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]
![Lagarde_stewart[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201156f69fe95970c-400wi)
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.
![Ferrari_paris_match[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201156ec67651970c-250wi)
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.
------
[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.
Continue reading "Rough justice for French journalist and pilot" »
Back in President de Gaulle's days, France's only television channel sent its news scripts to the Information Minister for clearance before broadcast. Memories of the old ORTF, the 1960s state broadcaster, are stirring today as staff at France Télévisions have gone on strike. Forty percent of of the personnel at the public tv and radio networks have stopped work for the day and programmes have been suspended.
The cause is a revolution by President Sarkozy that will bring the public broadcaster under closer state control. As well as de Gaulle, Sarkozy's other model may be Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister and media magnate who controls public and private TV in Italy.
The story began last January when Sarkozy decided out of the blue to end advertising on the state television channels (It was during his slightly unhinged period between wives when he announced a torrent of odd projects, most of which have evaporated). Commercials produce a third of the state TV revenue, with license fees making up most of the rest. In Napoleonic form, Sarko also decreed that henceforward he would appoint the boss of France Télévisions and the public radio networks. For the past two decades the jobs have been the gift of an independent supervisory body, the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel).
The President said that he was acting in the noble cause of relieving France2 and the other channels from the need to attract audience ratings with low-grade programming. The state would make up for the 450 million euro drop in income from advertising, he promised. They would now be free to start producing high quality programmes "just like the BBC". The British public broadcaster is Sarkozy's model, although it has an independent charter that makes it very different from the politically-controlled entity that he is creating for France.
Sarko's lieutenants say that presidential appointment of the TV chief will merely simplify things because everyone knew that the Elysée palace had the ultimate say on the matter even though the CSA is notionally independent.
 [The ORTF in May 1968 poster]
Few beyond Sarkozy's camp bought these arguments. He was accused of giving an advertising windfall to the private networks and mainly Martin Bouygues, his friend who owns TF1, the biggest channel. The president's entourage also fanned worry about the arrival of a de Gaulle-style "TV Sarko" with instructions on the type of programming that they expect from the new France2. This includes slots to "explain" government policies. Frédéric Lefebvre, a parliamentarian and spokesman for Sarkozy's UMP party, listed the presenters and formats that they want to see in prime time [watch him here].
 [Demonstrator from France Television today]
The Parliament has started to debate the television bill today. Commercials will disappear from prime time from January and completely by December 2011. The promise to guarantee the gap in funding has yet to be fulfilled. The money is supposed to come from new taxes on the commercial networks and mobile phone companies but the TV companies have just had their levy halved to take account of the economic slump -- and the new digital channels that are eating into their revenues.
The reform will take effect despite the opposition's promises to fight it in parliament. Among one of the more shameless amendments by the Sarkozy camp is a rule designed to protect TF1 when it runs 10 straight minutes of advertising at the end of the 8pm evening news. At present, both TF1 and France2 broadcast commercials in this slot after their parallel half-hour news shows. To deter viewers from zapping to France2, the state broadcaster will in future have to fill the parallel slot with public service messages on education, health and social matters -- a real flash-back to de Gaulle's days. .
Some of Sarkozy's criticism of France Télévisions is justified. The company suffers from over-staffing, bureaucracy and aggressive labour unions. Their programming is less diverse than that of the far richer BBC but it is still of a higher quality than the more crowd-pleasing output of TF1.
The presidential interference has stirred hostility on a broad front, including much of today's print media. Of course you would expect Libération to dump on TV Sarko with glee, but it's worth quoting Laurent Joffrin, its editor. "Nicolas Sarkozy will have managed to put under his influence almost the entire broadcasting landscape of France... After one year we are returning to the belle epoque of the ORTF."
Sarko is far from finished with the media. He has now set out to rescue the printed press from its steady decline -- what he sees as largely self-inflicted. More on that later.
If you are weary with lists that rank Titanic or Harry Potter among the highest works of art, you may be comforted by a league table of great films that came out in France this week.
A jury of 76 French film makers, critics and historians were polled on their favourites and the results have been published as Les cent plus beaux films du monde (The World's 100 Most Beautiful Films).
And no, the number one was not French and only four French films reached the top 15. First was Citizen Kane. Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece was followed in equal second place by Charles Laughton's 1955 Night of the Hunter and Jean Renoir's La Règle du Jeu, made in 1939.
F.W. Murnau's 1927 Sunrise, a silent film, came next, followed by Jean Vigo's Atalante (1933), Fritz Lang's 1931 M, starring Peter Lorre, and Stanley Donen's 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain.
That gives a flavour. It is a serious list with no concession to fashion. Some critics are calling it boringly conventional. The top 15 are below and click here for the whole lot, including trailers. The ranking is heavy with black-and-white and there are a few silent movies. The most recent entrant is Pedro Almodovar's 2002 Hable Con Ella (Talk To Her), preceded by David Lynch's 2001 Mulholland Drive. The most recent French film to make the grade was the 1991 Van Gogh, directed by Maurice Pialat and starring Jacques Dutronc, the popular singer-actor.
Surprisingly, Claude Chabrol and Louis Malle, two of the biggest auteurs who emerged from the 1960s nouvelle vague, fail to make the grade.
The exercise was organised by Claude-Jean Philippe, a veteran critic and historian. The idea was to define the ideal cinémathèque -- film library.
Le Figaro, hardly an avant-garde newspaper, grumbled this morning that the experts picked the usual French-favoured classics. Only three of the French-language directors on the list are still alive -- Resnais, aged, 86, Godard (77), and Rohmer (88). Did Charlie Chaplin really deserve five entries, wondered Eric Neuhoff, Figaro's critic. And why did the cinéastes forget such high-brow regulars as Wim Wenders and Britain's Peter Greenaway ?
At least the exercise offers a chance to catch up on these golden oldies. All 100 films are being shown at the Reflet Médicis movie theatre in the Latin quarter from today until next summer and they are listed in a book published by Cahiers du Cinema, the old bible of the nouvelle vague era.
1 : Citizen Kane, Orson Welles.
2 The Night Hunter, Charles Laughton ; La Règle du jeu, Jean Renoir.
4 : Sunrise, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.
5 : L'Atalante, Jean Vigo.
6 : M, Fritz Lang.
7 : Singin' in the Rain, Stanley Donen et Gene Kelly.
8 : Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock.
9 : Les Enfants du paradis, Marcel Carné ; The Searchers, John Ford ; Greed, Eric von Stroheim.
