Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Sarkozy insult returns as French rap hit

You might remember the singer who made a splash by setting to music the "come back" text message that Nicolas Sarkozy may have sent to Cécilia, his ex-wife. Now a young musician from Lorraine has scored with a video in which he raps to Sarko's notorious insult: Casse Toi Pauvre Con

The President used the line in February to put down a man who refused to shake his hand at the Paris agriculture show. We had an argument here about the English equivalent, which is something like "Piss off, jerk" or "Get lost, wanker".

Sarko would prefer to forget it, but his flash of unpresidential temper became one of the milestones of his first year. As well as being repeated often on television, it has been watched over five million times on video sites.

This spoof song, by a 25-year-old video technician who uses the name Tum Sally, is crude, but it has created such a buzz that the mainstream media have picked it up and a Paris record label his given him a contract.

French teachers strike again

We're enduring another day of the old French civil war today. About 45 percent of the country's 800,000 state school teachers have gone on strike, along with a smaller proportion of the five million civil service. Tens of thousands of high-school pupils are out marching with them [picture is from Nantes this afternoon].

This means that millions of parents have once again been forced to find someone to take care of their kids so they can go to work. Town councils allied to the government are offering basic supervision at schools but the majority with leftwing mayors -- including Paris -- are refusing to do so. Providing this minimum service amounts to strike-breaking, they say.

The cause of the "mobilisation", as the strikers and media call the stoppage, is the noble one of defending public service. President Sarkozy is accused of dismantling France's cherished services with cuts to teaching staff and civil service posts. Schools are to lose 11,000 teaching posts in the autumn. One in three civil servants is not being replaced on retirement from this year.

The classic battle lines have been drawn up. From the moral high ground, the left applauds resistance to the destruction of the national heritage and depicts its opponents as stooges of a brutal rightwing Government. Those on the other side, branded "rightwing" by the left, lament the obstructive, conservative reflexes of the state functionaries.

France elected Super Sarko to perform a radical cure a year ago, but on days like this you get the impression that nothing has changed.

Chatting up the revolution, French style

 

We saw the other day that the French Socialists, the main opposition party, are giving up their hope for revolution. But don't throw away the red flag yet. The past couple of days have seen the consecration of a new hero who has won millions of fans with his struggle to overthrow capitalism.

The star of the moment is Olivier Besancenot, the baby-faced Trotskyite who scored over four percent of the vote in last year's presidential election. Besancenot, 34, who works as a postman in the rich suburb of Neuilly, has made news with an appearance on French television's most consensual talk show, Vivement Dimanche. This is a Sunday ritual in which Michel Drucker, the dean of celebrity interviewers, sketches the life of his guest with soft questions and the help of musicians and friends of the subject. The media fuss was prompted by the supposed incongruity of the cosy talk host inviting a fire-breathing Trotskyite onto his red sofa for the ritual three-hour chat [video below]. 

In reality, there was nothing surprising. As we have noted here before, Besancenot is quite a standard French product: the loveable revolutionary. He was not even the first popular Trotskyite to be invited by Drucker. Arlette Laguiller, his grandmotherly rival, made it onto the show a decade ago. 

France enjoys the lazy, hazy days of May.

It feels like an August weekend in Paris today. The sun is blazing, as it has for the past week. The streets are largely empty except for tourists. Much of France is enjoying a fifth successive day off work.

President Sarkozy may preach the doctrine of "working more to earn more", but his country has seized the chance to enjoy what the headline in le Parisien newspaper called "Five days of happiness".  The long spring break has been made possible by the lucky timing of two public holidays for the nation that already enjoys more vacation days than any other. Last Thursday, May 8, was the holiday marking victory in World War Two and today is Pentecost (Whitsun in Britain). Friday was supposed to be a working day but schools in the Paris area and many other regions stayed shut  -- so people took the day off, enjoying what is known as le pont, or bridge.

Many even managed nearly 10 days because there was another unofficial pont on Friday May 2, after the May Day holiday fell on a Thursday. Half of France either took that Friday or last Friday or both, according to a poll.

Sarkozy revises the last war

World War Two ended 63 years ago but it sometimes seems that Nicolas Sarkozy does not want France to emerge from its shadow. The President used Thursday's celebration of victory day to try once again to revise the history of France's four-year occupation by the Nazis.

Sarko went to the spot on the Normandy coast where 177 French commandos landed with British forces on D-Day to celebrate what he said was the true story of France's war. "Real France was not at Vichy. It was not collaborating," said the President. "Real France, eternal France, had the voice of General de Gaulle. Its face was that of the resistance." 

"We are not celebrating a military victory, we are above all celebrating a moral victory," he added, with military flags snapping in the breeze on the landing beach at Ouistreham.

Sarko's speech at his first VE day ceremony was in line with his doctrine that France as a nation has no guilt to bear over the years when the puppet government based at Vichy collaborated with the Nazis and sent thousands of Jews to their deaths. France must shed its "culture of repentance", Sarkozy argued in his election campaign last year. "France never committed a crime against humanity" during the occupation, he said.

Sarko wants to restore the healing fiction that was adopted by de Gaulle in the aftermath of war and followed by every president until Jacques Chirac in 1995.This held that "real France" resisted the occupation and that the Vichy state was a criminal aberration. That's why there has been such a fuss over the current Paris exhibition of wartime photography, including on this blog.

