paris mustered continental backing for a European Union virtual library called Europeana, which has had a shaky existence since it went online last year.
According to Jean-Noel Jeanneney, the BNF chief at the time, Europe's literary and cultural heritage was under digital threat from les Anglo-Saxons. France faced the prospect of being force-fed with such things as the biased English-language version of its revolution in which "valiant British aristocrats triumphed over bloodthirsty Jacobins and the guillotine blotted out the rights of man", said Jeanneney (he has since lost his job).
Pierre Assouline, a writer with a popular Paris literary blog, pronounced an acid verdict on the surrender today: "It will thus have taken four years for the BNF to pass from resistance to collaboration." Some readers joined the lament. "The harm is done, now that the European mountain gave birth to a mouse," wrote a patriotic book-lover called Thierry. However the main reaction from France has not been shock and horror, just a virtual shrug.
Economics explain the shift, said Denis Bruckmann, director of collections at the BNF, which joins 29 other major world libraries in opening its shelves to Google's project (including Oxford's Bodleian). France provides only five million euros a year for digitizing books. This is done by Gallica, the national digital library. Yet the BNF needs up to 80 million euros just for its works from the Third Republic era (1870 to 1940), said Bruckmann. "We will not stop our own digitizing programme, but if Google can enable us to go faster and farther, then why not?"
Google scans almost free and it has so far added some 10 million works to its Books search base, the great majority of them out of copyright. These can be read free, while only extracts are available from the rest. In a development that could upset the dominance of Amazon, Google now plans to start charging for e-books online.
After a long battle, Google last year reached a settlement with publishers in the United States over copyright infringement, but resistance continues, especially in Europe. The US Justice Department and the European Commission are reviewing Google's US deal on several grounds, including its possible creation of a monopoly over millions of copyright-protected books that are no longer in print. The UK Booksellers' Association voiced similar concerns. In June, the German Government said that Google Books threatened European culture and media.
In France, publishers and booksellers are worried about the forthcoming e-book revolution. Strict laws on pricing have helped 12,000 bookshops survive while small sellers in many countries have been driven out by the big chains. It is doubtful whether the French protection rules can be applied to electronically-delivered books.Amazon isn’t launching its Kindle in France until next year and Google's pay book service is still some way off. Before the Americans move in, the French industry wants to create a national "digital distribution platform" to sell e-books. Alain Kouck, the chief of Editis, the number two national publisher, called in la Tribune today for the circling of French wagons before Amazon and Google come galloping over the horizon.
[Top picture, the Richelieu reading room in the old National Library.]
A French news item gives me a chance to sound off with a pet peeve: marriage proposals made in public. These are usually the stuff of feel-good movies from Hollywood or Bollywood. You know the cliché -- the hero goes down on a knee in front of a silent crowd. The intended pauses in disbelief, then assents. The crowd rises to applaud, the music starts and and the movie winds down.
I used to think French films were above such nonsense, but in recent years, they have have latched onto the device. Dany Boon used it for a high point in Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, last year's comedy which has become the all-time French box office hit. Boon's character, a shy postman, hangs a "marry me" banner from the town bell-tower, melts the heart of his girl-friend and everyone goes gooey.
In the usual way that life imitates entertainment, would-be French grooms have taken to the game of splashy marriage proposals. One has just been made by a cast member of Secret Story, the latest French version of the Big Brother reality TV show. Then, on Saturday, a shoe-shop manager from the Loire city of Nantes scored headlines with an excruciating version of the stunt.
Grégory Boché, 28, enlisted the help of the the Futuroscope theme park at Poitiers to let him offer marriage to Aurore Crusson in front of the 6,000 audience at its evening show [top picture]. Basking in his 10 seconds of media fame, Boché explained: "At the outset, I was thinking of projecting a message on a building or putting up a banner, but the management of the park suggested a declaration in the middle of the show." The couple were summoned on stage under the pretext of receiving a ticket-draw prize. Aurore, who has already born Boché two children in a decade together, was taken by surprise when he popped the question. She hesitated then consented and the crowd roared.
I must be missing something here. It's fine if people want to be sentimental and propose marriage in romantic places. But what is romantic or gallant about taking a woman by surprise in front of thousands of people and hitting her out of the blue with the most private of questions? It seems more like bullying and emotional blackmail. The script does not allow for reflection, let alone refusal. It's voyeurism. It should be embarrassing for victim and public alike. Yet people seem to exult in watching such stuff. Très bizarre.
PS: Someone has compiled a list of the top movie marriage proposals here.
Paris is at its most glorious on the July 14 holiday when France displays its military might, with the forces marching, driving and flying down the Champs Elysées to salute President Sarkozy on the Place de la Concorde.
No other nation puts on such a splendid display any more. The setting is sumptuous -- helped today by summer sunshine. From the breastplates and plumes of the mounted Garde Républicaine to the slow-marching Légion Etrangère, you get a sense of the pride that Napoleon must have felt watching his Grande Armée.
Memories of empire were surely in Sarkozy's mind as he surveyed the ceremony, which felt all the more old-world this year because 400 dress-uniformed Indian troops led the procession, their arms swinging in British style.
The President's quest for grandeur is the talk of the town after an astonishingly servile TV broadcast in his honour last night. When Sarkozy took over two years ago, he did away with what he called the stuffy ritual of the Bastille Day lunchtime interview. Presidents Chirac and Mitterrand used the moment to commune in a regal way with their citizens from the Elysée Palace terrace.
Last night we were offered a supposed intimate portrait of Sarkozy, in which the monarch deigned to talk about his life and ambitions. The recorded programme, part of a celebrity profile series called A visage découvert, was so uncritically fulsome in its depiction of the great man, that we thought at first that it was a joke by France TV. The state network has fallen foul of the President lately for lack of respect, so perhaps this was a satire in the manner of North Korean television.
Watch the start of the show below. Two France Television journalists stroll in the Elysée garden, reviewing the destiny of a French sovereign who has dazzled the world with his vision, energy and statesmanship. Tony Blair, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown, were among those hauled in to pay tribute to his noble person.
As a young man, Nicolas Sarkozy sensed that he was destined to lead France and he set high goals for himself and his country, we learnt. His talents amazed all those whose paths crossed with his. He inspires those around him them with his energy and "the high demands he imposes on himself." He single-handedly restored faith in Europe with his Presidency of the Union last year. "I think in six months Nicolas Sarkozy aquired a veritable international dimension. And the situation was not an easy one," said one of the two obsequious presenters. The other retorted: "As the proverb says, it is in difficult times that men reveal themselves." It was how Soviet television used to describe Leonid Brezhnev -- or how BBC commentators talk of the Queen on state occasions.
A "biopic worthy of Lady Diana," one blogging TV critic calls it today. Telerama:fr, the site of the leftish entertainment weekly, imagined questions that Sarkozy's interviewers would have liked to put. "Sublime President, your most Serene Highness, I love your tie. May I touch it with my finger tips?"
The Socialist Party has denounced the show as proof that Sarkozy has turned the state TV channels into his personal tool. Not even the late President de Gaulle got away with such stuff, it said. Benoît Hamon, the party spokesman, called it "hagiography worthy of a banana republic." "Democratic debate was totally abandoned in favour of a pile of worship that used, word-for-word, the political propaganda of the President."
All good fun. Back to the fête nationale. The traditional fireman's ball is enjoying a big revival. There have been over a dozen around Paris last night and tonight. People were dancing at the caserne des pompiers near my place until about four this morning.
We are sitting by lake Geneva under a gentle Alpine sun. Three military helicopters have just landed on the lawn of the grand hotel next-door. They were bringing in Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, but we won't see him until we are escorted into a press conference at the Royal Palace Evian.
[End of summit story here] In case anyone thinks there is anything glamorous about summit meetings, especially minor ones, here's a little snapshot from Evian, the lakeside watering place where the French President decided to hold this year's formal get-together with the British. These events follow a ritual. The host chooses somewhere pleasant and the machinery cranks into action. When the day arrives, the hotels and the public are cleared out, battalions of police are deployed along with interpreters and staff. I have just counted 26 buses and vans of the CRS riot police parked by us in the garden. Communications are installed, along with a media centre and a press conference stage. Sarkozy's meeting with Gordon Brown and six cabinet ministers is small beer compared with US summits (like President Obama's today's in Moscow) or G8s and other multilateral events, so there are only about two dozen reporters here. But we are well watered and fed by the Elysée as we wait and wait and wait under parasols. We tap on laptops, gossip and read the papers. In the old days you milled around with the participants and picked up information, but media are now always the other side of a sterile perimeter. We have flown down from Paris and taken a bus for an hour along the lake but our only contact with the leaders will be a carefully staged 30-minute press conference [watch it below]. The outside world will see the key quotes on television plus some picturesque shots of the great men against the Alpine lake. After lunch and a total of three hours on site, everyone leaves town and Evian is given back to the summer tourists. 
Without being too cynical, it is hard to avoid the contrast between, on one side, the talk at the summit of recession and the new age of frugality, and on the other the piles of money and carbon expended on staging the event. Everyone could have got together in a conference room in Paris for a fraction of the effort. Perhaps that is little unfair. Set-piece summits between the European powers serve two purposes. They act as a little theatre for reaffirming the relationship and playing statesman on TV. More importantly, they provide deadlines for the bureaucracy. Governments have a list of projects that they announce or tie up at summits. Brown and Sarkozy see one-another all the time so there is little business to be done. All is of course presented as perfect harmony. The pair get on quite well. Brown is grateful for Sarkozy's support at a time when, politically, he needs every friend he can find. At the moment, the testy ancestral rivalry between Britain and France is in one of its lulls. Sarkozy's people like quoting Gordon Brown's talk of a new "entente formidable" which has replaced the boring old cordiale version. In an hour or so we will be reporting "joint calls" and common plans for the G8 meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, later this week. Summits are always more interesting when we can get to work on a good row. Carbon update after the press conference. Sarkozy and Brown spent most of their session talking about climate change and carbon taxes. They were asked at their press conference about the message they were sending with their mass jaunt to Evian. Sarkozy waxed indignant and pretended to misunderstand the question. "You don't think we could get anything done just by sitting in the Elysée and Downing street and talking on the phone do you?" said Sarkozy. Brown, who has problems prnouncing the word Evian, tried to make a joke, saying: "I was wondering if I shouldn't just stay here for a couple of days and then go on to Italy and save some carbon.." And Brown, whose pallor contrasted with Sarkozy's Berlusconi-level suntan, produced another rather lame variant on his entente theme. "This time, it's l'entente formidable au soleil," he said.
Old television commercials are a big trigger for nostalgia. This is just one of 200,000 French ones which went on-line free today on the new site of the INA, the national broadcasting archives.
The site is a little slow this morning because everyone is clicking on to watch the adverts they grew up with, starting the the first one, for Boursin cheese, in 1968. French TV advertising does not play so much on sentiment and emotion as the Americans or situation comedy like the British. It can be as silly and annoying as everywhere else but the more creative commercials are a mix of stylish production, humour and often, eroticism. The ice-cream advert above from 1999 is an example. Some of the most fondly-remembered commercials are those of Perrier water (see below) and Orangina soda.
The INA site is fun to browse. France does these things exceedingly well. I mentioned the site when it first opened three years ago, offering a free trip down memory lane with thousands of hours of old tv shows, news footage and entertainment. The INA -- l'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel -- has the task of storing and cataloguing France's broadcasting heritage. It is half way through putting decades of TV on-line and the new site makes it more accessible.
Emmanuel Hogg, the INA boss, says he is offering France and anyone who knows the country the equivalent of Proust's Madeleine -- the frisson of a flash into your past. "We are the first generation to be able to see our past in images. When you look at an old show, you see two things: the broadcast and your (younger) self watching it...We are a guarantee that everything is broadcast on radio and television will be kept, from yesterday today or tomorrow." The INA had a lively internal debate on whether old TV commercials were really part of the national heritage and it decided that they were. No other country has such a publicly accessible memory trove, adds Hogg. Yes of course this costs the taxpayer, but no-one contests such spending.
[Housekeeping note. I'm off for three days. Comments will be moderated. Next post on Monday. CB]
[Below: Perrier cavemen]
![Frederic mitterrand[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201157147e63f970b-300wi "Frederic mitterrand[1]") We were right to expect Nicolas Sarkozy to dismiss Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister who was responsible for the President's ill-fated law against internet piracy. Sarkozy is about to stage one of his splashy personnel coups by replacing Albanel with a well-known character by the name of Mitterrand
The new Monsieur Culture is to be Frédéric Mitterrand, a versatile arts personality, gay activist and television presenter who was a nephew of the late President François Mitterrand. The younger Mitterrand, 61, has just made his first big mistake: he announced his elevation 24 hours before its proclamation by the palace. Sarkozy, who is recasting his government tomorrow, abhors subordinates who jump the gun.
[Wednesday update: Mitterrand's announcement forced the Elysée to name the new government last night. Here's the news from today's paper -- written five minutes after the announcement so it's a little sketchy.]
Because of the family name, Mitterrand's appointment to a plum Cabinet post has been depicted by some as a new ouverture, Sarkozy's term for his recruitment of people from the left. Mitterrand, whose late father Robert was the elder brother of the Socialist president, supported his uncle in the 1980s, when he was rising on state television as an arts presenter and commentator on European royalty. But in 1995, Frédéric threw in his lot with the then presidential candidate Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy's party boss who succeeded François Mitterrand that year. The new minister is seen by the lefty Paris cultural establishment as something of a dilettante and courtier. However Pierre Bergé, the former partner of Yves Saint Laurent and senior figure in the left-leaning gay establishment applauded his appointment.
Sarkozy had already promoted Mitterrand and put many cultural noses out of joint only last year when he made him boss of Villa Médicis, the French cultural academy in Rome. The post is one of the jewels distributed by Republican monarchs to those who enjoy their favour. On TV today, Mitterrand called his new job "an exhilarating task and an honour." The Elysée Palace refused to confirm it. Asked if his late uncle would have approved his decision to join Sarkozy's government, he said: "Certainly!"
Mitterrand has enjoyed moderate success as a writer and film director and producer but he is a household face, at least for the older generation, from his television days in the 1980s and '90s. He is admired as one of the first campaigners for gay rights. His creation in 1977 of a Festival of Homosexual Film was brave for the times. In recent years he has been one of the bosses of Pink TV, France's first gay cable channel.
Mitterrand's gayness will not be a first in the Culture post, a job which in France commands much greater money (2.8 billion euros) and power than arts officials in other democracies. But his background as a homosexual rights campaigner is useful for Sarkozy's goal of diversity in his administration.
The President has been hinting at surprises in what he says will be his "second government". Among these will be the identify of the one or more new ethnic personalities who will inherit the diversity role played by Rachida Dati, the outgoing Justice Minister. It is assumed that François Fillon is staying on as Prime Minister, although Sarkozy's direct management of the state has cut the function down to a sort of chief of staff.
Sarkozy laid out his aims for this second phase of his presidency before a solemn ceremonial session of both houses of parliament in the Château de Versailles yesterday. Among other things, he condemned face-covering by Islamic women (see last post).
The grandiose exercise in self-promotion, made possible by Sarkozy's changes to the constitution last year, played into the hands of the left and media critics who depict him as a would-be successor to Louis XIV and France's other absolute monarchs. They might have a point, given that he is appointing as guardian of the Republic's culture a man who is a famous admirer of European monarchy and its rituals.