12: Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks ; To be or not to be, Ernst Lubitsch .
14 : Tokyo Story, Yasujiro Ozu.
15 : Le Mépris, Jean-Luc Godard.
Purists here have jumped on my headline "la belle France" over the post on wind farms. The French don't say that, I was told. So let's be pedantic and look at the odd things that happen when one language borrows from the other.
I used la belle France advisedly. The expression is old but it is used internationally and it conveys a whiff of Frenchness, like Zut alors! which no-one says much either. It is one of a long list of French words and expressions that are current in English but not in France. The same happens the other way round, or lycée de Versailles, as the kids here say [footnote*].
A friend was complaining the other day that her job requires her to 'faire du phoning' -- making prospective sales calls. She had just had her brushing and was talking about a new restaurant fad called le fooding. These coinages can be useful. I find myself talking about 'un best of' because it's a good term for selected hits. We'll soon have le best of de Sarko 2008. Le smoking (tuxedo to Americans) has long been more concise than the British dinner jacket or black tie. The French media have become très people lately. The word, meaning celebrity culture, presumably came from People, the doyen of US celeb magazines.
In the other direction, a recent Times editorial was headlined Plus ça change. A Parisian colleague asked me what that meant. The proverb plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, is standard in English but has fallen out of common use here. The same goes for déjà vu and crème de la crème (You say le gratin -- the grilled cheese topping a dish -- for crème de la crème)
Then there are the errors. When I write bon vivant in an article , it is "corrected" in the newspaper to read bon viveur, conforming to the English usage. Educated Brits say "chacun a son goût" (each has his/her taste) although the French expression is "(à) chacun son goût" (to each, his/her taste).
The Eurovision song contest has added a Gallic joke to the English language: nul points. It's not French. Here, when a contestant scores nil, they say "zero pointé".
Many meanings have changed over the years. In France, une entrée is now the starter or appetizer, while Americans use it to mean main dish. The entrée originally came between the two when people ate more courses.
People stopped saying sacré bleu! around world war two, but the exclamation lives on in British newspapers and entertainment, along with zut alors! In similar manner, Englishmen in French cartoons always exclaim Damned! and greet their friends by saying "how do you do".
French gave a lot of food words to the world but doesn't use all of them itself. A Napoleon is an item of pâtisserie in some English-speaking places as well as Russia and parts of Europe. In France it's a mille-feuille (thousand leaves). Unlike the English-speaking world, France has no restauranteurs. It has only restaurateurs, which literally means restorers.
Clothes are an old field for linguistic confusion. Un slip are men's underpants (shorts). A brassière is un soutien-gorge. And there's no space to go into all the dangerous faux-amis like préservatif meaning condom. The New York Times committed a howler not long ago when it quoted Nicolas Sarkozy as saying that he had been deceived by someone. He had talked about his déception -- which means disappointment.
The two languages have been borrowing from one-another for a thousand years. Sometimes the same word gets imported twice. Vanguard, meaning the front of an army, came from avant-garde long ago. In the late 19th century it was re-imported as avant-garde, with an arty sense. English tends to mangle French words when it absorbs them. Une discothèque is still called that in its homeland while it became a disco in English.
And then, for enthusiasts who are still with me, there is the way that imported words change the sense of the original language. To the anger of the Académie Française this has been pretty much one-way lately, with French-rooted English words re-crossing the Channel and devouring their ancestors.
The verb supporter in French (to bear or put up with) has acquired the additional English meaning of backing a team or a cause. Réaliser (to fulfill or carry out) is being used instead of se rendre compte, as in "je n'ai pas réalise que j'étais un loser (I didn't realise I was a loser).
There is an embarras du choix for scoring points in the language business. Or should that be embarras de choix? Please add the words that I've missed from this résumé.
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* Lycée de Versailles is an old rhyming substitute for vice-versa (pronounced veesay-versa) .
Update: In response to comments below, this is une clef anglaise -- an English key -- which is monkey wrench in American and adjustable spanner in Britain.
We heard a little drama on France Inter's breakfast radio this morning. Mikhail Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, was making a passionate case against Russia when they read out to him the following exchange between Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy.
The scene was the Kremlin on August 12, when Sarkozy flew in to persuade Moscow to call off its invasion of Georgia.
Putin: "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls."
Sarkozy: "Hang him?"
Putin: "Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein."
Sarkozy "Yes but do you want to end up like Bush?"
Putin, after a long pause: "Ah, you have scored a point there."
Saakashvili laughed nervously when he heard this today. "I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It's funny, all the same," he said. He went on to argue that Europe had capitulated to Russia over Georgia in the same way that it had surrendered to Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938 when it let Germany occupy Czechoslovakia. That's how Saakashvili talks. He is seeing Sarko at the Elysée today and tomorrow President Medvedev is meeting him in Nice for a Russian-European summit.
The Kremlin conversation was recounted by Jean-David Levitte, Sarkozy's chief of diplomacy, to le Nouvel Observateur magazine which printed it today. Last August, I was down the corridor in the Kremlin with other reporters during the Sarkozy-Putin chat. Sarko was tense and shaky when he came out, announcing the deal to stop the war. The price was letting Russia keep the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Assuming that it's accurate, the exchange tells you a few things. It confirms that Russia aimed to to depose the hot-headed Georgian president. It confirms that Putin, the Prime Minister, was calling the shots, not President Medvedev. It also shows how Sarko has ingratiated himself with the Russians. Using the familiar "tu" with Putin, Sarko allowed himself a cheap shot against President Bush.
Levitte recounted the conversation presumably to make Sarkozy look good and bolster the claim that he really did save Goergia. It also underlines the striking U-turn performed by Sarkozy since he ran for election last year promising to get tough with Moscow over human rights.
Sarkozy said in the campaign that he preferred "to shake the hand of Bush than Putin" and promised to end the cosy ties that President Chirac had enjoyed with the Kremlin. Yet as soon as he was elected, he rushed off to cultivate first-name friendship with Putin. Levitte and Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, are close to their Russian counterparts. Sarkozy and his advisers say that the goal is to engage the Kremlin and treat Moscow with the respect which it is due as an old power. Paris wants to be Moscow's advocate in Europe.
Putin has not reciprocated the chumminess, but Moscow is pleased by the way that Sarkozy is pushing the European Union back to normal relations after the Georgian chill. "I want to pay tribute to President Sarkozy's efforts to reinforce relations between the EU and Russia in all areas," Medvedev told le Figaro today.