French "news babe" gets married

One of the most popular posts on this blog featured Melissa Theuriau, the French television journalist whose good looks turned her into a global internet celebrity. So I feel it my duty to advise her fans that they may wish to adjust their fantasies. She got married yesterday.    

Theuriau, 29, who hosts a weekly news programme on the M6 channel, wed Jamel Debbouze, 33, a popular comedian-producer. in a village south of Versailles. They flew with showbusiness guests to Morocco to continue the party in Marrakesh.

Debbouze, the pint-sized French-Moroccan star of two Astérix films, Amélie and other hits, is by far the greater celebrity in France. Theuriau is barely a household name, but abroad the union will disappoint the multitude who have swooned over videos of her since she achieved cyber-fame.

"The beautiful French news anchor" as she is known to her American admirers, rocketed to celebrity after clips of her turned up on Youtube. She was not doing anything risqué, simply reading routine items on the pre-dawn news on the LCI cable channel.  Her "perfect beauty" won her the title of "TV's sexiest news anchor" in the online edition of the US Maxim magazine. The feat was impressive given that she was running against America's TV superstars and readers would have understood little that she said. Melissa-mania has led millions to click on her 150 videos on Youtube and she features on countless screensavers.

Theuriau, from Grenoble, has sought to retain an image as a serious journalist as host of "Forbidden Zone", her investigative show. She also presents "Two or three days with me", an M6 programme in which she invites a celebrity to visit a favourite city. In January, Gérard Depardieu broadcast with here from Tel Aviv.

Laments on the internet over her marriage have focused on her choice of groom. Debbouze, a subversive comedian from the ethnic estates (projects), plays the underdog. He is helped by his disadvantaged physique, which includes a paralysed arm. "With all the hot guys there are in France, she had to fall for this clown," Jorge, a reader grumbled on one celebrity site. "She wouldn't look at him if he wasn't loaded with money."

French state decorates Kylie Minogue, culture star

In the picture, you see the French Minister of Culture awarding a top state honour to an illustrious artist for high achievement and for enhancing the reach of the French creative arts. That's right, the decoration is being pinned on Kylie Minogue, the Australian pop singer.

The ceremony yesterday at the Ministry's headquarters in the sublime Palais Royal, beside the Louvre, is not as odd as it seems. Official France has long taken a paradoxical approach to "Anglo-Saxon" pop culture. It spends hundreds of millions of euros a year promoting the Gallic arts against the "commercial steamroller" of English-language entertainment. At the same time, it confers high-brow status on Anglo-Saxon stars and showers them with honours.

A stop by the Ministry of Culture, or even the Presidential Palace, has become almost routine for big names from Hollywood and showbiz when they drop into Paris or the Cannes festival. This is not a product  of the arrival last year of Nicolas Sarkozy, the pro-American President who prides himself on his friendship with Tom Cruise. It began around 1983, when the Socialist administration of François Mitterrand awarded Jerry Lewis, the comic, the Légion d'Honneur.

Hope for Sarkozy in Year Two

A year ago tomorrow France elected Nicolas Sarkozy as the sixth president of its modern republic. No-one is in the mood for celebration given that Super Sarko the would-be saviour is now wallowing in lower public esteem than any of his five predecessors.

We know what went wrong and we've seen Sarko's attempt to make amends on TV 10 days ago but it's worth noting that things are not as bleak as they seem.

It's easy to make the prosecution case over the crash of the reformer who promised une rupture with France's stagnant society. The left-leaning media are full of it today, led by Libération with the front page above. All hubris and narcissism, Sarko betrayed the trust of France from the day of his election, writes Laurent Joffrin, Libé's Editor and bête-noire of the president. "As promised la rupture took place: it was une rupture with the French people."

Le Monde has devoted a whole supplement this afternoon to France's "disenchantment" with its "impossible president". "After arriving in the Elysée palace with more trump cards than most of his predecessors, the head of state wasted them with as much energy as he had spent winning them," it says.

Sarkozy certainly committed glaring errors -- mainly with his gaudy, self-indulgent style and the soap opera of his private life.

France revels in nostalgia for magic May '68

It is a little sad, but inevitable, that France's last revolt in the name of liberty should be reduced to a tin of expensive tea. Here it is, "May 68 -- a tea with the flavour of revolution" from Fauchon, the most luxurious food store in Paris

Forty years ago this weekend, the students of the Sorbonne university staged their joyous insurrection on the Paris Left Bank. Their carnival of slogans and barricades helped trigger the country's biggest general strike and briefly rattled the government of President Charles de Gaulle. The confused rebellion soon fizzled but "the events of May '68" marked a middle-class generation. Since they were the baby-boomers, no-one is allowed to forget it.

Now passing on power to their juniors, la génération de soixante-huit are enjoying a last hurrah, an orgy of nostalgia for the glorious upheaval in which, for a moment, it seemed they could remake the world. They may have given up Fidel Castro for Fauchon, but they are proud of their youthful ideals.

Modesty, mistakes... the new Sarkozy

Humble is not a word that we usually apply to Nicolas Sarkozy. Yet the adjective is doing the rounds today after the President delivered a long and fairly successful defence of his bumpy first year.

The occasion was one of those modern French rituals founded by the late Charles de Gaulle in the late 1950s. The monarch summons cameras to the palace and hogs the main television and radio networks at a time when his subjects are usually enjoying lighter fare. 