[Below: Sarkozy arriving at Versailles for his speech]
We try to avoid poking fun at Nicolas Sarkozy for his short stature, but sometimes the French President sets himself up for a little mockery. Here's a classic example, taken at Saturday's D-Day commemoration in Normandy.
Speaking from the same podium as Barack Obama, Sarkozy added about six inches to his five feet five by standing on a little stool. Added to his custom-crafted elevator shoes, this took him up to the same altitude as the six-feet-two US president.
Sarkozy is naturally sensitive about his lack of height and it may not be fair to focus on it. For centuries, sneering about small Frenchmen has been a standard in the anti-French armoury of the English and later the "Anglo-Saxon" world. Try Googling "little Frenchmen", and you get the point -- or look at the comments that land on this blog -- mainly from the United States -- when we get into French-bashing territory.
Napoleon Bonaparte measured five feet six inches in his stockings, which was not small for the late 18th century. But Boney was diminished by English propaganda, which depicted him as a power-mad midget. It's interesting to note that Bonaparte's nick-name, le petit caporal, the little corporal, was an affectionate term coined by the soldiers under his early command.
Jump ahead two centuries and the British are still at it. Here is Stephen Glover, a serious journalist, venting on Sarkozy in the mid-market Daily Mail two weeks ago: "This diminutive egomaniac is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to his countrymen, and a laughing stock to the rest of Europe..." If you dig back to 1805, I'm sure you will find similar words written about Bonaparte.
The Mail article, which depicted the French as collaborationist cowards, was a rant of a kind that would be deemed crude and racist if it had been written about just about any other nation. No French newspaper would indulge in verbal abuse about a foreign leader like that, but mocking the ancestral enemy is a time-honoured sport in Britain.
Sarkozy is something of an exception among recent French leaders. For 30 of the past 50 years, they have been quite tall. Charles de Gaulle stood six feet four inches tall and Jacques Chirac is six feet two.
Having said that, Sarkozy's petite taille is a talking point and subject of mockery in France too (see cartoon from le Canard Enchaîné below). Everyone from serious biographers like Catherine Nay to the man in the local bistrot will tell you that it's important to understanding his psychology. He has spent his life compensating, goes the cliché.
It's part of his view of himself as a scrappy outsider who had to fight harder than anyone to reach the top. During his 2007 election campaign he took pride in describing himself as "un petit Français de sang mêlé" -- a little Frenchman of mixed blood. Petit in this sense also means ordinary, but is still carries the image of height. Sarkozy likes to surround himself with small lieutenants, men such as Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, and Jean-Louis Borloo, who heads a super-ministry covering the environment and transport. His arch enemies, Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, Chirac's former Prime Minister, are of tall, aristocratic build. Sarkozy always chooses tall women. All three of his wives have been taller than him. The latest one, Carla Bruni, a former super-model, wears flat-soled ballerina shoes and stoops in order to minimise her superior five-inches. In the cartoon, she is saying: "You've grown again, pussycat." Sarkozy, in elevator shoes and standing on a classic French novel, says: "I make figures say what I want."
The physical mockery of first families is not all one-way. French comedians and commentators have been having fun with Michelle Obama, focusing on her considerable size. Nicolas Canteloup, the very popular satirist on Europe 1 radio, imagined her the other day as a rugby player knocking over Sarko.
Here they all are in Caen this week
 Trust the British to spoil Nicolas Sarkozy's plan for a dream day with Barack Obama. The French president managed after much arm-twisting last month to persuade the US leader to drop in on the Normandy beaches on June 6 to commemorate the D-Day landings of 1944 and celebrate Franco-American ties.
Sarkozy's big moment began to sour when the British, then the Canadians, Poles and other wartime allies wondered why they had not been asked to join the two presidents at the US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, by Omaha beach. Sarkozy was annoyed at the idea of sharing his golden photo-opportunity but invitations went out. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, agreed to attend along with other allied officials.
But the Elysée Palace failed to factor in British emotion over the war, ancient suspicion of France and the skill of the British media at whipping the two together. So today the Daily Mail, a mass-market paper, reported "fury" in Buckingham palace over Sarkozy's failure to invite the Queen.
In reality, we are told that there is no anger and no perceived snub. The Royal family had not expected to be invited and had not put out feelers, a senior British official told me. The Queen attended ceremonies in Normandy for the 50th and 60th anniversaries, but the 65th was not planned as an international event.
[Thursday update: for French tv viewers. Canal+ have asked me to talk about this on Le Grand Journal this evening, after 7pm]
The French are annoyed by the snub story. Luc Chatel, the Minister who acts as government spokesman, said that Her Majesty was absolutely welcome if she wanted to come. It was not up to Paris to designate who represented Britain. "Our interlocutors are members of the British Government who wanted to associate themselves with a ceremony that was Franco-American at the outset," said Chatel. This year's event is about the US-French relationship and there will be other D-Days, he added.
You can hear the irritation there. It's also evident in the confusion over what Gordon Brown and the other allied officials will do on June 6. Sarkozy is still hoping to be alone at least part of the time as the guest of Obama at the Colleville cemetery (which is US territory in perpetuity). The French plan a Sarkozy-Obama tête-à-tête and and there will be a three-way meeting with Brown. The Elysée Palace and Downing Street have still not settled on a programme.
In other words, this looks like a mess, another case of Sarkozy over-reaching and putting up backs with his self-promotion.
Past US Presidents have attended purely bilateral ceremonies with French leaders at Omaha beach, but never on June 6 itself. Sarkozy should have known that D-Day, in which 73,000 British forces came ashore, is as sacred to the British as the Americans. Some might have told him that he would court trouble by trying to mark the 65th anniversary without them. That is especially the case as the dwindling British veterans' organisations say that this will be their last Normandy commemoration.
The criticism is not just British. It came with force today from Jean-Michel Aphatie, a commentator who is feared in the political world. Sarkozy's attempt to stage an epic lone appearance with Obama was a huge mistake, Aphatie wrote on the internet. "It is impossible to honour the memory of the dead without associating the leaders of the countries which took part in the sacrifice...French diplomacy has landed itself in a glorious mess."
"This episode illustrates an obsession of French leaders: forever measuring themselves against American power. We live in the illusion of a tête-à-tête with America..."
[Picture: Colleville cemetery, Normandy, where over 9,000 US servicement are buried]
This video is causing a stir in France because it shows a side of Nicolas Sarkozy that people don't usually see: the doting husband at home. We learn that Carla Bruni's term of endearment for him is "mon chou chou". An English equivalent of this quite proletarian phrase might be my sweetie, sweetie-pie, sweetheart, luv, darling and so on.
The video was taken during a session between Bruni and a group of readers invited by Femme Actuelle magazine. The President drops in on the women in their private quarters in the Elysée Palace. He and Carla make a great show of affection. Sarko says that he has just received the Iraqi prime minister and taken a shower after working out. They point out that they only live in those apartments at weekends. Their dogs are called Clara and Dumbledore, by the way.
On a related subject, Sarkozy could soon be joining British parliamentarians in the field of embarrassing expense claims. A magazine called Challenges reports today that the state auditors have caught him out charging an undisclosed amount of private items to his official expense account. No details have emerged yet but watch this space.
France is amused, along with everyone else, by the fuss over the fanciful expenses of British members of parliament. All those claims for castle repairs and tennis court maintenance are good for a laugh. No-one could imagine such a scandal occurring in France for a simple reason: members of the government and parliament don't have to account for their expenses.
Unlike parliamentarians in northern Europe, French députés and senators do not have to hand in receipts or explain how they dispose of the fixed 70,000 euros that they receive annually to cover their their spending on housing, offices and transport. The European Parliament still uses largely the same method, to the disgust of the northerners and delight of Eurosceptics. Luxurious style and lavish perks are expected by French ministers and other high servants of the state and few see anything wrong with this.
Laurent Joffrin, editor of Libération, tried to explain on the radio this morning why France tolerates and even rather approves of the regal life-style of its ruling class. "There are two reasons: we have a culture of secrecy about money and also a reverence towards people in power," he said. "The Anglo-Saxons and Nordic states have a quite different culture. They don't have our delicacy about money."
Joffrin traced the attitude back to revolutionary days when the rulers of the young Republic sought to impose their legitimacy by looking like the old caste of the monarchy and aristocracy. "Napoleon said the prefect's (local governor's) house had to be as impressive as that of the nobleman." he said.
In the same debate, on France-Info, Michel Colomès, a magazine journalist, said people do not expect high dignitaries to live like ordinary people. "I don't think the French would want to see our prime minister living with the same life-style as the premiers in northern Europe," he said.
The subject came up because, parallel to the British scandal, an unusual glimpse of French ministerial spending has emerged this week. It came from René Dosière, a leftwing parliamentarian who has for years been trying to pierce the secrecy that surrounds the state aristocracy. It was Dosière who, a few years ago, exposed the way that French Presidents enjoyed an unlimited, secret budget, drawn from a number of ministries. President Sarkozy reformed this up to a point. He still lives like a king -- though that is probably the wrong expression since some of Europe's royal houses live modestly in comparison.
This time, Dosière used his parliamentary rights to force reluctant ministries to produce their running expenses. He got the figures after eight months but only one, the Justice Ministry, gave much detail. Among other things, we learn that Rachida Dati, the Minister, has put a fleet of 20 cars with 19 drivers at the permanent service of her 20 personal staff. Madame Dati [pictured above in her office] and her ministry on the Place Vendôme spent 270,000 euros last year on receptions and meals. She clocked up 416,370 euros on air travel for herself and advisers. Much or perhaps all of that was legitimate, but there's no way of knowing. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister (see last post) beat Dati on the travel front, spending 562,346 euros on flights.
Dati, who is about to leave office, does not live in the official residence which is provided for her, unlike many other ministers. Scandals occasionally break when ministers go too far on that front. Hervé Gaymard, a Finance Minister under President Chirac, was forced to resign after only a few weeks in 2005 after it was revealed that the state was renting a palatial apartment for his family because he considered that his official residence was not grand enough. As a result of this, ministers are now expected to pay some of the running charges of their mansions. That is a change from the days when President Mitterrand managed to house his secret second family at state expense in a sumptuous apartment for over a decade and no-one raised an eye-brow when the news came out in the mid 90s.
Dosière, who is regarded by fellow parliamentarians as something of an eccentric, commented drily in Le Monde today: "The culture of monitoring public spending is not very developed in France, at least it's not much liked in the ministries.... Our administration is not yet used to transparency."
A jinx seems to have latched onto President Sarkozy's scheme to make France the first democracy with an internet police agency. A furore is raging in the French blogosphere over the sacking of a television executive because he criticised Sarkozy's imminent three-strikes-and-you're-out law against illegal downloading.
The episode tells you about the cosy ties between Sarkozy and TF1, France's dominant -- commercial -- television network. Here's what happened:
Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, 33, TF1's chief of technical innovation, voiced his disagreement with the internet law -- known as Hadopi -- in a private e-mail to Françoise de Panafieu, the member of parliament for his home district in western Paris. Panafieu is a one-time minister and veteran member of Sarkozy's UMP party (She's also my MP and her office is opposite my apartent). Her assistant forwarded the e-mail to the office of Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister [above], requesting points to make in response to Bourreau.
The deputy-chief of Albanel's staff then zapped a copy of the e-mail straight to TF1. Bourreau's boss called him in, read out his e-mail and told him he was fired because it betrayed the network's policy in favour of the internet law. When the story broke in Libération, Albanel dismissed it as absurd and indignantly denied before parliament that her office had forwarded the e-mail. Over the weekend, she reversed her story and admitted that the dirty work had been done by Christophe Tardieu, her staffer. He has been suspended for a month.
Albanel says she regrets the incident but is pointing out that nothing in the e-mail said that it was confidential. Bourreau (the name means hangman or executioner) is suing TF1 for wrongful dismissal, citing a law which employees' rights to voice political opinions.
At this stage I would argue that an executive in a sensitive post should be more careful about airing opinions in contradiction with an important company policy. But that's not really the point here. The scandal comes from the Culture Ministry ratting on Bourreau to the private company that it is involved in regulating.
This is being taken as proof of the incestuous network of friends and interests through which Sarkozy influences -- some would say controls -- the media. TF1 is owned by the billionaire Martin Bouygues, a Sarkozy friend who is is godfather to his youngest son. As we saw here before, Sarkozy last year got rid of advertising from public television -- a huge gift to TF1 -- on the suggestion of Bouygues. TF1's second-ranking executive is Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. And so on.
Bourreau is being hailed as a hero, admired with dedicated Facebook groups and a special song "Qui a tué (Who Killed) Bourreau-Guggenhem ?" He has been called the first "internet martyr" in the cause of resisting what is seen as Sarkozy's Big Brother Hadopi scheme.
Much of the emotion is over-blown, but the Hadopi law is beginning to look like a loser before it has even finished its tortuous passage through parliament. It is supported not just by the big corporations of the entertainment industry but also by many artists as the only way to stop their work being pillaged. But its foes have done a good job painting it as an out-of-date plot by the establishment to punish the young and poor who download music and films.
That case was put today by a group of 90 independent record labels which have signed a declaration attacking the Hadopi law (which takes its name from the acronym for the new High Authority which will track down and punish illegal downloaders). The independents, who say they represent 90 percent of French musical artists, attacked the majors for impoverishing them and supporting a policy "which designates the public as potential thieves rather than music-lovers."
The anti-Hadopi crowd could not have wished for better ammunition than the case of the unfortunate Mr Bourreau.
[Picture at top is Albanel in parliament last month after a first attempt to pass the Hadopi law was unexpectedly defeated. It's back for a new vote later this month and will very likely pass]
As a follow-up to the last post on Sarkozy's new French model for Europe, have a look at the cover of the latest edition of The Economist. Sarkozy towers over Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany while Britain's Gordon Brown wallows in a hole with the Anglo-Saxon model.
The editorial neatly summarises the ideas behind the debate that we're always having here. Naturally it's on the Anglo-Saxon side, but it admits the merits of the continental approach. Their report from inside France, by Sophie Pedder, the Economist's Paris correspondent, is excellent.
 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]
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Paris is talking about the fine performance by Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, on Jon Stewart's Daily Show (Watch the Monday evening interview below). If you have only seen Lagarde inside France, it's an eye-opener. She is at ease, bantering in near perfect English, drawing applause when she says she had fired a few bankers because "they did a crappy job". Her advisers were initially nervous about exposing her to one of Stewart's comic grillings but she did well, batting off questions such as "Is America now more Socialist than France" and on France's debt to the US from the war.
Inside France, Lagarde, 53, has proved a liability to President Sarkozy. She is politically inept. Publicly, she seems stiff and out of touch and she is known as Christine Lagaffe because of her many verbal blunders. These have included telling the French last year that if motor fuel was too expensive they should just ride bicycles. As an outsider from the elite technocracy, she is flanked by junior ministers who run the financial machine. Lagarde is a non-politician who was brought into the government in 2005. She was humiliated last year by colleagues who said publicly that France needed a heavyweight Finance Minister. But a lot has changed since the slump set in last autumn. She has become an international star.