Sarko has turned a deaf ear to warnings from old hands about the way that Russia operates. He was briefed by Vladimir Bukovski, one of the leading dissidents of the Soviet era. Bukovski, a veteran of the Soviet era labour camp, told the Nouvel Observateur that he warned Sarkozy about the former KGB clan that runs the Kremlin.
"For an hour, I told him that it was dangerous to play matey-matey with those people and that there was nothing to gain from it except their contempt and that he risked being taken for a ride.... It did not serve any purpose."
Sarkozy has been defending himself today, attacking Bush for weakness over the Georgian conflict. Bush telephoned him and urged him not to go to Moscow to try to stop the Russians, he said. "Don't go," Bush told him. "The Russians want to go to Tbilisi. They are 40 kilometres away. Don't go. Just condemn them."
Sarkozy insisted that he had done more for human rights by persuading the Russians to stop their advance than Bush who stayed in Washington and did nothing. Sarko was speaking after receiving an annual prize for "political courage", awarded by France's Politique Internationale review.
(below:Saakashvili)
It's pure coincidence that I'm coming back to the matter of age. Look at these before-and-after shots of the makeover of Laurence Ferrari. She is the news presenter who holds the star slot at Tf1, the leading French channel. The first picture was a month ago and the second last week.
Ferrari, 42, was brought in last summer to replace Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, 60, the long-serving anchorman (picture below) who is affectionately known as PPDA. Her blonde youthfulness was supposed to win viewers back to the nightly Journal de 20h, the most-watched TV news in Europe. It failed to achieve this. So her bosses at Tf1 decided that she looked too young and sexy and instructed her to add gravitas by ageing.
Her hair was restyled to the sober anchor-woman look; she was taken out of her clingy tops and dressed in sensible dark jackets; her lipstick and tint were toned down and a few lines appeared around her eyes.
That was 10 days ago, but Ferrari's slide continues. Tf1 went to town with her US election coverage, live from New York this week, but last night her share of the audience dipped to 29 percent -- an historic low for the network. That compares with 40 percent when she started and the 36 percent held by her predecessor this time last year. Worse still, France 2, the rival, but less powerful, state network is fast catching up and risks overtaking la Ferrari.
The word in the trade is that Nonce Paoli, le big boss de Tf1, is beginning to panic. "Perhaps we miscalculated. We did not completely assess the impact of PPDA's departure," he told a meeting on October 21, according to le Canard Enchaîné weekly.
Ferrari's supporters see her as a victim of prejudice against blondes. Older viewers do not think that she has the necessary weight and seriousness. Meanwhile, PPDA is reveling in the difficulties of the woman who he believes usurped his television throne. The ex-anchor is haunting rival television studios "like the ghost son of Lady Macbeth, saying 'I was betrayed. I was stabbed'," said a column in today's Nouvel Observateur.
Footnote: Ferrari opened her news last night with the report that the French are happiest in their sixties (last post).
France is flocking to the delightful tale of a seductive charmer who takes on two young mistresses and lands in a tangle with his beautiful wife.
I'm not talking about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, though the exploits of le French lover of Washington have some similarities. This is about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the new film by Woody Allen which has topped the French box office for the past two weeks [video trailer below].
Almost a million people have now paid to see Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall in Allen's baroque ode to Spain and the lightness of being in the Catalan capital. Vicky Cristina is a bit of a fantasy about two young American women who are simultaneously seduced by a roguish painter who has a tempestuous on-off marriage with the Penelope Cruz character. It finishes up with a ménage-à-trois.
Allen is adored in France. Annie Hall, Manhattan and the other masterpieces of his oeuvre were a cult in the 1970s but his name is barely known to younger Americans. He has gone on turning out his essays on love and mortality but US film-goers turned their backs on his more recent efforts. That has been Europe's gain, with three European-financed films set in London and now his brilliant Spanish outing.
Allen, now 72, is revered here as un grand auteur. His charm, neurosis and sense of humour touch a Gallic (yes) nerve. The reviewers have mainly raved over Allen's Spanish opera, calling it dazzling, clever and sublimely melancholic. I agree with them -- and also with James Christopher in today's Times who calls it a "vintage summer dream".
In the USA, Vicky Cristina has not done badly for an Allen film since it opened on limited release in mid-August. It ranks as 81st in US box office so far this year. The New York Times, Allen's home-town paper, damned it with mild praise, concluding that "though not claustrophobic is is another cloyingly needy dispatch from a ravenous id."
How is it that an American movie is regarded as a minor art film in its own country but manages to beat out all the native comedies and US blockbusters at the French box-office?
Obviously Allen is a prophet more appreciated outside his country, where he became ringard -- annoyingly old-fashioned -- a couple of decades ago. But the Gallic Allen-mania is another example of the way that France appreciates the American sensibility that has more deuxième degré -- second degree, or irony -- than US mainstream entertainment. I don't want to exaggerate. CSI (known as Les Experts) is the top TV show in France.
You are not supposed to take the plot of Vicky Cristina too seriously and certainly not apply moral views of the kind we have seen in the DSK case. Censorious talk of "inappropriate conduct" and apologies for "regrettable lapses of judgment" do not apply.
In other words, Allen's film, like much of his oeuvre, are very European, quite Latin. Many French directors try but fail to pull off his tone. I'd mention in this category the latest effort from Agnès Jaoui, called Parlez-Moi de la Pluie (Talk to me about the rain). It's a social-romantic comedy, in which Jaoui stars, about her usual targets: the foibles of the Bohemian intellectual class. I enjoyed it a lot, but it could have done with the pace and tight editing of the veteran Allen.
Another big new film, a thriller biopic on Jacques Mesrine, the 1970s bank robber, starring Vincent Cassel, opened today to strong reviews (below). I'll report when I've seen it.
Nicolas Sarkozy is an ace lawyer but you have to wonder why he is so quick to sue in defence of his dignity. Last week, Sarko started proceedings against the former chief of the police intelligence service for circulating tales about his sex and financial life (more below). Today it's voodoo.
Thierry Herzog, the Presidential lawyer, has told a publishing firm that it must halt sales of a joke voodoo manual with a Sarko doll and a set of pins. If it fails to withdraw the 20,000 copies already in the shops, the K&B firm will be sued for usurping Sarkozy's image.
The manual and the doll are supposed to be funny. "Thanks to spells concocted by Yael Rolognese, a witchcraft specialist, you can put the evil eye on Sarkozy and stop him causing more damage," says the advertising for the manual, which also includes a satirical biography.