France wanted to know, via five TV interviewers in the Elysée ballroom, whether Super Sarko had got the message about the severe discontent over his rule and what he planned to do about it. In almost contrite tones, Sarkozy said yes, he understood the disappointment and he took the blame up to a point. He had failed to explain some policies well enough but the world slump was also responsible, he said. He had "doubtless made mistakes" but he remained determined to push through reforms on all fronts.

France stagnated for 25 years, failing to adapt to globalisation "which has turned the world into a village", he said. "There is only one possible strategy: to enact change....In France, there is always a good reason to do nothing, always someone who is unhappy."

Sarkozy announced nothing in particular. The main news was that a new modest Subdued Sarko has replaced the aggressive, cocky Super Sarko, at least for the time being. Even Laurent Joffrin, Editor of  Libération, his chief media scourge, game him a little credit.

"New clothes. The tone has changed. He has partly abandoned the style of the loud-mouthed and peremptory lawyer ... which caused him so much damage over the past 10 months," wrote Joffrin. "The suddenly more humble pleading of the President has changed the scenery a little. But the play remains rigorously the same."

Naturally, Sarko's foes in the opposition found nothing good to say about his 100-minute audience, watched by 12 million people. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate against him last year, said he had spouted approximation, improvisation, aberration and falsehood. "He is paying the price for the mass of lies which he uttered during the election campaign," said the woman whom he defeated. Royal confirmed today that she wants to run against Sarko again the next time, in 2012.

Sarkozy's appearance, the first since his last, disastrous, one on January 8, will not have satisfied the millions who blame him for failing to deliver on his rash election promise to put more money in French pockets. Olivier Duhamel, a politics professor and heavyweight commentator said: "The crux of the problem was purchasing power. That is what the polls showed was by far the French people's main expectation. And on that point, I'm sorry but I think that globally he failed."

But the TV Sarkothon will have helped soften the belief that the country is being run in a haphazard way by an insensitive show-off. Le Figaro, the President's cheer leader among daily newspapers, put the pro-Sarko case: "It will probably take Nicolas Sarkozy time to win back the heart of the French people. Sometimes you have to accept unpopularity to get reforms to be accepted."

Paris was not so bad under the Nazis, photos show

They thrust a piece of paper with a warning into your hand when you enter the latest photo exhibition at the Paris Historical Library. It tells you not to be fooled by the 270 images on display.

They are issuing the notice on the mayor's orders because the show has upset some visitors and media. No sex, violence or religion is involved. Its offence is showing Paris in world war two as a sunny place, where people got on happily with life along with their sympathique Nazi occupiers.

In the collective memory, Paris from 1940-44 was a grim, black-and-white place of hunger, roundups, humiliation and resistance. Films and books have in recent decades modified that cliché, which was promoted in the aftermath of the war. The picture series by André Zucca, a well-regarded French photographer, is breathtaking because it offers, as never before, a panorama of a Paris that was not suffering great hardship. The quantity and quality of the pictures has stirred old ghosts. The warning says that Zucca, a collaborator who worked for Signal, the Germany military magazine, avoided the "reality of occupation and its tragic aspects."

Paris looks eerily familiar in Zucca's chronicle of life under the Germans, which he shot for his own interest, not for publication.

Frenchman to sing in English against Irish turkey

Nothing tickles les Anglo-Saxons more than stories about the French surrendering to the English language. The latest version springs from France Television's decision to enter a song with English lyrics in the Eurovision contest for the first time.

Skip this paragraph if you are European: The Eurovision contest started in 1956 to promote fraternity among the recently warring nations. It turned long ago into an orgy of kitsch. Along the way it launched ABBA, a bunch of unknown Swedes who won in 1974 with Waterloo. The annual final, broadcast live to an audience well over 100 million, gives little nations a patriotic moment; the big ones treat the whole thing as a joke. Over half now sing in English and the next contest takes place in Belgrade on May 24. The Serbians won last time. The Irish, who speak a sort of English, have won most (see Ireland's Turkey at end). The French have not won since 1977.

This year, the state tv network decided to go with the flow, sending Sébastien Tellier, an eccentric singer-composer with a big beard, to Belgrade to perform a catchy track from his new all English album Sexuality [video below]. "Big deal" has been the general reaction. English  has been successfully embraced by many French artists in the past few years and the choice of Tellier was so uncontroversial that it went unnoticed at first.   

The lack of protest has been the real sign of the times. France3 television  anointed Tellier on March 7 and it took five weeks for anyone to complain. A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

The original Concours Eurovision de la Chanson was begun when French was the common language of the continent. The state still spends hundreds of millions of euros a year on the rearguard language campaign and President Sarkozy is one of the chief defenders, so objections were inevitable. They have now appeared, led by a junior parliamentarian from President Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement. 

François-Michel Gonnot, 59, demanded that Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister given an account to Parliament. "This shocks a lot of citizens who do not understand why France is giving up the defence of its language before hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world," he said.

Albanel, who was apparently unaware of the shocking choice, has responded by calling it a pity and saying that she would tell France television to make a more linguistically correct decision next time.