[May 4 update: Lagarde has just been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Read Tim Geithner's tribute to her in Time. Sarkozy is the only other French person on the list. Lagarde's nomination is ascribed in France entirely to the fact that she speaks good English]
Lagarde is the only member of the government who is at home in the Anglo-Saxon world. As such, she is invaluable to a President who, though an Americophile, is unable to construct a sentence in English. A former member of the French synchronized swimming team, Lagarde worked for 20 years in the USA as a lawyer with Baker & McKenzie, the Chicago-based firm. She was its international chairwoman when President Chirac recruited her as Trade Minister in 2005.
Lagarde does not just give a good impression in English, charming TV viewers. She is in her element in the world of internationl business and finance. When Lehman Brothers was collapsing last September, she was the only European Finance Minister called by Henry Paulson, the then Treasury Secretary. She knew him from his days with Goldman Sachs in Chicago.
Le Figaro, the newspaper closest to the Sarkozy court, carried a double-edged profile of her today, praising her for her new role as France's international face but noting her continuing low reputation with the Elysée Palace. A palace staffer told the paper: "She scores 100 percent for international relations. In explaining the economy she scores 30. That makes an average of 65."
While on the France-America theme, le Monde reported yesterday that Barack Obama has riposted over Sarkozy's claim that he was not up to speed on climate change. Obama pulled aside Jean-Louis Borloo, the Environment Minister, at a Washington conference and told him to tell Sarko that he was doing his homework and the next time they meet he will beat him on the subject.
[Click to watch Lagarde interview. For French readers here, Jon Stewart's satirical nightly news show is roughly equivalent to the Canal+ Grand Journal with a bit of Laurent Ruquier and Nicolas Canteloup thrown in.]
 Regulars on this blog will be saddened to hear that Peter Kinsley has passed away. He died peacefully at his London home last weekend, Roger Wickham, his publisher, told me. He was 74.
We will miss Peter's contributions -- always rich, colourful and full of tales of the golden age of Fleet Street and his life on the road around Europe. In his last, on April 3, he recalled covering celebrities in the 1960s. He had a full life as a journalist in Britain, then around Mediterranean and as a novelist and memoir writer. Here's a typical taste of Peter's newspaper years, from his biography on his web site. --
Fleet Street was still a Street of Adventure, and Peter drank with Oscar Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, lunched with the Duke of Bedford in the Savoy Grill and at the Ritz Hotel, interviewed the singer Shirley Bassey in bed with her after she was held at gunpoint by a crazed lover (she told him to jump in because the room was cold as the central heating had been turned off during the police siege at the Cumberland Hotel). He met Augustus John and Lucien Freud and dined with Francis Bacon, interviewed Jean Cocteau and Alec Guinness, Trevor Howard, Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh, Harold Lloyd, Robert Mitchum, drank with William Somerset Maugham and swam in the pool in Monte Carlo with Princess Grace.
Peter had a long connection with France, first in military service at Fontainebleau in the 1950s and later living in the southern Languedoc region for 18 years in the 1980s and 90s. He wrote about that in The Valley of The Butterflies, the fourth volume of his memoirs. You can see more on http://www.peterkinsley.com And here's a link to Peter's wild Ibiza days.
Violence is in the air in France thanks to a coincidence of news events. They are not particularly related but, magnified by the media, they are anxiogène, to use a useful French word -- they breed anxiety. They are also cause for political discomfort.
The "boss-napping" I wrote about on Tuesday is an element. Since then, the overnight detention yesterday of four executives -- three of them British -- at a plant owned by a British firm has strengthened worries in the government over the spread of physical coercion against employers.
Setting the tone for the week were the ugly riots at the weekend -- led by demonstrators against the Nato summit in Strasbourg [below] and by Corsican nationalists in the port city of Bastia. In both there was serious arson as well as fierce battles between les casseurs -- smashers -- and the Robo-Cop-style officers of France's CRS and Gendarmerie riot police. Seventy policemen were injured in the Bastia fighting, three seriously.
As a result, Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, wants to ban hoods and masks from demonstrations. These, she said, are always worn by the thugs who are intent on violence, never peaceful protesters. The proposal prompted predictable indignation this morning over interference with the right to demonstrate. Alliot-Marie was also mocked for trying to dictate people's dress. Germany outlawed head cover in demonstrations some time ago.
Hoods were in evidence in the week's most shocking episode: a six-minute video of four youths robbing and badly beating a young man in a bus in north-central Paris [picture at top. Victim with scarf just before attack]. They punched passengers who intervened, while the driver sat impassive throughout . The security camera video, from an incident last December, was put on Facebook by a police officer, and picked up by all the media. Extracts made the TV news but the police are trying to remove it from the net. You can still watch it here but beware, it's disturbing.
The police officer is likely to be charged for disseminating the video, which is circulating on far-right sites as an example of the ultra-violence committed by kids from the immigrant ghettos. The non-white attackers insult their victim as "sale français" -- dirty Frenchman.
The police say two of the youths were arrested on the spot after the driver called for help and a third has since been detained. The RATP tranport authority says that its bus drivers have orders not to intervene in defence of passengers but to stay at the wheel and press a silent alarm button. RATP drivers say that such attacks are fairly common on the all-night buses. "If you do not have money for a taxi on Saturday night, it's better to stay in the disco and wait for the morning," a driver said in today's le Parisien.
The sense of violence running out of control is also being fed by reports of an explosion of corner-shop (convenience store) hold-ups in Paris and other cities by teenage robbers. Armed robbery by minors jumped 44 percent in 2008. The police say they are being overwhelmed by casual stick-ups in which groups of baby bandits with airguns or fake pistols or knives help themselves to the takings of small shops. A bébé braqueur describes the fun in Le Point news magazine, out today: "When you arrive, you scream straight away. Just the sight of your hood and they start trembling."
And while on the subject of the immigrant estates and violence, I'll throw in a rap video which has upset women's groups and led to the withdrawal of a regional government subsidy for its performer, a Normandy artiste named Orelsan. In Sale Pute (Dirty Slut), he plays a man who discovers his girl-friend's infidelity and threatens her with grievous harm in obscene and graphic language [Watch here, but be warned]. Orelsan has apologised and explained that he was playing a role, but his act sounds painfully plausible. The bad treatment of young women in the estates has been a running news story for several years and it is the subject of a new Isabelle Adjani film, The Day of the Skirt. And of course there is nothing new in getting indignant over rap lyrics.
As I said, there's no common thread though reaction to these events splits down political lines. The left and nearly half of France excuses the boss-nappers -- for reasons that are understandable in the current climate. The hard left excuses the violent anti-Nato and Corsican demonstrators. Olivier Besancenot, the charismatic and very influential leader of the New Anti-Capitalist Party, blamed the police for the Strasbourg mayhem, in which rioters burnt down a large hotel. "The authorities did everything to make the situation degenerate," he said.
On the other side of the political fence, the bus thugs and baby bandits play to fears and prejudices over the anti-social and criminal behaviour of youths who are assumed to be of Arab or black origin.
There is no conclusion to draw except to note the unpleasant climate and the fact that President Sarkozy is said to be worried that unrest on the left and among students over the economy and his government could lead to a broader break-down of law-and-order of the kind that erupted in Paris in May 1968.
Within a few months, Big Brother will be watching your internet habits when you go online in France -- and he might decide to cut you off.
[Thursday update: surprise defeat for Sarko]
This seems sure now that both houses of parliament have approved President Sarkozy's novel scheme for punishing people who habitually grab copyright music, video and films from the web. A new state High Authority (yet another) will run a three-strikes-and-you're-out system against pirates. Illicit downloaders will receive two e-mail warnings. If they persist, the service provider will be ordered to cut access to the net for the offenders (and their families) for up to a year.
Officials start tomorrow producing the final version of the so-called "Creation and Internet Law" after a lower house session attended by only 16 members voted through the bill last Thursday. The new law should be adopted in a month or two. Many artists and all the entertainment industry are delighted to see France blazing an innovative trail that will help stem the piracy that is endangering their trade. Sarkozy, who has been advised by Carla Bruni, his singer wife, will claim victory in what he calls the battle against "the High-Tech Wild West... where outlaws pillage creative work without limits."
Needless to say, others see the law as a threat to liberty. Internet user groups, civil liberties monitors, bloggers, the European Parliament, the French left and others are calling foul and saying the law is unworkable. In the words of Christian Vanneste, a Sarkozy MP who opposes the law, "legislating over downloading is as presumptuous as trying to chase the horizon... A solution exists, but it is for the market to find it, not the lawmaker."
On the face of it, the new law sounds sensible. It replaces failed attempts to deter illicit downloaders by prosecution and, as the government says, it is gradual. A poll reported that one in three of France's 30 million web users admits downloading music, films or video games without paying -- one of the world's highest rates of piracy. One billion files are estimated to have been illegally shared in France in 2006.
Here's what will happen once the law is in place. Music and film companies will monitor file-sharers on the net and turn them in to the new authority, called HADOPI from the mouthful of its initials -- Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet (High Authority for the dissemination of works and the protection of rights on the internet). Service providers will be required to name the owner of the IP address and the agency will send its warnings or cut-off order. A blacklist of offenders will be circulated to prevent them signing up with other operators during their suspension.
You don't need much knowledge of the net or the law to see the flaws in the scheme, which is expected to lead to hundreds of people being blacklisted daily. One campaign group called Quadrature du Net says the law breaches the French constitution in 50 different ways.
For a start, it will be hard to identify offenders. Someone parked outside your window with a laptop could be hooking onto your WiFi, whether protected or not. How about people at work, visiting teenagers or copyright abuses who are simply using public WiFi? It's also apparently quite simple to pirate IP addresses.
Jacques Attali, the economist and thinker who has advised successive governments, has joined the blog assault on the law, saying it "paves the way for blanket surveillance" of the web. "It is absurd, because people no longer download, they stream audio and video ... absurd because it would deprive entire families of internet access ... because real artists have nothing to lose by letting people know their work."
The service providers are also unhappy because -- contrary to what the government originally promised -- they will have to strip out the internet from bundled TV-net-phone contracts without any compensation. The system will cost an estimated 70 million euros a year, with no money going to the holders of violated copyright, they estimate.
France, which loves big regulation, sees itself setting a trend for a new more orderly internet. Google -- which is not free from Big Brother charges itself -- is upset because the government aims to introduce a "label of quality for legal downloading sites". Search engines will be obliged to give them priority in their results, which Google says contradicts its policies.
The Hadopi is also expected to use secret codes to track banned offenders. Apart from the breach of privacy, this will create problems for users of Linux and other open systems, according to the experts.
The American and European industry hopes that the French law, which goes much further than experiments already tried in Ireland and New Zealand, will inspire similar action in other countries.
And before you think this is all about the French devotion to regulation, the law was enthusiastically praised today by Paul McGuinness, manager of the band U2. France has become "a pole of resistance to the blight of piracy. The (new) law is the right solution... It is equitable and balanced and will work in practice," he wrote in le Figaro.
In my humble opinion, the new scheme sounds like une usine à gaz -- a complicated, unworkable contraption. It means more bureaucracy and seems unlikely to fulfill the worthy aim of helping a troubled industry. But I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.
Sarko's moment finally came. After months of frustration during which the White House stayed cool to the entreaties of the French President, Barack Obama stood alongside Nicolas Sarkozy today and showered him with praise.
You could feel the joy radiating from Sarko as the pair proclaimed a new era of Franco-American unity on the steps of the Palais des Rohan, the old bishop's palace in Strasbourg. Obama listed the qualities of his friend 'Nicolas'. "Thanks to the great leadership of President Sarkozy, courageous on so many fronts at once that it's sometimes hard to keep up with him...." .
He thanked Sarko "for France's outstanding leadership with regard to Afghanistan" and he praised him again for his "extraordinary leadership role in NATO". The London G20 summit could not have succeeded without the problem-solving leadership of the French President, Obama added. "I am personally grateful for his friendship". Obama also announced that he will be back to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the allied landing in Normandy on D-Day.
This was all sweet music for Sarko, who had rolled out maximum military and civilian pomp to welcome the Obamas to France ahead of tonight's Nato summit. Only this morning, French media were noting Obama's apparent indifference to Sarko at the London summit. Sarkozy's offensive against Les Anglo-Saxons before the G20 summit also chilled the atmosphere.
After an hour's tête-à-tête, his first with the new US President, Sarkozy struck an unusually solemn and statesmanlike tone as he opened their joint press conference referring to "The President of the United States" and addressing "President Obama" with the formal 'vous'. But Sarko's excitable nature got the better of him and he closed trembling with emotion, using the the intimate "tu" and calling him "une sacrée bonne nouvelle" -- bloody good news -- for the world.
Sarko being Sarko, he could also not resist chucking a couple of stones in the direction of his former great friend George W. Bush. He contrasted, without naming him, Bush's closed, America-centric outlook with Obama's open-minded model and talked about the "terrorist methods" which the Bush team had used on the detainees of Guantanamo Bay
It was fascinating watching the pair: Obama grave, measured and still alongside the much shorter, energetic and punchy French leader. The monolingual Sarkozy also ventured timidly into English, saying "okay" to US journalists several times.
On the substance, Sarkozy and Obama of course agreed on everything, from emergency treatment for the world economy to Russia, Afghanistan and Iran. But the differences were there. Obama, for instance, wished that Europe would take on a bigger share of its own defence
Obama later talked bluntly about the rift in Transatlantic relations in recent years. Both sides were to blame, he said. America had failed to treat Europe with respect. "There have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." But anti-American feeling in Europe often seemed unfair, casual and insidious, he said. "On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise."
Obama was greeted like a hero by the crowds that were allowed to get close to him as the French security forces locked down the deserted centre of Strasbourg. While their husbands were doing business, Carla Bruni lunched with Michelle Obama and showed her around town. Bruni stayed away from London as the US First Lady took the spotlight, but the Elysée Palace is deploying her in Strasbourg as a sure bet for enhancing Sarko's moment in the sun.
To end, the Elysée is delighted by the Francophiles in Obama's entourage. General James Jones, his National Security Adviser, grew up in France as the son of a US marine officer and attended a lycée in the Paris suburb of Saint Germain-en-Laye. He always talks in French with Jean-David Levitte, Sarkozy's foreign affairs director. Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser to Vice-President Biden, also studied at a Paris Lycée and Sciences-Po, the top political science college. Philip Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, is an academic France expert who translated the US edition of Testimony, the manifesto-memoir that Sarkozy's published during his 2007 campaign.
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Paris Match today offered a good example of the hypocrisy in the way that celebrities use France's laws that protect the sanctity of private life. On its cover and six inside pages, Match featured a romance between Laurence Ferrari, the star TV news presenter, and Renaud Capuçon, a leading classical violinist. The article is the usual stuff, with carefully staged pictures and purple prose about the "duet at tempo appassionato" between the two stars "who fell head over heels in love a year ago."
Nothing wrong with that. Match, which has just celebrated its 60th birthday, leads the field with its mix of celebrity gush and good reporting and pictures. But we also learned today that Ferrari, who anchors the TF1 evening news -- the most watched in Europe -- came top of the league of French public figures who have won damages over the past year against the media for breaching their privacy.
Ferrari, 42, scored 144,000 euros in five separate suits that she brought against publications which mentioned her romantic life or published pictures of her without permission. Her last court case, in February, ended with 15,000 euros in damages against Voici, another celeb magazine, for reporting her liaison with the violinist.