The presidential lawyer told K&B: "Nicolas Sarkozy has instructed me to remind you that, whatever his status and fame, he has exclusive and absolute rights over his own image,"
Famous quotes form the Hyperpresident are printed on various parts of the doll's anatomy with the invitation to plant one of the 12 pins in them. They include work more to earn more and casse-toi, pauvre con (get lost, loser) -- his words to a bystander who refused to shake his hand last year.
The doll, issued 10 days ago, is matched by another set featuring Ségolène Royal, the Socialist whom he defeated in last year's presidential election. The voodoo kits had scored only a mild media interest until Sarkozy unleashed the legal artillery. The Sarkozy one at least is now likely to be a hit.
K&B have refused to obey the presidential order to remove their voodoo sets from the bookshops. "It is totally disproportionate given the humorous aspect of the project and the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal are political, public figures," they said.
Royal's lawyer told le Monde that her voodoo effigy was an "insult to her human diginity" and that she is contemplating legal action too.
Sarkozy is breaking with a long tradition with his quick finger on the legal trigger. Other presidents -- the late François Mitterrand in particular -- have used dirty tricks such as tax audits and illegal phone-tapping to exact revenge against media trouble-makers but they have eschewed litigation. In January, Sarkozy sued Ryanair for using his image in a jocular advertisement. He sued Le Nouvel Observateur magazine last spring over a mobile phone text message that he purportedly sent his former wife Cécilia. He later dropped the case.
Last week, he started an action for breach of privacy and other offences against Yves Bertrand [in picture], the former boss of the Renseignments Généraux, the police spy agency which we have often visited on this blog. The president sued after Le Point magazine leaked diaries in which Bertrand had recorded damaging tittle-tattle and intelligence about him and other politicians and public figures.
The diaries, which were seized by investigating judges and leaked to the press, reported on an alleged affair that Sarko was said to be having in 2002 with the wife of a colleague, who is now one of his senior ministers. They also included claims about adultery, partner-swapping, drug abuse and corruption in the high political world. Sarkozy's lawyer said "Bertrand allowed 'news' on private life to be made public with an undeniable intention to damage". [original news story here]
I'll come back later with a fuller post on the sleazy diaries of the secret policeman who kept his masters in the know for 12 years until 2004. The affair, very much in the tradition of French police snooping, seems unlikely to fade -- especially since Sarko is taking Bertrand to court.
"Quel con" translates into polite English as 'what a fool'. That's the expression that many in France are applying to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the talented and popular Socialist who has made his mark lately in Washington as boss of the International Monetary Fund.
Strauss-Kahn, 59, as you will probably know, is in trouble over a one-night fling that he enjoyed with a married subordinate last January at the Davos international forum in Switzerland. It seems pretty likely that "DSK" , who is married, will be cleared later this month of allegations that he abused his authority when he seduced Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian-born banking expert who worked in the IMF Africa department.
When he heard of the matter a few weeks ago, Sarkozy was furious that DSK, one of the most admired French politicians and a likely Socialist candidate for the next presidency, had risked his chance to restart his career and help France. But the Elysée Palace had been hoping that no news would break until Strauss-Kahn had been cleared by the Washington DC legal firm which was brought in last August to investigate.
DSK is a likeable man with a reputation for enjoying the company of women (the flattering picture above was used when he was trying to win the Socialist presidential nomination last year). One newspaper today called him un grand séducteur. Last year, a Libération journalist caused a fuss by wondering on his blog how long it would take for Strauss-Kahn's wandering eye to land him in trouble in Washington.
We got the answer last spring when Mario Blejer, a senior Argentine economist who is Nagy's husband, began campaigning to have him investigated for abusing his power. We were tipped off along with other journalists in Paris. Mr Blejer discovered the episode via the classic route of stumbling on an incriminating e-mail. His wife confessed and the couple were both very upset and blamed Strauss-Kahn for pursuing her aggressively, IMF colleagues said at the time.
The investigation was made public by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday with timing that could hardly have been worse for Sarkozy's attempts to put a French stamp on a new world financial order. Sarko has teamed up with DSK in an attempt to shape a new "Bretton Woods" pact on financial regulation. Sarkozy put the French-led European case to President Bush at Camp David, Maryland, yesterday, and got a frosty reception.
So you can guess the response from some sections of the French political and media world: The IMF affair is another absurd case of American hysteria over sex, like the affair of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. DSK's private life is nobody's business and he has obviously been stitched up in a plot to undermine France. That charge was laid, for example, by Jean-François Copé, the parliamentary leader of Sarko's UMP party.
But the view is by no means universal. Even allies of DSK are privately calling him idiotic for letting his taste for dalliance get the better of his judgment.
In a well-informed piece today, Claude Askolovitch, Editor of Le Journal du Dimanche, wrote that "Dominique le Magnifique" had caused a French farce by breaking well-understood rules.
"The affair may well be ridiculous compared with the destiny of the world but it touches the heart of the culture of the American government and the IMF," he said. "It is less about sexual puritanism.. than a deep horror of lies and conflict of interest. The absolute sin is not fornication, but denial, in which private life is mixed with public behaviour."
His newspaper carried its usual Washington political column by Anne Sinclair, DSK's glamorous wife, a celebrity television journalist. Sinclair, who is a tough cookie, is publicly standing by her man. She has written on her blog today that she has forgiven "cette aventure d'une nuit" -- this one-night adventure. "We love each other just as much as at our beginning," she said.
For the record, Nagy left Washington in the summer and now works in London at the Bank for Economic Reconstruction and Development (BERD). Strauss-Kahn has confirmed the "incident in my private life in January 2008" and denies that he abused his position as managing director of the fund. The BERD said that there was nothing irregular about Ms Nagy's recruitment and it is not investigating.
People who have talked to DSK say that he is confident that the affair will blow oved once the investigation has cleared him. If that is the case it will not have any impact on his chances of running as the Socialist candidate in the 2012 president election. At lunch today the (French) majority around my table argued that affairs at work are nobody's business if coercion is not involved. A woman who has une aventure with her boss should take responsibility and not seek to have him punished and pilloried, it was said. And before people pile in here, we all know the counter argument to this.
Strauss-Kahn, incidentally, ranked in a poll yesterday as France's second most political figure, behind Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist Mayor of Paris.
With capitalism near the rocks -- at least in a widespread French view -- it seemed a good time to check in with France's leading advocate of old-style revolution.
Olivier Besancenot, the popular young Trotskyite and former presidential candidate, has been in the news this week, not just because many are looking to his anti-capitalist movement for salvation. He has also been the victim of a bizarre plot.