Be famous for your initials in France

Here's a test of your knowledge of modern France and its passion for abbreviation. Explain the following headline which appeared in a newspaper today

OGM + NKM + UMP = COCKTAIL EXPLOSIF

To anyone following the news, the line in La Charente Libre made complete sense. OGM stands for genetically modified organism; NKM is the Minister for the Environment, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet; UMP is President Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement. The minister had just caused a furore by accusing her own party of cowardice over genetically modified crops.

Like other Latin and bureaucratic countries, France shortens many long titles into every-day initials. Un smicard is someone who receives le SMIC, or minimum wage. Few bother saying jeux olympiques. The games are usually just les JO. This is not to be confused with a GO, or gentil organisateur, a host at the old Club Med resorts, thus any boy-scoutish organiser. The 35-hour working week has given France the joys of the RTT (pronounce errtété) or time off (Récuperation du Temps de Travail). You can use it for a spot of VTT  (mountain biking)

Abbreviating names is especially French. All right, America had JFK first, but say JFK in Paris and people will understand Jean-François Kahn, a veteran journalist and commentator. You know you have made the big time when your initials replace your name. NKM (the environment minister, in picture), who is only 34, earned the rank this week with her feisty defiance of her bosses.

She only apologised after a threat of dismissal from Sarkozy, who is known as NS only to his staff and the tailor who monograms the left chest of his custom-made shirts. MKM is, however, dangerously close to NTM, a notorious rap group which has just been relaunched. Their initials stand for "F...Your Mother" in urban slang).

To be fair to Sarko, few earn two-initial celebrity. The last was probably BB, the film star-turned animal lover whose initials became a pop music hit in the hands of the great Serge Gainsbourg, her lover at the time (any excuse for another Gainsbourg video, see below).

France makes law to fight eating disorder

France's fondness for inventing odd laws to change human behaviour entered new territory today. A criminal offence is to be created to punish the act of promoting excessive thinness. Those found guilty will face up to three years in jail and 45,000 euros fine.   

This is not a laughing matter. The offence is defined in a government-backed bill that has just been tabled as part of the campaign to combat anorexia nervosa. The first use of prosecutors to tackle eating disorders is broadly aimed at the media and fashion world, but especially at the websites and blogs of the so-called pro-ana movement.

While many of these are support groups, others promote starvation as a "life-style choice", with girls and young women posting their wasting images as "thinspiration" for others. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry and you get the point. It reads as though it has been written by a pro-ana convert.

Paris makes a point with Olympic fiasco

The Olympic flame's day in Paris was a mess. I spent a few hours in the midst of yesterday's demonstrations, beginning with the sinister start below the Eiffel tower under the guard of hundreds of police and Chinese security.

Yet, despite the débâcle which ended with the Chinese rushing the flame out of town on a bus, it is impossible not to detect a little satisfaction in the air. The relay was a chaotic fiasco, marred by jeering crowds and scuffles with the militant pro-Tibetans. The torch-bearers, mainly French former champions, had a miserable time between hostile crowds and the strong-arm tactics of their Chinese handlers. President Sarkozy's government had reason to be embarrassed. But there is a feeling today that, even if it was futile, France at least made a gesture by venting its discontent over the Beijing games and human rights. I say France because the demonstrators enjoyed quite broad support. France prides itself on being "the home of human rights" and it likes a bit of rebellion and creative disorder in the name of a cause. The Beijing torch relay from the Eiffel tower down the Champs Elysées and on to Notre Dame cathedral offered the right moment and symbols. By the end of the afternoon yesterday, the demonstrations had become a festive occasion, joined by teenagers and office-workers.

Laurent Joffrin, Editor of Libération, was for once happy this morning. "Paris rediscovered its sense of revolt for the occasion. It took it upon itself to remind the world that hypocrisy has a limit," he wrote. "The Olympic flame has turned into a shameful candle-end."

Naturally the leftwing world was fully behind the la manif. Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, hung a rights banner across the front of the City Hall. Green councillors added a more aggressive one so the Chinese cancelled the ceremony there and the torch convoy sped past the Mayor without stopping. He shrugged and said: "The cohabitation of the Olympics and human rights disturbs them. That's their problem. We were ready to receive them but not to sacrifice our principles."

But there was also quiet support from President Sarkozy's conservative political camp. Half a dozen members of parliament for his Union for a Popular Movement joined a protest by mainly leftwing legislators outside the National Assembly. The organisers ordered the convoy to cancel a stop there.

On one level, the chaotic day made a mockery of the crowd control skills of the well equipped French police. They had said that the torch would be protected by an inviolable 200-metre long "security bubble". This burst within minutes. In the thick of it, however, I got the impression that they were not trying very hard. There were a few punch-ups but little of the brute force usually employed by the CRS riot police. Most of them were not wearing helmets and body armour. The feeling was confirmed this morning by Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, who is national police chief.

She essentially blamed the Chinese embassy for the mess. They had controlled the day's events and the police had been there to help keep order for them. "We had to balance this with the right of people to demonstrate," she said on Europe 1 radio.

Sarkozy watched events on television as the torch ran past the Elysée Palace. His people hope that the public excitement will cool because there is not much that they can do to satisfy public discontent over China. Sarko is maintaining his threat to stay away from the opening ceremony in Beijing in August but few imagine him doing so.

[Headline: China: the slap in the face]

Save our semi-colon, say French campaigners

A humble punctuation mark is the latest cause in the fight to preserve the elegance of French in the face of lazy habits from the English-speaking world.