The law is strict. You are committing an offence if you report on the private life of anyone or publish a picture of them without authorisation. President Sarkozy has used it successfully over the years and, as we saw in February, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, has a case pending against Match for a picture of her in the street with her new boyfriend. Yes, you can argue that the key word is "unauthorised". But if celebrities and political figures market their private lives in self-serving magazine spreads, it's a bit rich that they can use the law to rake in damages from others who report on them.
Ferrari is, by the way, continuing to lose her audience to the competition, mainly France2's Journal Télévisé, which is broadcast at the same 8pm.
Nicolas Sarkozy's antics around the G20 summit have provided rich pickings for Nicolas Canteloup, the comedian who impersonates the President on Europe 1 radio every morning. Regulars on this blog do not need any introduction to Canteloup, but you might be interested in our two page profile of him today in T2, the feature section of the newspaper.
The piece is the fruit of the conversation at the Gare de Lyon that I mentioned here the other day. What made it topical was Canteloup's brilliant improvisation on Sarko after Jean-Pierre Elkkabach interviewed him live on Europe 1 yesterday morning [hear it here].Canteloup put his finger on the comic emptiness of Sarkozy's threat to leave an 'empty French chair' at the London summit -- an image that evokes a boycott of the European Community in 1965 by the late General de Gaulle.
"To simplify the empty chair... (We go to London), we have a snooze, eat and split," is how Canteloup's Sarko described his plans (That's an Americanized translation of . On va à Londres, on pionce, on dîne et on se casse." I used a British version in the article.) Today's Canteloup's "Sarko" said he was keeping his word in London. He summoned Bernard Laporte, the sports minister, and slapped him. "Voila, j'ai claqué la porte", he announced. The pun on the minister's name -- 'I've slammed the door '-- was a bit heavy but it worked.
The Canteloup article was a chance to write about the boom in political satire in France. On that subject, you might remember how Stéphane Guillon, Sarko's imitator on France-Inter radio, upset the president with his impertinence.As predicted here, Sarkozy has just made it known that he wants to dismiss Jean-Paul Cluzel, the boss of France-Inter and the other state radio networks. The President wants to replace him with Jean-Luc Hees, a safer pair of hands from Sarkozy's point of view, who has already been head of France-Inter. Sarko has the power to hire and fire the broadcast chiefs under a new law that he passed for himself, but he still needs endorsement by the CSA, the supposedly independent broadcasting authority. We shall see if they dare oppose him.
Sarkozy and his court have given birth to a comic industry. Here's the latest bande dessinée, or comic strip book, out today. The Sarkozys Run France is drawn by Luz, a political cartoonist who did well with an earlier Sarkozy book last year.
If location is everything in real estate, timing is everything in the news business. As we saw last week, President Sarkozy has been threatening to block the G20 economic summit in London if he does not win agreement to French demands for new global regulation. No-one beyond France took much notice.
The message was mainly aimed at the home market but today it got the attention of les Anglo-Saxons, the ancient foil for French leaders in search of a cause. The spur was a briefing yesterday afternoon in the Hotel Marigny, the majestic annex across the street from the Elysée Palace (Colonel Gaddaffi used its garden for his Bedouin tent in 2007). Xavier Musca, Sarkozy's new economic adviser, told us that Sarkozy would prefer "a failure to a false success full of generous declarations without consequence." Musca confirmed that Sarko might walk out of the London summit. He described this as a nuclear weapon that France is keeping ready. Musca, who is new to the job, also obligingly used the Anglo-Saxon word, lumping the British and the Americans together in the same intransigent camp when it comes to clamping down on hedge funds, tax havens and the other items that Sarkozy wants regulated by a new global police.
Coming on the eve of the summit, Sarko's hard line, which he has co-ordinated with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, has finally made headlines outside France. We put it on our front page today.
It has achieved Sarko's aim of casting France as vigorous champion of the new morality that Sarko wants to impose on world finance. Of course this is part of the theatrical stake-raising that preceeds summits and Sarkozy knows that Barack Obama is not about to embrace French-style ideas for a new world financial police.
But it has shown France that Super Sarkozy is making a mark with his demands for the "refoundation of capitalism". This plays to his image as statesman, the game that has served him best since he crashed in opinion polls after winning office in May 2007. In the midst of the economic gloom, fewer than 40 percent of the public approve of Sarkozy's performance as President but when pollsters ask how he represents France abroad, he scores up to 70 percent.
"Super-Sarko" is admired for the vigour with which he charges around world capitals and especially for what was seen as his deft handling of his six months' turn in the EU's rotating presidency last year. He was given credit for persuading President Bush to stage the first G20 summit in Washington last November and he is claiming the paternity of its follow-up this week London.
But there is a paradox in Sarkozy's classical ploy of picking a fight with les Anglo-Saxons. Things are different now and not just because the Anglo-Saxon-in-chief is black. Obama is also more popular in France than the local president. Libération, the leftwing newspaper, yesterday contrasted Sarkozy negatively with the US President. "With his efforts against the crisis, Barack Obama is far ahead of his counterparts on the Old Continent," wrote Laurent Joffrin, the editor. Sarkozy and the rest of Europe's leaders are showing dangerous divisions and reverting to old-fashioned conservative policies, he added.
The French President finds himself in a tricky position. Until the spat ahead of the G20, he performed an intense charm offensive towards Obama. By returning France to the core of the Nato alliance he is trying to win new credibility with Washington and its allies. Before election, he called France's traditional anti-Americanism "that cultural cancer which prevents French diplomacy from working".
But things are not going well with the Americans. Obama has so far been unmoved by Sarkozy's campagne de séduction while the French President has risked looking over-eager to please him. That explains Sarko's reversion to the old Gaullist posture ahead of the G20. The mood will lift again on Friday when the Obama show reaches the French city of Strasbourg for the Nato summit. Sarkozy will hold his first tête-à-tête with the new President and no doubt declare a new era of Franco-American friendship.
Spring has arrived in Paris. Daffodils are out in the gardens, overcoats are disappearing and the sun is showing up the winter grime on the windows and on the ugly Porsche Cayenne that is parked in my street. Non-smokers are taking seats on the café terraces (les fumeurs frequented them all winter because of the new indoor smoking ban). The trout fishing season opened today. It's even possible to scent a hint of hope in the air despite the gloom and grumbling all around.
As the winter lifts, the French are not at all as depressed as they make out, according to a poll by le Parisien. Two out of three say they are optimistic about the future. There were other surprises from the mood survey which I'll get back to below.
One of the reasons for optimism may be the overdose of crisis. The news continued to be bleak this week, with factory closures every day, including a Sony plant where the desperate workers took the company's French boss hostage. But some of the media think that it's time to change the tune and have started putting out stories on making the most of the down-turn -- lower house prices and rediscovering simple pleasures such as home cooking, the cinema, holidays in France and so on.
And some of the news is reassuringly familiar. The Paris book fair has opened -- with a Mexican theme this year -- the fashion week was a hit as usual and Nicolas Sarkozy was caught out once again indulging his love of luxury.
The President disappeared with Carla Bruni three days before a one-day official visit to Mexico City last Monday. No-one was supposed to know where he was, but the Mexican press tracked the French royal couple to El Tamarindo Beach and Golf Resort, a very expensive enclave in Jalisco state on the Pacific Coast [picture]. This did not look good for Sarko's efforts to rid himself of the bling-bling that tainted his early months in the presidency. All that turquoise and palm trees hardly helped his new image as close to his suffering people.
Things got worse when it emerged that the presidential pair occupied their 3,500 dollars-a-day suite as guests of Roberto Hernandez, one of Mexico's richest bankers and owner of the resort.
It didn't take long for the media to recycle 1990s allegations from the United States that Hernandez was involved in the cocaine industry. The Elysée Palace kept an embarrassed silence, directing queries to the Mexican presidency who, it claims, organised Sarko's long weekend on the beach. Today the Mexicans have said that "a group of businessmen" paid for the beach weekend.
Talk of the Jalisco jaunt has eclipsed Sarkozy's two very substantial acts in foreign policy this week -- his announcement of France's return to full Nato membership (last post) and a realignment with Germany at a session with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday. Like all his predecessors, Sarkozy seems to have accepted that French power works best in Europe as part of the axis with Berlin.
Sarko has also been lecturing his government on the need for what's known in French as la positive attitude. He has given them orders to talk up his and their achievements.
Which brings us back to the spring survey, carried out by the CSA polling firm. It found that the French draw their greatest satisfaction and pleasure from leisure time with their friends and family. The best moment of the day is "meeting up with the family in the evening". Second after that came "waking up alongside the person you love".
Asked what contributes most to make their lives positive, 61 percent answered their children, 33 percent said friends, 23 percent said leisure activities and only 20 percent said that it was their work or studies.
Asked what activity gave them most pleasure, 40 percent said an evening with their partner or with friends. Thirty-nine percent said sports, listening to music or cooking. Only 13 percent cited love-making as their most pleasurable activity. That statistic is not great for France's reputation as le pays de l'amour.
At least sex got a mention. Religion appeared nowhere in the poll, not even under the question of the most important values that society should observe. First came respect for others, then "solidarity", followed by the family. The value of work came next, followed by money.
And a final question: What moments are you most looking forward to in 2009? The answers were pretty modest, in keeping with diminished times.
1) The first sunshine of springtime
2) The summer holidays
3) The birthday of your children or parents
4) A party, wedding or other social event with friends [A spring day at a café in Lille]
Regulars here need no introduction to Nicolas Canteloup, the humourist who draws two million listeners on Europe 1 radio every morning with impersonations of politicians and celebrities. Improvising on the day's news Canteloup has a great talent for skewering, not always gently, President Sarkozy and the other big egos who crowd the public stage.
Canteloup gave me an hour of his time today in the Train Bleu, the Belle Epoque brasserie at the Gare de Lyon. He was on his way to the next leg of a sold-out two-year touring show. It was good to get a chance to sound out the man behind the famous pastiches of Super Sarko, sanctimonious Ségolène Royal and the inaudible goody-goody Carla Bruni. Canteloup had come from exercising the horses which are his escape from his day job of mocking France's rulers (a life-long equestrian and former riding instructor, he says his big ambition is to enter England's Badminton trials).
As often with comics off-stage, he is rather diffident, a little austere and modest about what he does. He claims to have no great skill at imitating voices but rather a gift for picking up people's tics and traits and turning them into caricature. He discovered his talent as an amuser when he was a child but only went professional after failing to make it into a police college while a law student at Bordeaux and then working at Club Med resorts.
"I rather fancied the idea of gendarmes and robbers. I suppose that's what I still do in a way," he said. Canteloup, who does not drink or smoke, says he is blessed with political "clients" you couldn't make up. "Sarkozy, with his hyperactivity, is a comic strip character who gives us a lot to work with. He's a gift." The trick is to latch onto the detail. "Every character has their mask, like the commedia dell' arte. For Sarko it's heavy wrist-watches, for Rachida Dati [disgraced Justice Minister] it's beautiful dresses. Carla Bruni, its the little voice and 'everyone is nice'. Bruni is difficult because she is a real pro, in complete control of herself in public -- unlike Sarko-- he says.
Canteloup tries not to meet the targets of his sketches and refuses invitations from politicians. He says that he avoids vulgarity and draws the line at mocking physique -- though his jokes about Sarkozy's short stature are a running gag. He recognises that some of his material skirts the edge of the acceptable. One example was a sketch in January on Israel's bombardment of the Gaza strip.
Most of his victims take the humour in good spirit, even when it verges on the cruel, he says. An exception was Ségolène Royal, who Canteloup sends up as a perpetually indignant victim. "When she lost the presidency, she tried to find the reasons. She said that I was one of them. I was wounded by that because I did not set out to make Segolene lose. I don't take political sides. My aim is to try to find what is funny."
Another who was wounded at first was Gérard Schivardi, a village mayor with a slurred southwestern accent who ran for the presidency in 2007 as candidate for an obscure Trotskyite party. Canteloup's Schivardi is permanently drunk as he offers his views from the supposed village cafe. This has turned the fictional Schivardi into a familiar character. "It has been a jackpot for Schivardi," says Canteloup. "He has gone from a near unknown to a celebrity. I hope he'll stand again for president." Canteloup does Schivardi well because, he says, the south-western twang is his own "native language."
Canteloup agrees that he and his colleagues -- Laurent Gerra, Stéphane Guillon and others -- are benefiting from the economic crisis. "We are in a September 11 atmosphere. There is a kind of world malaise, economic insecurity. People want release."
Taking my leave, Canteloup was curious to know why Times readers would be interested in him since he is not known in the English-speaking world and humour does not translate easily. My answer was that the current French comedy boom is a phenomenon that merits attention and he is one of the leading exponents. Now I have to make it work for the readers who, unlike those on the blog, have not gone looking for something to read about France.
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[Below: Canteloup performing Sarkozy and his other characters on Michel Drucker's TV show. Unusually, he is impersonating one of them to his face: Bernard Kouchner, the perpetually breathless Foreign Minister. Canteloup caricatures Kouchner's emotional, old-fashioned rhetoric, complete with language mistakes. CB]
Canteloup et Kouchner chez Drucker le 26-10-08
 The French rather enjoy wallowing in gloom while Americans often seem impossibly cheerful, at least in European eyes. That old stereotype contains a degree of truth but here's a sign that the Americans might be becoming more French.
Americans are flocking to a new French-made internet site where people lament their misfortunes and recount the big and little disasters that ruined their day. FMyLife.com is simply an English-language version of VieDeMerde.fr, a wildly successful site that was started in January last year by two young Paris entrepreneurs, Guillaume Passaglia and Maxime Valette. VDM, which could be translated as Life Sucks, is now in the top 10 in Google's French search list and after only six weeks, FML is receiving a million visits a day, mainly from New York City and the Los Angeles area.
The idea of VDM and now FML, is simple. Losers tell their sob story in a few words, for the amusement or commiseration of others. The darker, bleaker and more humiliating the better. The episode must start Aujourd'hui or Today and end with the curse VDM or FML.
Two examples: "Today, my boss fired me via text message. I don't have a text messaging plan. I paid $0.25 to get fired. FML."
"Today, I received two text messages from my girlfriend. The first to tell me that it was all over. The second to tell me that she had sent it to the wrong person. VDM".
Most involve failure at work or in love and sex but some are just domestic, such as: "Today my little sister got a hamster. After four deaths, we hoped that this one would live a long time. The new rodent broke a record: 20. That's the number of minutes until it died of a heart attack after seeing the cat. VDM."
Passaglia and Valette are surprised by the way that Americans have taken to their site to unload their woes. "This sort of humour is quite specifically French but nevertheless it has worked in the USA straight away," Passaglia told us by phone.
The sites have been helped by the economic crisis, he says. "It favours this type of mentality. You have even more need to distance yourself from the difficulties of the world by laughing at your daily problems." Passaglia, whose site produced the material for a book last December, said that his team rejects the great majority of the 20,000 stories they receive every day on the French version and they only publish the best. They attempt to weed out the exaggerated and the outright false and they produce rankings of the most impressive failures. An American team does the same on FML.