Besancenot kindly received me along with a colleague at his little office, on the first floor in the printing works of the Communist Revolutionary League (LCR) at Montreuil, the borough that adjoins Paris on the east. Fittingly, the nearest Métro stop is Robespierre, named after the leader of the revolutionary Terror of the early 1790s.
Besancenot, a part time postman in the posh western suburb of Neuilly, is only 34. In other lands, he would be dismissed as an oddity. In France, with its historic love of insurrection, he is a star. He and his fans believe that his time has come.
"We are at the end of a cycle. We are at a major turning point in the course of the world economy," Besancenot said as he surveyed the "crisis of capitalism" that was forecast all those years ago by Karl Marx and his successors.
In black sweater and jeans, the baby-faced Besancenot looks more like Tintin, the boy reporter, than political heavyweight. But his mix of eloquence and cheek have turned the "the red postman" into a serious player, a leftwing populist who needles the established parties from factory floors and tv chat shows. He won 1.6 million votes as the LCR candidate in last year's presidential election; he enjoys a 56 percent approval rating -- well ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy. An August survey ranked him second most effective opponent of the President -- after Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist Mayor of Paris. On Thursday, Le Monde gave him half a page to pronounce on the crisis. "The system is ending by drowning in its own blood," he said.
With the wind in his sails, the timing could not be better for Besancenot to launch his New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). He has been anointed as leader by most factions of the far left, except the fading Communist Party. Support is flowing in from the young, green activists, anti-globalisation types and from traditional leftists who are turned off by the Socialists' embrace of the free market and attracted by the romance of revolt. "If the Socialists have completely discredited themselves, it's not my fault. Holding power drove them crazy, made them giddy," he said.
But this week we glimpsed the darker of young Olivier when a judge revoked the parole of a leader of Action Directe, a 1980s revolutionary group, who was serving life for murder. Rouillan broke the terms of his release by publicly backing Besancenot and giving an interview in which he refused to voice remorse for the 1986 killing of the chairman of the Renault company. Besancenot has refused to disown Rouillan.
He has also hit the headlines after the head of the French distributers of Taser stun guns and six private detectives, police officers and a customs official were arrested and charged with spying on him and his family. They targeted him apparently to smear or blackmail him after he campaigned against the use of Tasers by French police.
The Socialists -- and the old trade unions -- dismiss Besancenot as a trouble-maker who has no plans for governing. He is seen as useful to Sarkozy because his cause undermines the mainstream opposition just as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right leader, was long the bane of the Gaullist movement. Many commentators also see Besancenot as a charismatic magnet for discontent with little prospect of power, like Le Pen.
Besancenot's new party may be aiming for the barricades, but it is starting humble with candidates for the European Parliament in next June's elections. "We are proposing a change of software," said Besancenot, who took his proletarian job after earning a history degree at Nanterre university, Sarko's alma mater.
The world has only known capitalism and the bureaucratic communism founded by the Soviet Union, he said. "The only model that has not been tried is the one where the majority decides for itself." One of Mr Besancenot's ideas -- nationalising the banks -- no longer seems as extreme as it did a month ago. He is trying to link his party with anti-capitalist movements across Europe, including Britain's Respect coalition, in which his frend Ken Loach, the film director, is involved. [watch video of Loach endorsing Besancenot]
Besancenot is a fan of Che Guevara and other Latin American revolutionaries but his ideal, he says, is the Paris Commune of 1871. That brief exercise in people power ended with thousands dead, mainly at the hands of government troops who retook the city.
The young militant talks an ambiguous line on violence of the kind that has accompanied France's periodic upheavals since 1789. "For us, revolution is not terrorism," he said. "It is a majority of the population breaking onto the public stage to change society. It is counter revolution that is violent".
Besancenot softens such talk with jokes and assurances that his internet-age revolution will welcome a free press and multi-party democracy -- provided of course that they do not conflict with the will of the people.
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[Watch video of Besancenot in talk show action against class enemy Charles Beigbeder, businessman and capitalist champion]
Two major Nobel prizes in one week is not bad for a country that is anguishing about its cultural decline.
France has just pulled it off with the literature award for its novelist JMG le Clézio after Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barre-Sinouss (below) shared the medicine prize with Germany's Harald zur Hausen for their discovery of the HIV virus.
It was only the third time that a French writer has won the Literature Nobel since Jean-Paul Sartre was anointed but refused the honour in 1964. Not since 1952 had it won two prizes. They went that year to Albert Schweitzer for Peace and François Mauriac for literature. There was even an outside chance that this week could have produced a hat trick. Ingrid Betancourt, the Franco-Colombian former hostage, was thought to have been in the running for the peace prize and had even tempted fate by reserving a hotel room for a victory news conference.
Here's my story from today's newspaper. One of the first conclusions is that Le Clézio, 68, was well qualified for a Nobel. His style may be avant garde, but he is not one of the navel-gazing introverts who have given a bad name to the modern French novel (see last month's post on Christine Angot). He is seen as a big picture writer, dealing in universal human themes in the tradition of Hugo and Zola. He is also an apostle of the environment and specialist in endangered cultures -- qualities that play well with the Stockholm committee.
Le Clézio, whose father had British nationality, is a polyglot globe-trotter who lives mainly in New Mexico after a life travelling in Latin America, Africa and Asia. He was one of the signatories of a proposal by a group of authors last year to save the Gallic novel by uncoupling the language from France and turning French literature into "world literature" written in French.
An enigmatic character with the looks of a handsome adventurer, JMG le Clézio had been tipped for a Nobel for the past two decades and he was favourite yesterday. He is quite familiar in France from his television appearances and he has a devoted following but he has a reputation for being difficult and never been really fashionable. Most of his 48 novels have been translated, but he is far from a celebrity in the English-speaking world. Newsrooms scrambled yesterday to find background and commentary on him. I had to confess that I had never read him -- a shameful admission for a long-serving Paris journalist. All that will change as his work, ranging from his 1963 Procès Verbal (The Interrogation) to Ritournelle de la Faim (Same old Story About Hunger), published last week, reach global bookshops.
Here are some excerpts in English from Clézio's texts, in today's NYT
President Sarkozy was naturally quick to hail Le Clézio for bringing honour on his country. "He embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world," said the President's statement. "A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clézio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures." I would guess that Sarko, who is no great lover of fiction, may be among those inculte people who have not read him yet.