Writers and linguistic patriots have thrown their weight behind a push to save le point-virgule -- the semi-colon. It is threatened with extinction because the media, authors and the people at large no longer understand its use. They prefer chopping their prose into short sentences with full stops (periods).

Fans of the semi-colon were pleased today by a topical April Fool's joke on the influential Rue89 news site. This reported that President Sarkozy had created a state commission to save the semi-colon. The device would have to be used at least three times in all official correspondence, it said.

The article, which included a bogus mission letter on Elysée Palace stationary, initially took in readers because it was only a slight exaggeration of reality. Sarkozy has a mania for intervention and the media have lately been reporting the threat to the semi-colon.

Serious money for comic strip heroes in France

The English-speaking world can never fathom the French and continental passion for comic strips.  That disparaging expression does not do justice to the Bande Dessinée, the genre more respectfully known in English as the graphic novel. In the French-speaking countries and beyond, the BD, with its heroes from Belgium's Tintin to Switzerland's modern Titeuf, are not just for kids. They are revered and treated as a serious, ninth art of a kind that mixes the novel and cinema.

La BD (pronounced bédé) is big business. Last year 34 million albums were sold in France. As further proof, a Paris sale of original comic art broke world records last weekend. A cover illustration for a Tintin album went for 764,200 euros (1.22 million dollars). The indian ink and gouache, bought by an anonymous French collector, was drawn in 1932 by Hergé for Tintin en Amerique, the third adventure of his intrepid boy reporter [picture above]. The previous BD record was 177,000 euros, paid a year ago for a drawing by Enki Bilal, one of the titans of the French BD [picture below]

The ecstatic Artcurial saleroom said the auction of 653 items earned 3.4 million euros. "This marks the veritable consecration of the bande dessinée," said Eric Leroy, the house's expert. "People are no long ashamed to say that they collect BDs. The market is expanding fast."

As an honorary Gaul, I have long been a Tintinophile. The nostalgia-inducing tales have a certain magic. Like many French, I recognise lines from his adventures that have passed into the language. For example, everyone knew what le Monde meant the other day when it noted that the bad reputation of one of President Sarkozy's ministers "clings to him like Captain Haddock's Band-Aid" (Le sparadrap du capitaine Haddock). This refers to a running gag involving the whisky-soaked mariner in Tintin's Affaire Tournesol and Vol 714 pour Sydney. On a flight to Beijing with a French Prime Minister a few years ago, I noticed that his staff were briefing up by reading Le Lotus Bleu, Tintin's tale of late 1930s China.

I can also understand the attraction of some of the masters like Bilal, who created post-apocalyptic world that draws heavily on old Soviet bloc life.  And yes, Art Spiegelman has shown in the USA how the comic strip can be used to high brow ends. Yet... I still find it hard to take the bande dessinée as serious art, with its high-brown criticism, annual festival at Angoulême and venerated stars. In the past week, the media have feted the publication of the latest adventure of Blake and Mortimer, a pair of old world military Englishmen who exclaim "by Jove" on every second page. Le Monde's literary supplement on Friday ran a cover on a new BD version of Dickens' Oliver Twist.

A lot of creative work goes into the art and plot of a BD album. They have come a long way from the American comic strips for kids that inspired them in the early 20th century. It's also fair to note that the thriving genre is accessible to young creative talent in a way that the movie industry and classical publishing are not. But I still see them as fast food beside entertainment that takes more mental effort to consume. I'm happy to be contradicted by my French regulars and anyone else, so fire away....

PS: I see that Steven Spielberg is likely to cast Thomas Sangster, a 17-year-old English actor as Tintin when he makes a long-awaited movie version of the cartoon hero this year. Movies of comic strip heroes are rarely as good as the original.  I'll stick to the cardboard and paper version.

[Blake and Mortimer's latest]

Bilal's Bleu Sang sold for record price in 2007]

France and Britain clash over Beijing Olympics

Europe is in a tangle over this summer's Olympic games in Beijing.  Foreign Ministers of the Union are trying to reach a consensus today in Slovenia over the matter of using them to apply pressure on China. They will not manage because opinion is divided. This is a good moment to find out what readers of this blog think.

France and Britain have taken opposite sides, as President Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, made clear in London on Thursday. For Brown there is no question of even thinking about a boycott or staying away from the opening ceremony. The Olympics are purely about sport and London wants the best games possible, not least because it fears trouble when it hosts them in 2012. Sarkozy, however, is threatening to cancel his trip to the opening ceremony unless Beijing mends its ways, towards Tibet in particular.

There are other European approaches. In Poland, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, has canceled his trip to Beijing and he urged other democratic politicians to do the same. Germany's Angela Merkel said that she is not going to the ceremony but had never intended to.

It's all a bit of a mess. The subject produced lively argument in a French TV show in which I took part today (Canal+ here. Click on 'L'émission de la semaine). In France, a country that prides itself on its sensitivity to human rights, the political world, media and public favour some gesture of disapproval towards Beijing's conduct in Tibet and to register distaste over the nature of the Chinese regime. They do not support a sporting boycott but a CSA opinion poll this week showed that 53 percent want national leaders to stay away from the opening ceremony. Sarkozy's threat was the least he could do after two weeks of public pressure. Despite the posturing, it is obvious that he will turn up in Beijing in August because he is as reluctant to incur Chinese displeasure as other leaders with heavy commercial interests at stake. A campaign for boycotting French goods is already under way at a site on SOHU.com, one of the big Chinese internet portals.