The success of VDM in France has spawned half a dozen other self-pity sites, on which self-styled "serial losers" (now adopted as a French expression) can lament their shabby lot. These include include Jaipasdechance.com (I've no luck) and JobDeMerde.com (Sh--tty Job). The latest opened to instant success last Monday under the name RaterSaVie (FailingYourLife).
The spur for the site was an ill-advised remark last month by Jacques Séguéla, the veteran advertising man and friend of President Sarkozy, that "anyone who doesn't have a Rolex watch by the age of 50 has failed his life." The idea is to come up with joke things to do by a certain age that are even more preposterous than Séguéla's defence of Sarko.
With their sense of sardonic self-mockery, the hard-luck sites reflect the pessimistic streak in the French character and also illustrate Voltaire's remark that "the misfortunes of some make for the happiness of others". Some have described the sites as Twitter for losers.
Danielle Rapoport, a well-known psychologist, thinks that the sites reflect a very French mixture of defiance and anxiety. "The French are champions of depression and pessimism because they have a culture of comfortable status quo and life in fear of losing something," she told us. "At the same time they have a sense of rebellion which pushes them to act."
Some experts think that too much negativity is bad for the character. Pierre Mannoni, a sociologist who wrote a book called "Social Bad Luck" said that there was a danger in falling victim to what is known in French as "le miserablisme". "Even if it's done with humour, it can be dangerous to
describe oneself endlessly as a loser," he said in a Swiss newspaper. "It can prevent you from succeeding."
To end on a lighter note, Libération is leading today with four pages on the positive side of le marasme ambiant and la sinistrose, two good expressions for the prevailing sense of depression. It points out that "in Europe, the French are always more afflited by anxiety than their neighbours by bad economic times". Yet, it says, there is a sense that people are making do with less and even rather enjoying the latest trend, which goes by the name of la nouvelle frugalité.
[Below: A recent book, How to be a failure in life in 11 lessons. ]
[UPDATE SATURDAY: As predicted in the final paragraph of this post, the site has just closed after only a day in operation. The founders said they were overwhelmed both by the criticism and the volume of visitors that they received.] One industry doing well in France these days is private tuition for school pupils. One in six receives coaching outside the classroom, often from moonlighting teachers or one of the big firms that charge hefty fees to give kids an academic edge.
So we should not be surprised that two bright young entrepreneurs have come up with the idea of an internet homework service. It's not exactly coaching. They do the work for you.
My 17-year-old son thinks that Faismesdevoirs.com (DoMyHomework.com), which went online today, is great and insists that it's an "educational idea". Le Petit Nicolas, the fictional schoolboy whose 50th birthday is being celebrated this week, would have loved the scheme. The schools and government do not.
Xavier Darcos, the Education Minister, joined in a chorus of condemnation for the service, which says that it has a team of students from grandes ecoles, the elite colleges, standing by to help out their customers. In return for payment they guarantee to supply A-grade essays, class projects, maths solutions and so on. The answers to three maths problems costs five euros while a full-length essay can cost more than 30 euros. Pupils send the questions by e-mail and receive the completed copy within 24-48 hours. They can also scan their own work and send it to have it corrected.
"The place to get educated and have your work corrected is in the nation's schools," said Darcos. "In no way do I encourage paying systems which provide this kind of service."
Le Monde devoted its main editorial today to attacking the start-up as "terrifying and scandalous," because it "empties education of its basic principle -- learning, with all its rigour and satisfaction." There was already enough trouble with cutting and pasting and unfairness with well-off parents who pay for private tuition for their children, it said
All the free publicity -- which has included cover in the main TV news -- has been great for the founders Stéphane Boukris and Romain Benichou, recent graduates of two top Paris business schools. They are defending themselves by saying that they are merely extending the possibilities of outside coaching. Parents help out with homework so why shouldn't they, they say. Pupils would learn from the comments from the experts when when their work is corrected and returned to them, said Boukris.
The key to their scheme is an elaborate payment system. Apart from borrowing the parents' credit card or Paypal account, kids can buy pre-paid cards online and in certain Paris shops. Mobile phones can also be used via the method of sur-taxed text messages. They will even accept pocket money in the form of postal orders.
Boukris says that he had recruited dozens of eager students as well as a number of teachers who wanted to top up their state school salaries. Here's their Facebook entry.
The state will no doubt find a way to outlaw the service, as they have done with other internet ventures involving education. Last year they used France's privacy laws to close a site in which school pupils could rate their teachers.
[Below: TV cover of homework service]
This is the March page in a calendar on the theme of "The Tribes of Paris". Produced by ActUp, the gay campaign organisation, it would not normally cause a stir except that the gentleman on the left, in the wrestler's mask, is a state dignitary, the Chairman of Radio France, the public broadcasting corporation.
Jean-Paul Cluzel, 61, a senior civil servant and former director of the Paris Opera, was already in President Sarkozy's bad books. His exotic picture has now given the president an extra reason for sacking him when his mandate comes up for renewal in May. "This is not worthy of the boss of a public service," Sarko told his advisers, according to today's Canard Enchaîné. "This guy is mad. He thinks he can do anything. His private life is whatever he wants but he can't display himself like that."
Sarko, who recently awarded himself the job of appointing the heads of the public TV and radio services, really wants to dump Cluzel because he dislikes the impertinent output of France Inter, the biggest and most popular of the seven stations in the national radio group.
Inter is the direct equivalent to Britain's BBC Radio 4. It offers solid current affairs and entertainment with a leftish, public sector streak. It holds its own well against the big commercial networks RTL and Europe 1 thanks to a lively, impertinent tone that it has sharpened further since Cluzel took over in 2004. Auntie Beeb's stolid Radio 4 would be unlikely to go in for some of the antics recently heard on Inter.
[Picture below: Cluzel in civilian dress]
Sarkozy is especially incensed by Stéphane Guillon, Inter's new court jester, who delivers a vitriolic black humour commentary on the political news of the day in the peak-audience 7.50am slot. Guillon lacerates everyone, pulling no punches on the grounds that "bad taste is sometimes necessary." It's meant to be taken in the spirit of knock-about grand guignol but for some, including me, he goes over the top. The other day, for example, he mocked Martine Aubry, the Socialist party leader, as a "fat tobacco jar".
His worst offence, in the eyes of Sarko, was a vicious job last month on the supposedly predatory sexual habits of Domnique Strauss-Kahn, the French Socialist who runs the International Monetary Fund. Strauss-Kahn, who landed in trouble last year over a one-night stand with a subordinate, was in the studio for an interview when Guillon announced that all female staff at the station had been ordered to wear demure clothes in order not to excite "the beast Strauss-Kahn". A siren would be sounded to evacuate all women if the bromide in his coffee failed, he said. A camera had been placed under the table to ensure correct behaviour by DSK, as Strauss-Kahn is known.. and so on. DSK, who is regarded as a potential presidential candidate for 2012, blew a fuse and complained about Guillon's méchanceté -- nastiness.
The incident turned Guillon into an internet sensation thanks to the studio webcam. Watch him below. Cluzel defended his satirist, saying that spicy, irreverent humour was an old French tradition and it brightened up the day.
Sarkozy did not agree. He sounded off against Guillon and France Inter to journalists and also at a palace meeting. "It's insulting, it's vulgar, it's nasty. Do you realise what he said, at prime listening time, about the private life of Strauss-Kahn or the physique of Martine Aubry," Sarko fumed. "What's this country coming to?" [Mais dans quel pays vit-on]
Cluzel, who describes himself as "gay, catholic and liberal" has a strong argument for resisting Sarkozy, though it probably will not do him much good. France Inter is scoring high ratings and Guillon is very popular. All of Cluzel's stations are doing well, with the exception of France Musique. If and when Cluzel is dismissed, Sarko will be attacked yet again for ruling the state air waves like a monarch, or at least like the late President Charles de Gaulle.
As we've noted here before, France is enjoying a boom in political satire. This is being interpreted as a reflection of the need to lighten up in grim times. Over on Europe 1, Guillon's rival is the brilliant Nicolas Canteloup. But Canteloup's daily impersonations of a manic and Napoleonic Sarko are much gentler than Guillon's
 Michelin published the 100th edition of its Red Guide today. That prompted the annual ritual of bashing the celebrated bible of French gastronomy. The guide, first published in 1900 but halted during world wars, has lost touch with modern taste and rewards "museum-cuisine" in the stuffy old French tradition, say the critics.
The only addition to the élite three-star category, Eric Fréchon of the Hotel Bristol in Paris [below], is coming in for his own share of sniping. The Bristol, across the street from the Elysée Palace, is President Sarkozy's favourite "cantine", so Fréchon's promotion is being called a marketing stunt. In an amusing video, the ferocious François Simon of le Figaro visits the Bristol and calls his cooking overdone, too expensive and not very original. Simon's bill for a meal for two came to 531 euros.
For the British, the other noteworthy promotion was the two-star rating awarded to Gordon Ramsay, the British celebrity chef, for the restaurant which he took over at the Trianon Palace hotel in Versailles a year ago. Simon of course had a put-down for the upstart Britannique. Ramsay's cooking is not bad though déjà vu and unoriginal, said Simon.
But for an institution that is so often proclaimed passé, Michelin is not doing badly. The 2,000-page Red Guide sells 1.3 million copies a year worldwide. In France it sold 370,000 in 2008 -- ten times more than its nearest competitor, the Gault et Millau guide. That's impressive for a publication that sticks to its tradition of packing a single volume with tiny print, minimalist description and no pictures.
A series of great chefs have withdrawn in recent years from the struggle of meeting Michelin's exacting standards in order to keep their stars. The latest of these was Marc Veyrat, one of the super-stars of the culinary world, who said last week that he is giving up his restaurant at Annecy, in the Alps.
But for thousands of aspiring chefs, Michelin and its feared but small team of anonymous inspectors, remains the ultimate arbiter. In a sign of the times, the French guide is now under the command of Juliane Caspar, 38, a German from Cologne. Jean-Luc Naret, director of all the guides, has been making his case for the superiority of the Guide Rouge. "We have no competitor in France or internationally," he said. Michelin went intercontinental in 2005 with a New York edition and has since opened in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
The tyre-making Michelin brothers put out their first guide free to help travellers and their chauffeurs in the new-fangled automobiles to find mechanics and places to sleep and eat [1920 version in picture was first paid edition]. With its maps, guides and recently GPS brand, the firm has remained a reliable source of information for travellers in France. The Red Guide is now available on the internet and as an iPhone application. The next step is a GPS service that will list nearby Michelin recommendations automatically on your sat-nav mobile phone.
Do we really need to know all about the rather cheesy chat-up that Nicolas Sarkozy performed on the night that he met Carla Bruni? The French media apparently think that we, or at least the French people, do not.
A lurid and fascinating account of the famous dinner party of November 2007 has just been published by its host, Jacques Séguéla. If we are to believe Séguéla, the doyen of the French advertising world, Sarko went for Bruni like a boastful teenager on speed. He proposed marriage that night, mocked Mick Jagger, one of her former lovers, and bragged that he would make her Marilyn Monroe to his Jack Kennedy.
Click here for the full account from today's Times. My point here is the near silence so far in the French media. Séguéla, 77, has been interviewed on the radio about his book, called Autobiographie Non Autorisée, a series of portraits of people he knows. But very little has so far surfaced on the extraordinary mating dance performed by Sarko and the woman who became France's first lady seven weeks later. Almost the only French-speaking media to report the tale until now are the Swiss and Belgian. In her excellent press review on RTL radio -- the top-rated station -- Pascale Clark advised listeners to go to a Swiss newspaper site if they wanted to know about Séguéla's yarn.
The silence reflects the usual reluctance by the media -- reinforced by the law -- to touch matters of private life and especially of those in power. But Séguéla has published his account and presumably did so with some consent from the two friends whom he invited on a blind date in his home.
You can argue that conversations between the President and the woman for whom he fell are of no public concern. Perhaps Séguéla is betraying confidences -- or reporting inaccurately. But once he published his transcript of the less than witty badinage between the pair, it's impossible to deny the interest.
Séguéla calls the encounter a meeting of two mighty Shakespearian characters. The Great Dinner Romance does not quite sound like that but it gives intriguing insight into the psychology of Europe's most powerful leader (in the sense that no other is head of state and absolute chief executive). Sarkozy comes over as impetuous and thrilled with himself -- qualities with which France is well acquainted. The dinner party was originally planned as an attempt to reconcile Sarko with Cécilia, his restive wife. Bruni was invited to meet Sarko after Cécilia walked out and divorced him. Without venturing into amateur psychology, Sarkozy's behaviour looks like a classic case of rebound.
There was no room in the news article for an angle that emerges from Séguéla's account of the evening: the confirmation of Sarkozy's obsession with the United States. His desire to see himself as JFK is a constant. When he was elected, he saw the Elysée Palace as a new Kennedy Camelot, telling journalists that Cécilia looked like Jackie Kennedy.
Sarkozy has lately turned against the Americans, blaming them, or at least their bankers, for corrupting capitalism and bringing down the world economy. But in November 2007, Sarkozy had just come back from a visit to the White House and the love affair was in full bloom.
Here is what Sarkozy told the dinner guests about his state banquet at President Bush's place, according to Seguela.
It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. My entrance up the steps of the White House, surrounded by three women who are symbols of a France that America was not expecting: what pride! I took care of every detail. I told Rama Yade (young, black Minister for Human Rights) that she was too beautiful to put on one of those dresses with fussy frills that she goes in for. I told Rachida (Dati, Justice Minister, of Arab origin) to stick with her usual Dior elegance. I told Christine (Lagarde, Finance Minister) to leave her jewels in the safe. A Minister of Finance does not greet the American President in a pearl necklace.
A final point: The failure of the French media to pick up this tale is part of the same taboo that was applied last month to my interview with Julie Imperiali, Sarkozy and Bruni's fitness coach. Her account of working out with Sarko was replayed -- and usually distorted -- everywhere else, but not in France. There are some things that the people do not need to know about the President of the Republic.
President Sarkozy pulled off a smooth performance in his long television audience with his restive nation last night. It was a strange show -- a regal lecture from the Elysée Palace in answer to soft questions from four journalists, one of whom he romanced a couple of years ago.
More on the behaviour of the journalists below, but first the summmary. Over 15 million people tuned in to one of the three main television channels whose prime time Sarko had commandeered for his pep talk. For 90 minutes, he held the stage, exuding his usual self-confidence as he explained that he understood people's anguish -- which was due not to his policies but to a world crisis caused by the Anglo-Saxons.
Sarkozy gave a little ground, promising corporate tax cuts, some welfare benefits and talks with the trade unions. Otherwise, he refused to follow demands that he cut taxes and raise the minimum wage to boost consumer spending. The British have tried that and it did not work, he said. France would stick with his 26 billion euro plan for investing in infrastructure and industry.
"The English have chosen to follow the strategy of stimulus through consumption, notably by lowering VAT (sales tax) by two points. It has done absolutely nothing," he said.
The British and the Americans came in for harsh treatment. The USA and the UK had been hit far harder than France in this "worst crisis for a century", said Sarkozy. "When you see the situation in the United States and the United Kingdom, we don't want to look like them."
Sarkozy also said he would refuse to "pay America's debt" and he demanded US agreement to radical reforms of the world financial system. "They're not going to get away with explaining that everything is going to go on as before."