In the eternal contest of France versus les Anglo-Saxons, it has been a pretty good month for Gallic pride. As well as the Nobels, many in France have been saluting what is seen as the end of the "Anglo-Saxon" creed of deregulation and free markets which has held sway since the early 1980s.
Nicolas Sarkozy had a hard time in Normandy yesterday trying to convince workers at a Renault car factory that he was a regular guy who understood their fear of losing their jobs. That might be because of photographs such as this one.
The picture, from this week's Paris Match magazine, speaks for itself. Times are hard and the French are worried for their livelihoods yet their president is posing for glamour pictures with Carla Bruni, his wife, in the Carlyle hotel in New York City. In the picture, taken by Pascal Rostain, Bruni's regular photographer, Sarko seems to be aiming for something between the Great Gatsby and Al Capone, as played by Robert de Niro. In the one below, captioned "Alone in the world in Manhattan", Sarko seems to be the hero in a romantic comedy. The text even talks about the couple's "Manhattan escapade".
It is hard to grasp the logic which drives Sarko to show off like this. In recent months he had toned down the "bling-bling", his instinct for exhibitionism, after the pollsters told him that it accounted for a big part of his unpopularity. He even put it out that he spent his evenings on his collection of ancient manuscripts and postage stamps. But people close to Sarko say that he is on something of a high these days, revelling in his role as crisis manager and trouble-shooter for Europe.
He was reported this week to have been boasting in private that he had "stopped the Red Army" on its advance to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, last August. His European mini-summit on the financial crash last Saturday produced almost nothing but Super Sarko visibly enjoyed his job as chairman -- which he holds a current steward of the European Union's rotating presidency.
The excitement of battle seems to have got the better of Sarko's judgment and that of his image advisers. Having luxurious fun in New York, the source of the financial mayhem that has hit Europe, is surely not a great idea. It hardly matches the censorious terms with which Sarko damned Wall Street greed in a speech in Toulon two days after his return from New York. It is especially surprising since the president ordered his ministers last month to stop appearing in glamour shots in the celebrity press. "In times like these, I don't want to see pictures of anyone at fancy events in dinner jackets (tuxedos) and long Dior dresses," he was reported to have told the cabinet. The main target was taken to be Rachida Dati, his Justice Minister.
It is interesting to muse on what Charles de Gaulle would have made of the behaviour of the fifth man to follow him in the presidency. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Fifth Republic, the presidential regime that was tailor-made for the old wartime saviour. The system was deliberately monarchical to get away from decades of parliamentary paralysis. But Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle led an austere life, even paying for their own telephone calls at the Elysée Palace, or so it is said. These pictures suggest that Nicolas and Carla are enjoying life at the other extreme.
It is refreshing to step out of France for a weekend in England because you are reminded how different life still is on each side of the waterway that separates the old rivals.
Here are a few notes. Little will be new to British expatriates and readers here who know both countries. Please add all the points that I have missed.
Arriving in London, you are reminded that France is still a more formal society. In Paris, old-fashioned civility ensures a distance between strangers though this can sometimes seem unfriendly, especially to foreigners. You also notice that while the French state may be more paternal than Britain's, it treats its citizens more as adults.
Old class-ridden Britain has become more egalitarian and friendly. Strangers address one-another in familiar terms that can be equivalent to using tu rather than vous in French. But social interaction has also become rougher. After the relative harmony of Paris, London, with its bustle and multi-cultural mix, seems crowded and rushed, like New York used to feel for visiting Britons.
We witnessed a scene in Islington that seemed right out of modern-day Moscow. A multi-coloured police-car with sirens screaming blasted down a sidestreet scattering pedestrians who were nearly mown down. "C'est vraiment le far west ici," commented my French companion. The aggressive policemen are of course ultimately taking orders from bosses who with names such as Nick, Ed and Andy and who talk as if they are your mates. In France, members of the cabinet are still very much Monsieur or Madame le/la Ministre.
On the social side, my friend, who has little experience of English-speaking countries, draws the contrast between London pubs and Paris cafes. She is impressed by the cosiness and conviviality in traditional pubs, even in the shoving to get to the bar to be served. She is also puzzled by the raucous noise, made by women as much as men. In the Paris café, you pick out a table and keep to yourselves, waiting for service that is often indifferent.
One thing that hits you entering Britain is the nanny-like chivvying from loud-speakers. The London Underground is a non-stop speech. Loud voices, pitched somewhere between TV host and sergeant major, exhort passengers to move along, to stand back from incoming trains and so on. When there are no delays to report, they busy themselves by telling you that service is running normally. On a southern region train to rural Sussex, the talk never ended, between welcoming new "customers" aboard to pointing out that rain makes station platforms slippery.
France and the rest of the continent are catching up in this field, but travellers are rarely harangued this way. After years of criticising Britain's mania for closed circuit television, France is also adopting the practise, but it is nowhere near the blanket surveillance that Britain now applies.
I hesitate to use the word nannying, but the loud-speaker habit is part of a tendency to explain the obvious and organise people's behaviour. You also see it in the simplified language of British television news. That brings up a role-reversal in cultural stereotypes. British TV reporters now wave their hands all the time while French ones hardly gesticulate at all .
In the bossy vein, you could not imagine in France such stunts as the present crusade by Jamie Oliver, the television chef, and his aptly named Ministry of Food. He has set out to shame a whole city -- Rotherham in Yorkshire -- into cooking more healthy food for its children. Some of the junk food die-hards are understandably rebelling.
Linked with the new British enthusiasm for caring and interfering are taboos over language that might be deemed divisive or judgmental. The Guardian, a great newspaper in other ways, has just offered a lovely illustration with a new style guide, the house rules for its journalists.
They are now banned or discouraged from using the following terms because they cause offence: invalid, elderly, suicide, the deaf, old-age pensioner, Asians, mental handicap, grandparent and so on. They have to use softer terms -- in other words euphemisms -- such as "a person with learning difficulties" for mentally handicapped. Even the word nation is out because it supposedly implies homogeneity.
"Reserve nation to describe people united by language, culture and history so as to form a distinct group within a larger territory," says The Guardian's language master. Never could you imagine such an instruction being given in France.
Naturally, the Guardian outlaws the expression that springs to mind for the above: politically correct. This term (of American origin) is "an empty rightwing smear designed to elevate the user", says the stylebook. It's odd then that the Guardian does not ban the word rightwing, which is most certainly a smear in its vocabulary.
George Orwell, that great scourge of the manipulation of language, would have had a field day with the Guardian's strictures.(His 1946 essay Politics and the English language is still the bible on the subject).