For the moment, though, France will make a little trouble. When French-led protesters flashed a banner at the lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens, the act was largely cheered here. It was seen as a grain of sand in the Chinese propaganda machine and there will be a lot more protests when the torch reaches Paris. Leading politicians from the Socialist opposition will take part. 

The same incident was treated quite differently in the British media. They talked of "anti-China protesters" disrupting the Athens ceremony and they ran headlines on "fears" for the torch's passage through London. 

The Times delivered an unequivocal endorsement of the games in an editorial today: "The newspaper ardently opposes any suggestion of a boycott, which would be unfair to the athletes ... self-defeating for those who want to see greater freedom in China and malicious towards a country and a people who have traveled so far to celebrate their achievements as a nation and their re-engagement with the world." 

Our editorial was a response to an internet campaign in China against Jane Macartney, our Beijing correspondent. She reports today that she has become the most hated person in the country after the Government cited a Times commentator (not her) who had compared the Beijing Olympics to Nazi Germany's 1936 games.

In her report, Macartney, a Mandarin speaker who knows the country well,  makes a strong anti-boycott case: The Chinese see the games as "a moment when they want to celebrate, with the world, their achievements, development and prosperity of the past three decades." 

As no expert on China I bow to those with knowledge, but I recall that similar arguments were used about the Moscow Olympics of 1980. President Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher, the US and British leaders of the time, led a sporting boycott that caused misery for the sportsmen and turned the games into a fiasco. That prompted a less effective retaliation by the Soviet bloc against the 1984 Los Angeles games. The Russians were understandably angry in 1980, but the message of international disapproval struck home. I was in Moscow in the run-up to those games and then for three years in the aftermath. The boycott -- ostensibly over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan --  added to the pressure that eventually unraveled the Soviet Union and ended the cold war.

Those were other times. China is a whole different story and I am not naive. But there is a similarity. Moscow's ruling communist party regarded the 1980 games primarily as a vehicle for political propaganda. They invested in them massively as a showcase for the Soviet state. Beijing's communist government is doing the same for its system.

I read in the US media today that Coca Cola and the other big Beijing games sponsors are now worried about possible damage to their image from their association with China's great event. It's odd that they did not see this coming a long time ago. 

Eiffel Tower hit by fantasy

You may already have seen this picture of the stunning observation deck that is to be built around the top of the Eiffel Tower to mark the 120th anniversary of the Paris monument next year. The photographs flashed around the world after a Paris architectural firm won a contest staged by the tower's management. The New York Times and the London Guardian have already reported the story.

The trouble is that the tale is false. It was just a publicity stunt but it does offer a nice lesson in the power of the internet to disseminate nonsense and the danger that this poses for traditional media. In our business dog is not suppposed to eat dog. We don't like criticising one-another. But I'll make an exception. None of my Paris colleagues were involved.

Italian Carla opens French British affair

                                                                                                                            

France is a little bemused today by the collective swoon of the British over Carla Bruni and her husband since they arrived on their shores. All those superlatives from overheated broadcasters and the the comparisons with Grace Kelly and Princess Diana suggest that les anglais have lost their sang froid. "The English conquered by Carla," said a headline in le Parisien, under its story on "L'Opération séduction du couple Sarkozy à Londres". The British only had eyes for the Italian Madame Sarkozy, noted France2 television. 

There is an interesting precedent.  When JFK landed in France in 1961, he joked: "I'm the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris."

That is of course exactly what Sarko was aiming for when they decided to dress Madame Bruni-Sarkozy in the 60s-retro Dior outfit with pillbox hat -- even if she looked a little like an airline stewardess. Since the night of his election last May President Sarkozy has been trying to remake Kennedy's Camelot. He boasted then: "If you liked Jackie Kennedy, you're going to love Cécilia (His wife at the time)." The idyll started well with JFK style-photoshoots of young Louis Sarkozy playing in the Elysée Palace like the late John-John Kennedy. Their summer holiday in New Hampshire was a nod at the Kennedy clan's New England compound. "Sarkalot" vanished when Cécilia walked out last October taking Louis with her, but she was swiftly replaced by an even more Jackie-looking consort.

Sarkozy, as we predicted, is revelling in all the adulation, not just for his wife and the style of his travelling court but also for the "new honeymoon" that he has opened with Britain, as le Figaro put it today. His speech to Parliament, a love letter to the British unlike anything heard from a French leader, is deemed typical Sarko -- over the top. It's all very well embracing the Brits, but they have to give something in return, I heard from French politician friends. His line about the faltering Franco-German motor was clearly meant to needle Chancellor Angela Merkel. "He stuck the knife in the decades-old contract between Paris and Berlin," France Soir said. "The Franco-German couple might find it hard to get over this infidelity."

Read here for an opinion piece on psyching out Sarko that I wrote in today's newspaper.

And back to the froth: Jackie Kennedy-Onassis did not feature naked in French papers on the morning of her arrival in Paris. Carla's appearance, reproduced in certain British media (last post), was deemed un peu shocking on this side of the Channel. Once again, the British are managing to puzzle the French with their oddness -- that mixture of  formality, irreverence and eccentricity. The royal outfits are an example of the eccentric side. The Queen's hats were described on France Inter radio this morning as inverted saucepots. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, seemed to have perched a partridge's nest on her head, said another radio station.