You hear the same points about the US and Britain all over Europe, but not usually from heads of state. Sarkozy's relations with Gordon Brown and Barack Obama are clearly not as rosy as we thought. On the other hand, he went out of his way to praise Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, with whom he has really does not get on. Downing Street seethed as the British media and opposition had fun with Sarkozy's words today.
Predictably the unions and the Socialist opposition gave Sarkozy a low grade. "He is fobbing us off with talks and negotiations," said Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader. "He has no problem ramming decisions through when he wants to cut taxes for the super rich, or to make people work on Sundays," she said.
The unions are not satisfied and are talking of another day of strikes and protests. I have a feeling that they will happen.
The Sarko-show has generated another story today -- the meek behaviour of the star TV journalists who were invited by the palace to question the President.
There is not much new in this because France's political boss is also the head of state, unlike most other European countries. That makes an interview more ceremonial than with a Prime Minister. Since General de Gaulle in the 1950s, journalists have always deferred heavily to French Presidents. One exception was Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, who became an ex star presenter last year after telling Sarkozy in an interview that he had been acting like a little boy.
But Sarkozy does more than his predecessors to bully and influence the media and he can be intimidating in an interview, as I have found out first hand. As president, he loads his evening broadcasts in his favour by summoning the TV to his turf -- a studio set up in the palace ballroom. Last night there was a visible studio audience of palace staff.
He was given an exceptionally easy time by Laurence Ferrari of TF1, David Pujadas of France 2, Alain Duhamel of RTL and Guy Lagache of M6. Mediapart, a serious leftwing news site, poured scorn on them today. "Nicolas Sarkozy offered the pitiful spectacle of an idle king... revelling in vague but gilded questions."
The SNJ, the main -- and leftwing -- journalists' union, condemned the interviewers in a statement. "They perfectly played their role as court jesters... In no other so-called democratic country do politicians choose their interlocutors like that," it said.
No-one has publicly mentioned what many people knew as they watched Ferrari lobbing her questions to Monsieur le Président, that she went out with with him in the short period after his divorce in October 2007. He is said in the business to have played a role in her promotion Poivre d'Arvor's job.
When he was elected, Sarkozy promised to hold open US-style presidential news conferences. The only time he tried, in January last year, the result was so disastrous for him that he forgot about the idea.
[below: Ferrari and Pujadas not grilling Sarkozy]
For the first time, a French government minister has announced that he is homosexual. The coming out of Roger Karoutchi, 57, Minister for Relations with Parliament and a longtime friend of President Sarkozy, has consumed a fair bit of media space.
Karoutchi's message, in television and radio appearances as well as a book, is roughly: 'Yes I'm gay. So what?'. On TF1 TV last night he said: "I live with a partner and am happy with him. End of story. It's my life and I draw no special glory or shame from this."
It's interesting that this is always called le coming out. French adopted the American expression in the 1980s, along with "le outing". Karoutchi's decision reflects the gradual retreat of the old taboos and stigma in France over homosexuality. Twenty or 30 years ago, Karoutchi would have committed electoral suicide making such an announcement. Now it might even help him.
Being officially gay became acceptable in the arts world about the time of the Cage aux Folles comedies in the 1970s and 80s. The gay world featured in a string of 1990s comedies and since then gay characters have become normal in in tv series and films. Public figures remain partly protected by the French media taboo over private life but there was no difficulty last spring with the public mourning of Pierre Bergé, the fashion tycoon and patron of leftwing causes, after the death of his partner Yves Saint-Laurent.
And this year is the 10th anniversary of the PACS, the civil union that was created primarily for gays in 1999 (It has subsequently proved highly popular for straight couples, while gay campaigners want France to establish full marriage for them).
But acceptance has come much later in the political world. It was only 17 years ago that Edith Cresson, then Prime Minister under President Mitterrand, tried to put down the British with a sneer that "a quarter of Englishmen are homosexuals." A breakthrough came when Bertrand Delanoe, the Paris Socialist, confirmed in 1998 that he was gay and went on to win election as Mayor of the city in 2001. Apart from Delanoe, who benefits from the tolerance of the cosmopolitan capital city, no other national-level politicians have ever confirmed their homosexuality. It's fair to say that in the provinces of la France profonde, professions of homosexuality still make voters uneasy.
Karoutchi said he felt confident in going public because Sarkozy had behaved so well towards him, inviting his partner along with him to stay at his holiday house and to official dinners at the Elysée Palace. "If I had to dedicate to someone the fact that I am speaking out, it would be to the President of the Republic," he told le Monde.
Politics are behind Karoutchi's coming-out. He is running in a party primary election in March for the candidacy for the presidency of the Ile-de-France -- the Paris regional government. His opponent is a cabinet colleague, Valérie Pécresse, Minister for Higher Education [below]. Karoutchi was stung by what looked like an attempt by Pécresse to score off his homosexuality. She was asked to describe the difference between her and Karoutchi. "I am a mother in a family," she replied. There was also a whispering campaign on the internet, said Karoutchi.
This may be the first time that a profession of homosexuality has helped a French politician. Karoutchi was running far behind Pécresse in opinion polls and many voters reported that they had never heard of him. Now they have.
As a footnote, Sarkozy's easy relations with homosexual friends mark a change. In 2001, Sarko attacked Delanoe in a book (Libre) for coming out in public. "What got into Bertrand Delanoë, wanting at all costs to reveal his homosexuality?" Sarko wrote.
It's Sunday in Paris and as usual most of the newspaper kiosks are closed. You don't need to look much beyond that absurdity to understand why the French press is in trouble.
The newspaper business is suffering everywhere, but the French one is in worse shape than most. Restrictive practices by communist-led print unions and a bizarre distribution system hobbled the press long before the internet began eating into its readership. France is one of the most expensive places in the world to print and sell newspapers. This created a vicious circle with dwindling readership driving away advertising and forcing prices even higher. Ouest-France, a provincial daily that is France's best-selling newspaper, ranks only 77th in the world circulation league.
Now, after saving the banks and car industry, President Sarkozy has turned his attention to our trade. He is offering 600 million euros in emergency aid, beyond the 1.5 billion euros subsidy that the newspaper and magazine industry receives annually from the state. To whet the reading appetite of the young, every 18-year-old will receive a year's free subscription to the paper of their choice. It is the state's responsibility to ensure "a free, independent and pluralist press", said Sarkokzy
Needless to say, this makes a lot of people uneasy -- especially journalists. They do not like being instructed, as they were by Sarko on Friday, to attract readers by improving the quality of the content, both in paper or internet form.
As in most western countries, the French press likes to see itself as a watchdog that keeps a healthy distance from le pouvoir -- the government and powers that be. That ideal is breached to some degree in most places and especially in the France of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The president has long nurtured a love-hate relationship with the news business. He befriends, bullies and cajoles political writers and editors. He cultivates their proprietors. There are few big titles now that do not have a Sarkozy ally as part or whole owner. Even Le Monde and Libération, the left-leaning dailies that are most critical of le régime Sarkozy, have important minority share-holders in the president's orbit.
The business conditions are so dire that even Sarko's foes are happy to accept his helping hand. "Where is the harm if it helps the conditions of the practical life of newspapers?" asked Laurent Joffrin, editor-in-chief of Libération, and one of the most acerbic critics of the President. Libé is about to announce its umpteenth austerity plan after making 80 staff redundant.
It may be too late to save the old titles in France -- as opposed to the news weeklies such as the Nouvel Observateur and L'Express, which still do well. There are four mainstream national dailies -- Le Figaro (conservative, Sarko's house organ), Le Monde (establishment left), Libération (nostalgic 60s left) and le Parisien/Aujourd'hui en France (mass-market pro-Sarko). Their combined circulation is a fraction of the British and German equivalent. Their standards are high but their resources are meagre so they offer less value than richer papers elsewhere. It's worth noting that only one of the four main titles -- le Figaro --dates from before the end of World War Two. Because of war and revolutions, there has been little continuity in French newspaper history. The biggest-selling national daily is L'Equipe, a sports paper.
Sarkozy rightly noted that the future depends on integrating the traditional press with the internet and finding a model that works. One of his plans is to give professional internet-based media outlets the same tax benefits as the print media.
This takes us into the media upheaval everywhere. Last year marked a tipping-point in the USA, with more people getting their news from the internet than the printed press. The French press was slow to embrace the net and cannot afford to put all its content free online. Over the past year a few web-based news sites have made a mark -- notably Rue89.com and Médiapart -- but they have yet to work financially. The rest of the French-language internet news is the usual recycling of mainstream media plus fantasy.
To close, there is a fun comedy film out this week that plays on the low esteem in which journalists are held in France."Envoyés Très Spéciaux" (Very special correspondents) [trailer here], starring Gérard Lanvin and Gérard Jugnot (picture below), is about a couple of reporters who fake a reporting trip to the Iraq war. Hiding in Paris, they become national heroes as supposed hostages of Baghdad insurgents. I enjoyed the way the film mocks the pretensions of our trade -- like the CNN correspondent who falsely reports in the film that he has been with the French pair in Baghdad simply because he does not want to look behind the curve.
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Tintin, the eternal boy reporter, celebrates his 80th birthday tomorrow. Europe's most venerated comic strip hero is being feted across the continent and, thanks to an imminent Steven Spielberg movie, he is at last about to be introduced to Americans.
France has long adored Tintin as one of its own although his creator, Georges Rémy, known as Hergé, was a Brussels-based French-speaking Belgian. That may explain the indignation over the past couple of days over an amusing column by my Times colleague Matthew Parris. Matthew had the effrontery to recite a longstanding assumption in the gay world that the intrepid little foreign correspondent is homosexual.
"What debate can there be when the evidence is so overwhelmingly one-way?," asked Parris [his article]. "A callow, androgynous blonde-quiffed youth in funny trousers and a scarf moving into the country mansion of his best friend, a middle-aged sailor? A sweet-faced lad devoted to a fluffy white toy terrier, whose other closest pals are an inseparable couple of detectives in bowler hats, and whose only serious female friend is an opera diva. And you're telling me Tintin isn't gay?"
It's always fun to interpret innocent-sounding yarns in this way. Alice in Wonderland has been psychoanalysed to death and I remember a tongue-in-cheek US book subjecting Winnie-the-Pooh (A.A. Milne's version, not the Disney travesty) to psycho-sexual literary criticism. But French pride has been needled by the Anglais who has used Tintin's 80th birthday to depict the brave reporter as all-out gay.
"At this age, the hormones are usually asleep," sniffed Les Echos, the business daily. "But for Matthew Parris, it is never too late to wake up the houppette of the nice Belgian hero." Houppette means both quiff and powder puff. What next, wondered les Echos ? Astérix and Obélix as lovers ? "That's perhaps the next subject for a column by Matthew Parris."
Le Figaro hammered Matthew for "reviving this old fable". It hauled in Serge Tisseron, a celebrity psychiatrist, to explain that claiming the hero as gay "is a lovely revenge for a homosexual". "The problem is that the sexual dimension is totally absent. Tintin is a creature whose sex is never defined. Beware of launching into a sexual reading of Herge's works... In reality all the characters in Tintin are children."
Figaro's article produced a torrent of mainly conservative internet comments pointing out that Hergé was drawing and writing at a time when boys' adventure stories were allowed to be violent (as Tintin was) but steered well clear of romance or sex. France Info, the public news radio network, even got in on the subject this morning, pointing out that Hergé, who died in 1983, scoffed at the gay Tintin theory after it was aired by studies in the 1970s.
The French defensiveness over Matthew's piece seems a bit overdone. The same protective reaction appears when people investigate Hergé's work during the Nazi occupation of Belgium in the early 1940s and when Tintin is nailed as a proto-fascist.
I agree with Hervé Gattegno, a Tintin fan and well-known Paris investigative journalist, when he said a couple of years ago that it did not matter whether his hero might be gay or not. Born in the Catholic pre-war culture, sex and love were kept out of the stories, he noted. "The values which are defended in the Tintin adventures are those of comradeship, friendship, solidarity and fraternity."
I have been a lifelong Tintinophile. The play with those old-fashioned virtues are what makes Tintin enjoyable -- along with the stunning draughtsmanship of Hergé. His comedy, movie-like scenes and the loving detail of the period machinery, architecture and dress, are wonderfully atmospheric.
Most loyalists are worried about how Spielberg will turn the clean-cut Boy's Own lad into a global movie hero. But the producer need not worry about the Tintin being outed. Hollywood has never had a problem with Superman, Batman and the other clingy-suited, all-bulging, all-American super-heroes.
This little jingle from 1986 has been used almost unchanged for the past 22 years to announce the commercials on France 2, the main public television network. At 8pm tonight it disappears, as President Sarkozy's reform in state TV takes effect. [see TV Sarko post]
All advertising is to be halted in the evening and commercials will be dropped entirely from 2011. As we've seen, it's part of Sarkozy's attempt -- decreed without warning or consultation last January -- to create a quality state broadcaster modelled on the BBC. His idea is that the public channels will no longer have to chase ratings with low-grade fare.
Sarko's most questionable act was to anoint himself the effective chief of state broadcasting. He did this by scrapping the procedure in which public TV and radio bosses are appointed by the supposedly neutral broadcasting authority. He has also amalgamated all the state TV channels into a single company.
All this has created an upheaval for the broadcasting world and the row shows no sign of subsiding. News staff at France 2 and France 3 are striking today and tomorrow over what they see as a threat to their editorial independence and incomes. The opposition is accusing Sarko of shovelling advertising money towards his friends who own TF1, the main commercial network... and so on.
The story today is the little revolution in French habits that may be wrought by the monarch's decree. Since the beginning of time, or so it seems, the main networks have opened their prime time entertainment at the same moment at 8.50 pm. This comes after a long "tunnel" of commercials following the ritual 35-minute 8pm news. Forty percent of the French still eat dinner while watching the 8pm Journal Télévisé on one of the main channels. The 15 minutes of advertising and programme trailers are used for clearing the table, going to the lavatory and so on. Now France 2 gets the jump on the others and is starting its entertainment at 8.35. It has even been advertising the change with jokey spots warning people to relieve themselves before 8.35.
For the moment, the main rivals are sticking to their later slot in the belief that France will resist changing an ancient habit. Nonce Paolini, the chairman of TF1, says the French do not want their 'biorhythms' disrupted. The media are full of arguments in both directions today. The behaviour of over 20 million viewers is at stake.
The fuss is obviously overdone. People are much less set in their television ways than they were a decade or two ago, before cable, satellite, digital TV and the internet. It will be interesting to see if commercial-free public television becomes any better than its mediocre predecessor. They are making an attempt to go up market tonight. France 2's new prime time opens with a documentary on the fascinating world of the Dogon people in the African nation of Mali. That will please Sarkozy, but I have a feeling that many people will wait for Avalanche, the sentimental thriller that is being offered by TF1.
For nostalgists, here is a medley of more recent versions of the quirky France 2 commercial jingle:
 France enjoys opinion polls more than most countries. I even remember seeing a survey on the value of opinion polling. One six-monthly poll acts as a sort of barometer of popular culture. This records France's top 50 favourite people. Perhaps the oddest point to note in the latest ranking is the domination of men. Only 10 women are rated among the best-loved 50.