France has gone nowhere nearly as far down these paths as Britain. State agencies probably do not do enough explaining, especially for non French-speakers and immigrants (a word discouraged by the Guardian). The bureaucracy is still a nightmare, especially, for poor French-speakers.
But France has its linguistic taboos too. It turns a blind eye to matters of race. Ethnic descriptions are avoided by using euphemisms such as "des jeunes" (young people) for young men from immigrant housing estates.
But sex distinctions ('gender' in the new sensitive English) are still very much alive. A woman thespian is une actrice and a female cabin attendant is une stewardesse. In English, people are reduced to being "chairs" to avoid being man or woman. French is still often more paternal and patronising towards women, reflecting French society. In advertising, female secretaries still take orders from male bosses. At the Académie Française, they still address gatherings as just "Messieurs", ignoring the presence of les Académiciennes.
Those are just random home-thoughts-from-abroad and before anyone points it out, these differences can generally be observed across the Germanic-Latin divide of western Europe and the story is much the same in the rest of the English-speaking world.
Continue reading "France and England: vive la différence!" »
This might be an exercise in what the French call "shooting at the ambulance", or kicking someone when they are down. But here's a look at the French reaction to Sarah Palin.
Like the Gallic adoration of Barack Obama, the French view of John McCain's vice-presidential choice has been simplified by the cultural filter. The personnage of Palin and the initial enthusiasm she generated were puzzling for a country that disdains displays of faith and moral certainty. Her convention joke about hockey moms being pitbulls with lipstick took a lot of explanation.
In le Monde, the elegant Dominique Dhombres explained that Palin was an elemental type from l'Amérique profonde. "She is a go-getter, almost an assault tank. A virago ? That's for you to decide... She believes in God, America, the family and firearms. She defines herself as 'une maman hockey'."
On France-Inter, the main state-run radio station, a commentator this morning described Palin as une sacrée bigote -- a really sanctimonious woman (literally 'a holy bigot', though the words are softer in French).
French feminists have had the biggest trouble with Palin. They have come round to the conclusion that she is a dangerous agent of anti-feminism. "The exhibition of this fundamentalist version of femininity and maternity in the American presidential election concerns all of us," wrote Julia Kristeva in Libération. "Whether she represents the banality of evil or tragic caricature, can this strangling of women's emancipation... be reversed?"
Elle, the thinking Parisienne's fashion weekly, denounced Palin on Monday as "the incarnation of a new femininism, as dangerous as the 'Islamic feminism', which has recently been invented by the Muslim fundamentalists." Marie-Françoise Colombani, Elle's editorial columnist, concluded that Palin was proof that the "worst enemy of woman is often a woman."
Palin's self-undoing with her inept interviews has been greeted with relief and a little gloating. Headlines today called her "Sarah la gaffeuse" and McCain's Achilles Heel. Libération had fun filling a page with her confused answers to questions from Katie Couric and others. Her words about Vladimir Putin "raising his head" and flying over Alaska and her incoherent views on the Wall Street bail-out have been prompting widespread mirth.
Below, from today's le Nouvel Observateur, McCain says: "There's only one solution left." Palin replies: "Bomb Wall Street".
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John,
Sorry for still having some white people around.Are we still allowed to display old postcards, pictures of our grand-parents, see our former kings queens eventhough they were all white? If you have a problem with Europe being mainly white, Africa being mainly black, China being mainly asian, then i am afraid you'll have to deal with it and... suffer...Maybe you have a problem with skin colours?
You remind me some politicians claiming after loosing an election "We are right, the people is wrong, let's change the people!"
Daniel Strohl,
Et pourquoi voulez vous me changer mon biotope à moi que j'ai? Vais-je me plaindre des concerts, des bateaux sur les canaux, ou de l'accent charmant des habitants de Strasbourg en des termes aussi violents? Je pense que vos mots ont dépassé votre pensée. Les parisiens ont-ils encore le droit d'organiser des évènements sur Paris ou bien n'est-ce réservé qu'aux provinciaux en province? Les parisiens vous semblent "rances"? Je ne n'aventurerai pas sur ce terrain là...
Posted by: Dominique | 17 Jul 2009 18:17:21
"Touché" (DOMINIQUE II)
LOL !
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 17:11:22
DOMINIQUE II,
Per pure coincidence, we watched a "retransmission" of Dr.Knock on TV may be 3 or 4 days ago (on cable TV - can't remember the channel).
A perfect complement to an article about (the well and purposely organised) waste of money in our Sécurité Sociale system :
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sante/2009/07/18/01004-20090718ARTFIG00001-medicaments-des-milliards-d-euros-gaspilles-.php
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 17:04:54
"and France's moderate drinking habits" (CHARLES)
LOL - reminds of some recent poster comments on various more or less exotic drinking habits :).
"which will throw all these central Paris bobos and their stale view ..." (JOHN)
Let us hope so - mais ils vont essayer de s'accrocher :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 16:51:29
(demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year, but I'm not sure what's the tower is doing there).
Surtout qu'elle est agressivement placée sous le menton de l'ondine volante.
Posted by: DODO | 17 Jul 2009 16:40:30
.....I'm sure Cabu will have a nice pension until his last quiet days drawing such rubbish. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 17 Jul 2009 12:41:42
Excellent comment Robert! Délicieusement politiquement incorrect. A chaque action répond la réaction. Loi physique implacable qui fait que le jeune révolutionnaire (Paix-au-Vietnam) devienne généralement un vieux conservateur (Bobo)
Posted by: DODO | 17 Jul 2009 16:30:09
RM
you've explained the lack of comment on countering the vandalism, and the dismissive tone of remarks about 'hard to discover in the middle of the night,' other excuses for not pursuing perpetrators.it almost excuses the abuse, the price society pays for pissing off various societal sub-groups because of lack of opportunity, gross inequity of wealth, etc.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 15:12:58
What's shocking in this picture is the whity-white Aryan woman that they chose. It completely negates the ethnic diversity of the Parisian population. But then it's typical of Delanoë's municipality, which has unfortunately ruled this city since 2001. Their waspish and Amélie-clichéesque boboism is sickening. I can't wait for Nicolas Sarkozy to finally create a Greater Paris including the ethnic and working-class suburbs which will throw all these central Paris bobos and their stale view of the city into the dustbin of history.