The British Royal family, for all its centuries of refinement, does bling-bling much better than Sarko, especially with his new demure style, others noted. Reporting from Windsor, Libération had a go, describing the scene at the castle as "l'Angleterre eternelle et kitsch". Its flag-draped streets had a feel of Mickey Mouse, Libé added.

There will be general relief in government circles here late tonight when Mr and Mrs Sarko fly home after another protocol-packed dinner, with the Lord Mayor of the City of London. This was the trickiest foreign trip so far for the French president. So far, at least, it seems that he has not put a foot wrong.    

[Today's Figaro : Franco-British Honeymoon]



Sarkozy's eyes on the internet

Nicolas Princen, l'oeil de Nicolas Sarkozy sur Internet

Meet the young man they are calling Monsieur Buzz. Nicolas Princen, aged 24, has just been given a job at the Elysée Palace in which he will monitor the internet to keep tabs on what is being said about President Sarkozy.

In three days, Princen, a graduate of the ENS and HEC, two of the grandest universities, has gone from nobody to a figure of cyber-mockery as the blogosphere has laid into him. He is being called "Sarko's spy", "the Sheriff", "Little Brother", "Cyber-cop" and so on. Three Facebook groups have already assembled around him, one of them called Nicolas Princen est sexy. 

Princen's newly-created job is a response to the damage that Sarko has suffered from stories, parodies and videos that have blazed on the net and then reached the main media. In the past month, the president has been zapped hard by two such items: the notorious "pauvre con" video of his outburst at the farm show and the affair of the text message. We've already been through both here. 

Sarko yesterday dropped the charges against Airy Routier, the Nouvel Observateur reporter who posted the text item claiming that the president tried to get Cécilia, his former wife back, only a week before marrying Carla Bruni on February 2. At the same time, Bruni signed an article in le Monde denouncing le Nouvel Obs for pedalling scurrilous gossip unworthy of "real journalism" [my story here]

The Elysée says there is nothing sinister in Princen's appointment. The president's staff is just catching up with the new media. "He will be a sort of monitor of the internet, watching everything that is making a buzz about the President," the Elysée explained. "He will be keeping under surveillance... less-known sites, blogs etc. Everything that is moving on the net. [The presidency was breaking a few linguistic rules there (last post), since they said le buzz and le net in French]

The presidency may insist that his only job is to "observe and alert", but the heavily anti-Sarko blogosphere does not like the idea that this clean-cut young man who worked on the president's election campaign last year (video above) will be sniffing them out and reporting them. There are too many sinister precedents in France, from anonymous informing in the wartime occupation to the late President Mitterrand's secret phone surveillance unit at the Elysée in the 1980s. The sarcasm has been flying thick and fast, with bloggers saying they will report themselves to him with RSS feeds and so on. "Turn your pals in... and help your new friend", said one quoted by le Monde this afternoon.

Luc Mandret, who runs a successful site called Ma vie en Narcisse, addressed Princen with the familliar tu, to offer his welcome: "I wish you courage. If you know a minimum about the world of blogs, you must know that there are several thousand blogs in which you will find unpleasant things about Nicolas Sarkozy."

This of course is not one of them. And I would also add a warm bienvenue to our new reader.   

Help save the French language

Now you can do your bit to save the French language. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister [above] has just opened a site on la toile (better known as le web) which seeks French equivalents for the American-English jargon that has invaded the language. Featured words today are coach, gender and podcasting.

Franceterme.culture.fr is a new weapon in an ancient battle. Les Anglo-Saxons, whose own vocabulary has been part Gallic since the 12th century, are always amused by the attempts of the French state and its language police to defend the purity of the tongue.  Why, wonder smug foreigners, don't the French just laissez faire like the Anglophone nations and allow people to use foreign terms if they think they sounds more chic.

After living for some time on the front line in this war, let me defend France's rear-guard campaign. Yes, I share "Anglo-saxon" antipathy to the idea of policing language. It's silly, smacks of oppressive regimes and it costs a fortune -- hundreds of millions of euros a year are spent on the language bureaucracy and promoting the French language abroad.

Yet... why shouldn't a country seek ways to resist pressure from more powerful cultures -- in this case the USA? Sometimes it works.  In honour of tomorrow's International Day of the French-speaking World, I shall explain:

"I shot down Saint Exupéry" says German ex-pilot

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Some news scoops are too good to be true. I hope that this one is not false because it will solve one of the great mysteries of aviation -- and wartime history. A former German fighter pilot has claimed to French researchers that he shot down Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince and legendary French pilot-author.

Horst Rippert, 88, who lives in Wiesbaden, said that he had suffered remorse all his life after discovering that Saint Exupéry was the pilot of a P-38 Lightning of the Free French Air Force that he blew from the Mediterranean sky on July 31 1944. "If I had known that it was him, I would never have fired," Rippert told the authors who traced him and have produced a book.

[Saint-Ex at the controls of his Lightning, 1944]

France flocks back to good old days on TV

After camembert and the decision to redraw the map of champagne country, it is time to take a look at another  highly successful celebration of France's terroir, or its rich rural roots.

What does it take for a television network to beat a big football match in prime time ? Manchester United was knocking Olympique Lyonnais, France's top side, out of the European Champions' League the other night, but the French preferred to watch a yarn about a bigoted 19th century widow and her search for virtue.