For the fifth time since July 2005, the most admired person is Yannick Noah, the former tennis champion of Cameroonian background who became a pop singer and humanitarian activist. Noah is seen as modest, humble and a generally good person, said Frederic Dabi, polling director for the Ifop agency.
The Journal du Dimanche has been running the poll for the past 20 years. Ifop draws up a list of about 60 personalities and asks a sample of over 1,000 people to "name the 10 who count most for you or which you like best."
Entertainers, sportsmen and TV personalities have always dominated the list. In the past, though, there were quite a few politicians and the most admired were often elderly figures engaged in humanitarian causes. This January, the entertainers, sportsmen and TV personalities occupy 45 of the top 50 places. Politicians have been relegated to the end, led by Nicolas Sarkozy in 42nd place. Olivier Besancenot, leader of the Trotskyite New Anti-Capitalist Party, comes 46th, a step ahead of Ségolène Royal, the Socialist star.
I wonder why women rank so low. There have never been so few in the top 50 since the poll started in 1989. The only one in the top 10 is Mimie Mathy, an actress-comedian who is four feet five inches tall. She was the overall number one choice for women who were questioned. Next, at 11th, is Simone Veil, 81, an elder stateswoman and Nazi death-camp survivor who made her name as the minister who legalised abortion in the 1970s (she is not an active politician). Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant, two film actresses, are among the women who have fallen from the top 50.
Here's the full list on the JDD site
If you need a little background, here's the top 10:
1) Yannick Noah, 48, former tennis champion turned pop singer
2) Dany Boon, 42, actor-comedian, on a high from 2008 filim smash Les Ch'tis
3) Zinedine Zidane, 36, retired footballer, former captain of France
4) Gad Elmaleh, 37, Moroccan-Jewish actor-comedian with popular one-man show
5) Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, 61, news presenter who lost his TF1 network job last June.
6) Charles Aznavour, 84, veteran singer-composer
7) Nicolas Hulot, 53, reporter-writer, television guru on the environment
8) Mimie Mathy, 51, actress
9) Djamel Debbouze, 33, actor-comedian who specialises in subversive humour from immigrant ghetto
10) Michel Sardou, 62, popular singer with rightwing views
The European Parliament has just voted to end Britain's exemption from the maximum 48-hour working week. The usual horse-trading with member governments should water this down, but on this side of the Channel they are wondering why Britain bothers. France is reversing a question that has long come from Britain: Vous n'avez toujours pas pigé? -- haven't you got it yet?
Since the early 1980s, les Anglais have been lecturing Europe on the virtue of hard work as the path to prosperity. While the grasshopper French were awarding themselves a 35-hour week in the 1990s, the British fought for the right to sweat away in the name of competing with emerging the ants of Asia. Britain has closely guarded its 1993 opt-out from the EU's working-time directive which set the maximum at 48 hours. France's short week, which is applied to most wage-earners, has kept incomes lower but enabled people to enjoy non-working life more.
Now the shoe has switched foot. There is no French word for schadenfreude but there is a lot of it around. No-one is saying "we told you so" too openly, yet it is impossible to escape the smugness over the failure of the virtuous modèle Anglo-Saxon. The media are regaling us with tales of misery in Britain, from the collapse of Woolworths to the plight of the unemployed legions of the City. This morning a radio network featured a Sunday Times investigation that exposed allegedly Dickensian practises at Amazon UK, where employees work seven days a week and are fined for sick leave. "Even working like that, they still don't make it," said the commentator.
Of course France is suffering from the slump too. Lay-offs are multiplying, money is tight and the housing market is in retreat. But the pain is nowhere near as bad as in Britain and the United States. America's slide began with the dollar a couple of years ago, but the belittling of Britain has come as a shock.
British prosperity, flaunted by pound-rich house buyers and Eurostar weekenders, was until lately the envy of stuck-in-the-mud France even if people sneered that it came with Victorian working conditions and stone-age services. Only last year, Nicolas Sarkozy won election on the slogan "Work more to earn more". He also encouraged people to retire later. That seems a long time ago.
Since even George Bush has now temporarily abandoned the free market, "Sarko l'Américain" has switched camps and has started talking like a lefty. On Monday, he dumped a long-standing promise to allow Sunday opening for all shops.
Seen from Paris, there is little to be gained from emulating les Anglo-Saxons and their brilliant institutions if it ends in tears. The Gallic model was right all along, or so it seems to many in France. You can actually have your butter and keep the money for the butter -- French for the cake-eating concept. Super-Sarko has been rubbing it in, pointing sorrowfully across the Channel and saying that he would never give up a manufacturing industry in favour of financial services.
France has been profligate. It has piled up national debt and keeps a heavy trade deficit. Labour taxes are extraordinarily high, even by European standards, and red tape stifles entrepreneurs. But it has been helped by the conservative institutions and attitudes that looked so old-fashioned to the outside world. It has especially been protected by the strong euro -- albeit kept that way with the help of German austerity.
Against all the prevailing doctrines, France resisted investment-funded pensions, kept its big car industry, its generous welfare state, its 80 percent nuclear-generated electricity and expensive high-speed trains. And it has managed this while working the world's shortest week. Writing as a new-poor Brit in Paris, there may be a lesson here, or perhaps this is just another exception française.
What words do the French find the most reassuring in this winter of economic doom? It's not Sarkozy, Santa Claus or Social Security. It's Barack Obama.
This comes from a survey on the language of crisis performed by the Médiascopie institute at the request of Euro RSCG, the advertising firm. And before any Americans get too smug, the word that most frightens the French is Bush.
Bernard Sananes the head of Euro RSCG, C&O division, said he had the idea of sounding out the impact of words after realising that the financial and economic slide did not have a human face. Médiascopie drew up a list of 100 expressions and names that have been used most frequently with reference to the crisis in the media, including the internet. They asked a sample of 200 people to rate the words on two scales: worrying/reassuring and local/global.
The incoming US President scored highest in reassuring and global. That shows the expectations awaiting Obama. I would guess that the French response represents general European feeling. George Bush scored top in worrying and global, reflecting the irrevocable demonisation that he underwent with the Iraq invasion of 2003 and its aftermath. Nicolas Sarkozy, France's own leader, came only mid-way on the worry/reassurance axis.
As might be expected in France, the state is deemed very reassuring but what is surprising is the return to favour of Europe. For about 15 years, the Union has been a scapegoat, taking the blame for everything that is wrong, including rampant capitalism. Sarkozy is being given credit for the reversal with his energetic conduct of his six month turn in in the EU Presidency. The single currency, long seen as negative, gets credit for holding up so well while the pound and the dollar have gone south. "The crisis has brought the French closer to the euro and Europe as well as to Nicolas Sarkozy," said Sananes. The winners are....
The most worrying:
Bush
job redundancy
market crash
madness of the financial world
financial tsunami
subprimes,
traders,
virus of crisis,
golden parachutes
toxic products,
contamination
The most reassuring:
Obama
Europe
the euro
livret A (state-regulated standard savings account)
moralisation of the economy
transparent transactions
protection
state intervention
stimulus plan
European Central Bank
The most global:
World governance
new world financial order (a goal of Sarkozy)
International Monetary Fund
Closest to home:
Livret A
French savings
Nicolas Sarkozy
state guarantee
the real economy
rigour (which corresponds to austerity in English)
nationalisation
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 sad when a newspaper closes. Britons living in France -- especially those in the western regions with the big expat population -- felt a sense of loss this week when they heard that French News had folded.
For the past 21 years, the monthly, based in the Dordogne, has been serving the fast-growing community of Brits who moved across the Channel in search of of the Gallic good life. Its liquidation on Tuesday was the end of a little institution. The paper, edited and co-owned since 1995 by Miranda Neame, had a readership of up to 120,000. Without, I hope, being unfair, I'd say that it was especially appreciated by recent arrivals and the Britons who feel part of a community that keeps a little distance from French life.
The end of the News is a symptom of the struggle that thousands of British residents are facing with the economic crunch. Everyone on sterling incomes is suffering a double hit. As well as the general slump, their incomes have shrunk as the pound has slid by 22 percent against the euro since September last year (French-based dollar-earners suffered a similar fate earlier). For us expat workers, the sterling slump is mildly painful. It is truly hard for people on sterling pensions and those in the property and British-linked services and trade.
Some are giving up the struggle and going back to the UK. It's difficult to gauge the flow or conclude that the great cross-Channel exodus to France in the past decade has come to an end. But some removal firms are reporting roaring trade in shipping Brits back to Blighty.
We tried to get a measure of the mood by phoning around the country over the past two days. Thank you to regulars on the blog who filled me in on the scene where they live. Obviously I have an incomplete picture. It would be helpful to hear from others who might like to tell us how they are bearing up.
Continue reading "La belle vie ends for British expatriates in France " »
The subject today is the abuse of power by French police and judges. Two lurid examples have made the headlines for different reasons. One involves a journalist and the other a recreational pilot. Since I am both, I of course feel extra indignation.
Journalists do not usually get sympathy when they complain about mistreatment, but the tale of Vittorio de Filippis [in picture], a manager with Libération, has caused an outcry. It tells you about the heavy-handed methods of a system which has extensive power to arrest and hold people.
Plainclothes officers hammered on de Filippis' door at 6.40 am last Friday. He was arrested in front of his two young sons and insulted. An officer called him "worse than garbage". He was taken in handcuffs to a holding cell and twice subjected to an intimate body search. He was questioned without access to a lawyer and released five hours later.
The police carried out their raid on the orders of Muriel Josié, an examining judge. De Filippis' alleged offence is that he was liable as publisher of Libération for a defamatory comment left by a reader on its internet site. In France, when you sue for libel, the case is prosecuted as a criminal one. In this instance, the victim of the supposed libel, an internet businessman, has already lost two cases against the newspaper.
In other words, a judge ordered a newspaper executive to be dragged from his home and abused over an internet comment. "I barely had time to reassure my son that I was not a crook and that this had to do with the newspaper," said de Filippis.
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Virginia and I were guests of Johnny
in the early Sixties. We went to his show at the Olympia, which was recorded. We were invited to Castell's nightclub that night and given an album of the concert that had been recorded only hours earlier, personally signed by Johnny.
We always loved his music and were sad that he never made it big in Britain
Posted by: Bill Harry | 14 Dec 2009 21:51:34
If the full veil is le voile intégral, then how does one say en français that a ship is under full sail?
I'm so hoping for a pun here.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 14 Dec 2009 21:37:17
Tous mes souhaits de rétablissement pour Johnny.
Mais j'espère que l'on ne jugera pas la médecine et la chirurgie françaises à l'aune des pratiques du Docteur Delajoux dont on connaît les casseroles... Je n'en dis pas plus, pour ne pas risquer de mettre ce blog (que j'apprécie depuis longtemps) en difficulté.
Posted by: Gilles | 14 Dec 2009 20:22:15
Get well, Johnny.
Then get out!
To that end, maybe Sarko will propose a financial bailout for you citing your iconic importance to French identity.
I am waiting for some aging rock 'n roller to appear onstage with oxygen canister in tow, nurses on either side, holding bedpans.
Mick Jagger looks like a skeleton with a prune for a skull. But he's probably still getting laid quite a bit which may at least partly explain why these guys can't stop.
Posted by: azloon | 14 Dec 2009 19:57:45
How about banning low-hanging, baggy blue jeans with exposed ass-cracks?
Now that would actually be useful !
Posted by: azloon | 14 Dec 2009 19:31:04
"... translation of which so offended your linguistic sensitivities" (Rick)
Nothing "so offended my linguistic sensitivities". I had wondered about the French original (neutral statement).
Whenever I happen to come across an inaccurate "literal translation" (based on the French original) that might be biased and prove to be detrimental to accuracy, I won't hesitate to point that out - as I have done in the past.
ACCURACY either is an aim, or it is not.
Charles masters the French language well enough to provide accurate and not just literal translations.
Posted by: Lily | 14 Dec 2009 19:01:26
TO RICK,
Aural pollution and Pollution auditive is noise or du bruit, or is my sense of words slowly slipping away?
Posted by: richard jones | 14 Dec 2009 18:45:52
"As for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, it is not obliged to give out ni name of patient nor medical updates"
Without his permission Cedars-Sinai CAN'T give out the information. It would be a violation of Privacy laws.
Posted by: KitKat | 14 Dec 2009 18:11:28
@ Cam
Cam there is very little evidence to suggest that non surgical spinal decompression is any more effective than that other form of quackery called chiropractic.
Posted by: P Thomson | 14 Dec 2009 18:05:00
I sincerely hope JH gets well really soon, as he is an iconic entertainer on the level of Springsteen. The biggest mystery to me is why JH used this Paris surgeon, which apart from the obvious, has a prison record for an insurance scam.
Posted by: Terry | 14 Dec 2009 17:51:26
So sad and infuriating because disc herniations in most instances do not require surgery. There are non-surgical options that ALL patients should try before going under the knife. Check out non-surgical spinal decompression for disc herniations before you put your life at risk!
Posted by: Cam | 14 Dec 2009 17:40:23
Native? :) He is originally Belgian, but yes France's answer to Rock and Roll for the last many many years.
[Actually, he's not originally Belgian, except that his father, whom he hardly knew, came from there. Johnny was born in Paris and brought up in France by his French mother. He never lived in Belgium. When he tried to apply for Belgian nationality a few years ago to escape taxes, they refused him. CB]
Posted by: Karen | 14 Dec 2009 17:35:27
I totally agree with Dot King.
This confirms what is often said, "important persons are not always treated better than smaller". He would have gone anonymously (every citizen has the right to ask to be treated anonymously in every hospital and every hospital has an obligation to have such a procedure), may be he would have been better cared .. And not to do a long travel, four days after a spinal intervention, without rehabilitation and postoperative monitoring.
Posted by: Francois D | 14 Dec 2009 17:30:55
‘The building would aggravate "the aural and visual pollution and bad odours" from the property, his suit said’.
To make your point, you are going to have to show that the French version, as written by the lawyer in his deposition, is substantially different from the above, LILY. Was it?
I have unearthed the following : ‘Pollution olfactive, auditive et visuelle’. Perhaps the lawyer’s expressions – CHARLES’ translation of which so offended your linguistic sensitivities – were indeed rather less exotic to the French ear or eye than you had imagined.
Posted by: Rick | 14 Dec 2009 17:22:49
Zbigniew Mazurak :
Sorry, but there are so many made-up pseudos around and then some of us have ridiculous real names (DANIEL it's coming back to haunt you :)), that I wasn't sure you hadn't just created your name by tapping random keys! ;D
I think that the girls who want their 15 mins of fame by trying to be a Miss are pretty irrelevant in themselves - as are their 15 minutes. Just think of all the hours wasted trying to get 15 mins of fame and then someone else gets them . . .
Now I must go and see what colour Mr Calvi has chosen to dazzle me with this evening :)
Posted by: dot king | 14 Dec 2009 17:09:39
Simply unconstitutionnal, impossible. Besides, vote a law on some 350 odd women who like to dress as scarecrows is ludicrous.
ROMAIN
Amen to that.
I'm beggining to understand that you have quite a severe and exacting dress-code for women - what with "curtains" mentioned recently (unkind!) and burqas.
;D
Posted by: dot king | 14 Dec 2009 17:00:04
Dot
Weren't you dating Johnny for a while?