Seven million people tuned in to the episode from Chez Maupassant, a costume drama that has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of drawing a mass audience to high-quality television. At the start of its second season, the setting of Victorian-era short stories by Guy de Maupassant, is such a hit that President Sarkozy is using it as an argument to convince broadcasting bosses that the French will watch high-brow television if they do it right (Unfamiliar with modern Britain, he usually cites UK television as his model).

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Paris book fair opens with row over Israel

Riot police are out in force today for the opening of the annual Paris book fair. They are not there to calm the latest French literary spat but to prevent trouble when President Shimon Peres opens the show, which this year is hosting Israeli writers as guests of honour. This may be more a news item than a blog post, but I want to record it, in the absence of much media attention.

About 10 Arab states and Iran have cancelled their attendance at the annual showcase of the French publishing industry. The Hebrew-language theme of this year's fair, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel, has upset the Muslim world and drawn criticism from some leftwing French writers and rights organisations. 

Writers' unions in usually Francophile Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Lebanon have refused to take part in the event because they say that it condones a country that violates the rights of Palestinians. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called on its 50 member-states to stay away because of Israel's "atrocities, oppression and imposed starvation and siege against the Palestinian people."

Some French commentators have also joined in deploring the invitation, especially the failure to invite Israeli Arab-language writers.

Arab boycotts of Israeli events are hardly new. What is surprising about this one, near the heart of Paris, is the lack of indignation from the usually vocal French literary establishment.

Claude François grooves beyond the grave

Thirty years ago today, Claude François was taking an afternoon bath at his home outside Paris to wash off suntan oil. Standing in the water, he tried to straighten a metal light fixture and the electric shock killed him.

Cloclo, as he was known, was 39 years old and France's biggest star of the pop-disco style. He was a slightly-built, light-voiced singer with a huge following of girl fans. Thanks to an alchemy that takes a little explaining, his death turned him from teen idol into a cult. His albums and DVDs are still selling at a rate of nearly 400,000 a year, making about 10 million euros for Claude junior, his son and the other heirs. Half his 60 million albums have been sold since his death, helping a younger generation ape his kitschy ballads and jaunty tunes in karaoke bars. Provincial clubs are full of professional Cloclo impersonators wearing copies of the 500 sequined suits that he left behind. 

But don't laugh yet, François' best-known composition was the most popular song played at British funerals until it recently gave way to James Blunt's dirge Goodbye My Lover. I am talking about Comme d'Habitude, which François wrote in collaboration with Jacques Revaux. Paul Anka gave it English lyrics in 1969 and sold it to Frank Sinatra with the title My Way. [François' version in video at end of post] 

Ten top topics for France this week

It's not surprising that the French are gloomy these days if you look at the news items that are getting their attention. Paris Match offers a regular glimpse with an Ifop poll on the top subjects of conversation at home and in the work place. 

Here are this week's top 10 and an interesting detail from Ifop. Ninety-one percent of people with university degrees said they had discussed President Sarkozy's verbal assault on the man who would not shake his hand at the farm show but only 65 percent of those without higher education did so. Only one topic (Cotillard's Oscar) is straight good news.  It's also worth noting how little sport or entertainment makes the list. The performance of the national rugby team ranked 15th.

1 -- Rising prices and (falling) purchasing power (discussed by 87 percent)

2 -- Sarkozy's exchange with the man at the farm show (77)

3 -- The campaign for local government elections (68)

4 -- The sixth anniversary of capture of Ingrid Betancourt, half-French hostage of Colombian rebels (65)

5 -- The Oscar for best actress won by Marion Cotillard (61)

6 -- The debate over how children should be taught about French Jewish children who died in the Holocaust. (57)   

7 -- Racist behaviour by supporters during football matches (53)

8 -- Sarkozy's decision to end advertising on public television (49)

9 -- Sarkozy's law allowing certain dangerous criminals to be detained indefinitely (delayed for 15 years by the Constitutional Council) (36)

10 -- The Obama-Clinton duel for the US Democratic nomination (36)    

Keith Richards sells French luggage

You remember the uncomfortable appearance of Mikhael Gorbachev in those glossy advertisements for Louis Vuitton, the French leathergoods brand. The picture of the Soviet elder statesman was not just selling luggage, Vuitton told us. It was celebrating the company's corporate "core values" and projecting the notion of "travel as a personal journey".

One wonders what kind of trip the company is trying to celebrate with its latest recruit to its "exceptional journey" campaign: Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. "Keef", now pushing 65, has lent his well-worn features to the camera of Annie Leibowitz in a New York hotel room. His pirate-look is enhanced with black make-up. A skull sits on the night table and death's heads adorn the black scarves draped on the lamps. Keith's guitar case is a custom Vuitton item. A book lies open with a magnifying glass of the kind that such senior citizens use to relieve elderly eyes. Physical sustenance is suggested by a coffee or tea-cup and pot, biscuits and orange juice. There is no hint of the more exotic substances which helped Richards rock through the ages.

The caption says: Some journeys cannot be put into words. New York. 3 am. Blues in C

According to Antoine Arnault, communications chief at Louis Vuitton, Richards is "a world icon, an inspiration for millions". In Le Monde, Arnault also managed a delicate allusion to Richards' more exotic journ