Posted by: rocket | 14 Dec 2009 16:57:35
Although I am not a fan of Johnny I will admit that he puts on a great show for his fans and they get entertainment for their money much unlike many American and Brit Bands who get into fist fights before the show and then cancel or do 45 minutes onstage.
"Secrecy has surrounded his hospital stay, with not a single medical communiqué on his condition."
As for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, it is not obliged to give out ni name of patient nor medical updates. Since TMZ is not convering this story it makes Johnny National irrelevant in the United States as no one other than the French press are convering the story thus the level of investigative reporting will be limited. (right Tiger?)
Posted by: rocket | 14 Dec 2009 16:55:56
"I find your translations of quotes and the like, a little too literal." (Jimmy)
I share this observation.
LILY
Me too, but I know that if you were freer in your translations there'd be people who'd be down on you like a ton of bricks quicker than you could say couteau! :)
[Quite. I'd rather spare the argument which pops up here when I use too free translation.. And as for the stilted line on 'aural pollution', it was a faithful translation of stilted French legalese. It wasn't supposed to be elegant English. CB]
Posted by: dot king | 14 Dec 2009 16:49:54
There is nothing to be admired in the idea that laws can be interpreted to favour the local French, regardless of the facts. I strongly suspect that the same people who seem happy to give a nod and wink to this behaviour
JAN MAGUIRE
Don't know what you're getting at really - the story I told is completely true - the fact is that the agent who sold the people their house was also an adjoint du maire of the village which also encompasses the hamlet. He had a duty to signal to the prospective buyers that an application for a veal battery farm was in progress, but he didn't, because it wasn't, but he also wanted votes from the farmers, so he let things go through without formalities and the farmer went along with it.
No-one interprets the law to suits the French farmers - especially not a lawyer - in the Ridley Scott story the Orset did everything they should. In the story I told, there was corruption as well as law-breaking, nuisance and cruelty, and the lot was outed.
The lawyer did his job, that's all. He won the case for his clients because the other side had clearly broken the law. And it didn't take long either - I was there the day he opened the file and made two phone-calls and said that it was quite clear that every regulation under the sun had been breached.
Posted by: dot king | 14 Dec 2009 16:45:58
I wish they would stop saying "plongé dans un coma artificiel" and say rather "maintenu" - the word "plongé" is emotively loaded.
It seems (ie "ON a dit") the USA doctors who opened him up were the first to say he'd been "butchered", then we saw Camus saying the same thing, then the Ordre de Médecin's lawyer doing anything but supporting a member of the Ordre, saying he'd had problems before and it was well known what a bad surgeon he was and how many problems he'd had in the past - though again someone else said he'd recently saved Charlotte Gainsbourg's life.
It was all really a bit much, too much being said, and, coming from a lawyer, that all seemed to me very unprofessional - and all of it led to the surgeon's being beaten up.
The immediacy given to the "need" for any - even false - information is scandalous - it's also an invasion of Johnny Hallyday's medical privacy.
If the surgeon is so bad, how come so many stars have him for their surgeon? Isabelle Adjani, whom I think I heard (ON a dit) was his moitié at one time - and I thought someone said (ON a dit) that he was living with Laura Smet, Johnny H's daughter. All very incestuous and small-worldy IMO.
I suppose it's a risk whichever way you look at it - if you are surgeon to the rich and famous and you make a mistake, then you have patients who are more likely to have the time and funds to take you to court.
If you're rich and famous and you have a doctor because he is doctor to other rich and famous, then that's no reason to have that doctor.
I wish JH well - most of all I wish him some privacy to be Mr Smet - while he convalesces at least.
He is still a private citizen at base, not public property, his fans need to remember that.
Posted by: dot king | 14 Dec 2009 16:29:33
"Eric Woerth, the minister in charge of taxation, drops his usual mortician's manner to sing: "living on love and hope"."
Hope? I don't believe the French people want to hear about "hope". As for love - he and the President better fall in love with capitalism, or the French economy will not rebound.
A good start would be a privatization of all state-owned enterprises.
Posted by: Zbigniew Mazurak | 14 Dec 2009 16:03:24
It’s surprising to some French people that he is not known outside France, as shocking to some here learning that the group Air is French.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 14 Dec 2009 15:56:20
Johnny should throw the towel and enjoy a peaceful retirement, rather than die on the job.
Posted by: Romain | 14 Dec 2009 15:45:37
Simply unconstitutionnal, impossible. Besides, vote a law on some 350 odd women who like to dress as scarecrows is ludicrous.
Posted by: Romain | 14 Dec 2009 15:41:08
Get well soon, Mr Hallyday!
Zbigniew Mazurak
Posted by: Zbigniew Mazurak | 14 Dec 2009 15:37:19
And if this was in the UK he would of won... This country has fallen far and we have little support for our own.
Posted by: Farmer Giles | 14 Dec 2009 15:35:14
However namby-pamby it may have been, the Swiss did stand up and take a decision on the minarets matter.
Will the French establishment have the marbles to go through with the burkha ban ? In the interest of genuine laicité and valeurs républicaines, I sincerely hope the mandarins in France pass the law as soon as possible.
Posted by: Jay Bhattacharjee | 14 Dec 2009 15:34:28
[‘ "I find your translations of quotes and the like, a little too literal." (Jimmy)
I share this observation.’
Is it asking too much for an example or two? Plus suggested improvements, of course... ] (Rick)
RICK,
I guess it's asking too much though I have pointed it out in the past.
"The building would aggravate "the aural and visual pollution and bad odours" from the property" (CB above)
I have wondered what the "aural pollution" might have been in French. :)
----
"I translate fairly literally for a reason. It is easier to be accurate even if it can sound clumsier." (CB)
Charles -
I disagree. The more literal translation is often less accurate and misses the point made in French while it might help to highlight the point YOU wish or are expected(?) to make.
Maybe it's just part of journalistic freedom but the critical reader should be aware of that.
Posted by: Lily | 14 Dec 2009 15:22:04
TO Jan Greggy Flint,
Ya Ridley cud tilly-tally dahn ya hill in his Rollie and crump up on his locerl zac wiyyer gang. Why not?
Posted by: richard jones | 14 Dec 2009 15:00:09
Slightly OT
Pour Carla Bruni, 5 ans, ça suffit titre un article dans Liberation.
Déjà la bougeotte madame la Présidente?
she goes on to say
"C’est mon affaire, si je mets un majeur ou un mineur", a-t-elle poursuivi.
Has she started speaking in tongues?
Does anyone know when the contract ends?
Posted by: rocket | 14 Dec 2009 14:50:00
Zbigniew --
The U.S. had our "Zbigniew Brzezinski" in a key policy position under President Carter, I believe. We all (or at least some of us) learned to pronounce his name by reason of hearing it on the TV news all the time.
We was known as Ziggy. Or as a nod to Costas-Garvas, we could call you "Z."
Posted by: azloon | 14 Dec 2009 14:06:11
‘ "I find your translations of quotes and the like, a little too literal." (Jimmy)
I share this observation.’
Is it asking too much for an example or two? Plus suggested improvements, of course...
And 'non-literal translations' sound just a touch venturesome, in my opinion.
[On this matter, I translate fairly literally for a reason. It is easier to be accurate even if it can sound clumsier. Looser, more fluid translation often leads to argument. Also, finding le mot juste takes time, which is not abundant in immediate internet journalism. I'm delighted if people would like to improve my words. CB]
Posted by: Rick | 14 Dec 2009 13:56:21
surprising coming from a President who had to be repeatedly reminded what France is about by his Senegalese-born, but rather more French, token Condi Rice.
Dominique II
Who remains popular despite being sent to Coventry.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 14 Dec 2009 13:16:32
Tongue-in-cheek is best translated as SECOND DEGRE, eg, "Je parlais au second degre", "C'est du second degre!"
Posted by: Sato | 14 Dec 2009 13:05:14
When in doubt , vote a new law.
That law being well thought out or simply unenforceable is of no interest as long as the miraculous law is voted swiftly enough.
Anyway there a fat chance that "le decret d'application" will not see the light of day rendering the all process even more worthless than it looks.
So Belphegors now , who's next ?
Posted by: Julio | 14 Dec 2009 12:52:06
"There is nothing to be admired in the idea that laws can be interpreted to favour the local French, regardless of the facts." -- Jan Macguire
Since you seem to be an advocate of the free movement and rights of capital at the expense of people and traditional use, lets turn it around a bit. I want to buy the house next door to yours and convert it to a loud and smelly factory. Or, how about I'm going to by a bunch of houses across from yours, raze them and build a WalMart or a Tesco. Or, I and all my rich compatriots take a liking to your shore, and we are going to buy up all the water front property where you and your compatriots have traditionally taken your summer holidays. So sorry the rents have trebled or it's no longer for rent. Free markets and all that, dontchaknow.
The neighborhood where my shop is is a favorite for groups to have parades and foot races. They think that because the streets belong to everyone, they have a right to demand that my street be closed to traffic so they can have their little party. My view is that I am there everyday, and have been for years, caring for the street and paying the taxes, creating jobs, participating in the community. Who comes first?
Or, a German industrialist bought up a major portion of the shares of the company where I buy my groceries. Now he wants employee benefits cancelled and prices raised so that he can make more money on his investment.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 14 Dec 2009 12:09:58
My father gets calls from Urbanites who have move to the country and complain of being woken up by le chant du coq, they also want street lighting, and tout a l'egout (until they get told how much it cost per metre).
Posted by: do-re-mi | 14 Dec 2009 11:30:57
Way hae man, wah Ridley divvent kna frenchys!
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 14 Dec 2009 11:24:15
TO LEO & THOMASINE,
I could be wrong and often am but I did say historically meaning roughly 1815 to mid 1930's. And I said it because I think attitudes that have (if I'm right and I accept memory disorder)prevailed for over a past century still pierce those of half that time.
Posted by: richard jones | 14 Dec 2009 11:03:31
Rick
I don’t know if all the multi- culti has been totally bad, we learn about other culture and we see they are not as different as ours. In a Global village is not that bad.
The bad thing as been not to be seen as too authoritarian or offend the sensibilities of many small groups ( no longer seen in colonialist eyes yet living them in their little “ tick the box you belong to”) and do an overkill with PC .That has backfired off course, before they were in boxes and that wasn’t fun, so now they have paperwork for it and asking about their right as a group and not as part of the whole. . Some group flex their muscles and we are going backwards. In a volunteering job I did, the nurse had to get out of her station because an Asian male did not want to be seen by a woman and it was just for a band-aid, she had to step out. My first reaction was, “ we are back in the middle ages” with my taxes, and “ it’s the nurse or nothing mate”. But you don’t want to go back to a place where it was before.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 14 Dec 2009 10:50:42
RICHARD,
In addition to THOMASINE's and LEO's entries, hereafter a link showing that the big brass of the Conseil Général du Gard is exclusively either Parti Socialiste or Parti Communiste or similar :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_conseillers_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_du_Gard
However, the Président de la Région Languedoc-Roussillon, Georges Frèche, got "excluded" from the parti socialiste may be two years ago, because among other things he made racist comments against UMP harkis, calling them "sous-hommes"!
However, he is still very popular in his region. He will most probably get reelected, since a huge majority of PS "militants" are in his favour, against the official stand of the PS head-quarters. Consequently, the PS has eased things out - they will not present a candidature against Frèche, otherwise they would risk to lose the région Languedoc-Roussillon in the pending "élections régionales".
The boss of the PS, Martine Aubry, said a few days ago that their aim is to get the majority in ALL of the 22 regions. For the moment, only 2 regions, i.e. Alsace and Corse, are on the right (and right so, in my
modest opinion :).
We saw Martine Aubry "chez Drucker" 2 days ago. In private, she is witty and not antipathic at all - however, in politics, she ushers the usual PC crap :).
PS:
The harkis were former local suppletive troops of the French army in Algeria. A part of them were able to escape deadly reprisals of the FLN through transfer to France. They settled mostly in Southern France, in dire conditions (a shame for my country, in my opinion).
The UMP is Sarkozy's party.
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 14 Dec 2009 10:47:41
"I find your translations of quotes and the like, a little too literal." (Jimmy)
I share this observation.
Posted by: Lily | 14 Dec 2009 10:13:26
For once Copé is talking sense, in a way. The prohibition against veiled faces is in fact, AFAIK, already on the books, for the obvious security reasons he quoted - so the need for specific legislation is pure smokescreen.
I seem to recall a few jewel shop heists by Burqa-wearing male thugs of indeterminate religion in good old UK...
The only exceptions to the current regulation are motorcycle helmets and balaclava helmets - which have to be doffed to be granted admission into a bank - and Carnival days or private shows / fests where everybody may wear a mask.
As for Sarko's transparently demagogic insistence to focus the silly "national identity" debate on resistance against Islamic provocations, it is utter tripe. French identity is one of the strongest national identities around, and one of the oldest. To hint it might be at risk from a few marginal bottom dwellers is to show a remarkable lack of understanding of its nature, and an insulting lack of confidence in its very strength and existence - not so surprising coming from a President who had to be repeatedly reminded what France is about by his Senegalese-born, but rather more French, token Condi Rice.
Posted by: Dominique II | 14 Dec 2009 10:00:02
Now Ridley Scott knows how it feels to BE "the Alien".
Posted by: Dominique II | 14 Dec 2009 09:44:51
‘Only this time instead of meek portuguese or carribean in dire need of northern funds, they stumbled upon a couple of genuine gaulois and their legendary village.’ [VALENTIN]
I’ve always wanted to know what a ‘genuine gaulois’ was. Now I do know, thanks VALENTIN. By the way, is Albert Calvo a ‘genuine gaulois’ name?
Posted by: Rick | 14 Dec 2009 08:10:59
RICHARD JONES
"Secondly, in historical terms I always think of Nîmes and the Gard as the most monarchy-oriented, right wing, and nationalist part of France."
I would add to Thomasine's entry that the mayor of Nîmes is a genuine Communist (probably preserved in formaldehyde) and the Conseil Général du Gard left wing by a huge margin.
Posted by: Leo | 13 Dec 2009 23:25:20
I quite enjoy your articles on France, living in Bordeaux. I would just have one little complaint though. I find your translations of quotes and the like, a little too literal. It has struck me several times in your posts.
Maybe I am wrong in this. Other commentators can say whether they agree or not.
Posted by: jimmy | 13 Dec 2009 22:59:53
[Azloon - some American Muslims were indeed harassed and insulted after 9/11/2001 because of the religion they profess. But, importantly, President Bush CONDEMNED the perpetrators of those incidents.
POSTED BY: ZBIGNIEW MAZURAK ]
One of the most sickening incidents happened in Phoenix on 9/12 when a Sikh wearing a turban was shot and killed in a convenience store, the redneck-psycho killer believing this dress had something to do with Islam.
Posted by: azloon | 13 Dec 2009 22:54:48
Valentin "the usual coloniser feeling any rich anglo gets upon moving down south"
is 'anglo' in any way relevant to your post? you don't just think it's the rich part that's relevant?... is the behaviour of similarly rich French people any better... I doubt it. You also seem to like linking anglo and coloniser in a sneering way... didn't the French have colonies?... don't they still?
Posted by: FC | 13 Dec 2009 22:53:36