Posted by: John | 17 Jul 2009 15:05:38
[demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year] CB
is 'poster woman' flying or diving? no matter, esther williams 'lives.'
the only good thing i can think of about one-piece suits is not having to look at navel rings/studs, or those defiling, small 'gremlin,' or rose, tattoos peeking out above the suit line.
how do you do 'topless' in a one piece suit? the upper portion of the suit hanging down at the waist? hmmmm, not the 'look' you'd want to emphasize.
Paris Plage: cool idea. CB, will you be taking your pastey-white (i presume) British form, and sandwiches, over there from time to time? Take SPF 30 or above.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 14:51:49
RICK my anecdote on the U-Boot (which I can substantiate on request) was not meant as random entertainment nor as a profound view of potential parallel histories. It was to be read in the same breath as the previous sentences: "I wouldn't have posted the pics but you were fair game. Enough with the posturing." (said pics being HRH the Duke of Edimburgh and the Missus on the best of terms with the distinguished Chancellor of the Third Kingdom).
My point, which was clear to anybody with average command of standard English, was that you do not, and should not, enjoy immunity from taunts about appeasement and ill-placed sympathies, because only a very thin hull or a leaking gasket spared you the dire straits we floundered in.
We were not a weak, cowardly populace as opposed to you, a proudly fighting nation; we were very similar human beings in slightly different circumstances. And Sir Winston, who perfectly perceived this, had the genius and the unique ability to mold the circumstances so the English had no choice but to stand proud. In so doing, he took the only path to the good side's victory and I am unreservedly thankful to him.
(Layman's summary: I was not delving in non-realized theoretic possibilities, but in historical fact, ie the status of opinion and political tendencies in Britain before and at the beginning of the war).
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:51:44
ROCKET "Whereas in the case of French soldiers, both men and women no hygienic products necessary. (very wide grin)"
LOL it is clear Daniel had opened himself to your well prepared and well delivered broadside. Touché.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:14:56
RICK "persecution fantasies, (...) xenophobia, ‘esprit de clocher’, localism, infantilism, and so on"
Are you morphing into the blog's Dr Knock, head shrink variety?
(I won't insult you by explaining to you who Dr. Knock is).
It's so much easier to slap pathological-sounding labels on arguments than to address them...
I know, I know: René's post contained no arguments. That's your standard and rather tiresome summary of anything that riles. Find something else... it's especially ludicrous in that case. René certainly held an opinion, but he made his points with clarity, supported them with fact and remained courteous throughout. (The last one is why I'm not promoting him to honorary Frenchman).
Meeting his post with such undeserved contempt may help you vent your bile, a laudable end per se, but your own credibility isn't enhanced a single bit.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:04:25
Thanks Azloon - yes you are right in principle: Democracy is to be valued. But my problem is that France has a long history of extreme division and when the figures are that close it leaves a lot of people disgruntled as we have seen lately. It would have been better if they had been more like 60% - 40% something decisive even though I still wouldnt have liked the outcome (smile). Anyway we shall see at the next parliamentary and presidential elections. I just hope by then that the *Socialist* party has got itself together so there are real differences of policy. Democracy is about choice and if there is no real difference (look at Con servative and New Labour policies over the last 20 years broadly speaking) then there is no real choice. Anyway as you say keep hoping!
Posted by: thinknoworpaylater | 17 Jul 2009 14:02:25
[since old hand posters like myself and others know your name and address] Daniel
Thanks for reminding me. Just knowing this helps keep me from going completely overboard. and we 'old salts' don't want to become 'all wet.' :)
Rick, indeed.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 13:54:18
"consistently monochromous' -- Dom2
i love it when you talk that way to me.....
'probably sincere'
faint praise, indeed. but better than a stick in the eye. :)
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 13:34:27
As Charles Bremner has hinted, the official poster campaign purporting to dissuade vandalism on Vélibs is woefully inadequate. In fact, it encompasses the contradictions of modern-day political thinking on multiple levels.
Cabu, who drew the poster, is one of the French icons of May-68 rebelliousness. He spent decades using his (real) talent to depict, in his cartoons, long-haired youngsters making fun of old farts : teachers, army officers, priests, bosses and politicians.
Unfettered freedom was good ; authority was bad.
Cabu's character "mon beauf" acquired such celebrity that he coined a new word into the French language.
Cabu's "beauf" was the brother-in-law ("beau-frère") of the young, cool and leftist narrator.
His "beauf" was the anti-hero : middle-aged, working-class, ugly, vulgar, loud-mouthed, and, especially, right-wing and racist.
"Mon beauf" spent hours at the bistro du coin drinking Ricard, ranting about law and order and criticising excessive immigration.
Cabu's young, easy-going and likeable hero (presumably himself) seemed constantly appalled by his beauf's dreadful inclinations. The cute, blonde young things with short skirts and pointing tits who always seemed to surround the hero helped ram the message home : racist right-wingers don't get laid.
(How do I know they were blonde, since the cartoons are black and white ? Don't ask. That's obvious.)
Now, everybody in France understands what "un beauf" means : a middle-aged reactionary, pleased with himself, disparaging the young and ranting about law and order.
The irony is even greater, since Cabu's character evolved into a second-generation "beauf", more in line with modern times. This born-again, upmarket beauf' sports a ponytail and flashes his wealth around.
He's dangerously close to the "bobo", the bourgeois-bohême who, surprise, suprise, is the prime user of Vélibs.
Now Cabu seems to be on the Paris mayoral payroll : he has a regular column in the free municipal magazine, drawing cartoons as tame and unfunny as the Vélib poster.
Of course, the Paris mayor is socialist. I suppose that might be viewed as an excuse.
Also, note the downright stupidity of the poster's argument : don't attack Vélibs, because they can't defend themselves.
This shows how deeply out of touch our elites are with modern-day reality. If anything, such an argument will encourage vandals, not the other way round.
Haven't they noticed that the traditional, Western, French, Christian sense of honor, borne out of Middle-Ages chivalry, that this poster is appealing to, has completely disappeared ?
When was the last time hoodlum violence followed those time-honoured rules : you will fight one-on-one, you won't attack from behind, you won't hit a man on the ground, you won't hurt the weak, the old, the handicapped, or, God forbid, the women ?
Did not those snotty intellectuals and politicians notice that the rules for street violence have been turned on their head ?
Did not they notice that the rules now are : you will attack ten to one, you will hit from behind, you will make your victim fall, you will kick him in the head when he's on the ground, you will jump on his head with both feet, you will preferrably target the weak, hit the women, hit the old, hit and torture the handicapped ?
Did they not notice that the rules of chivalry have been replaced by the rules of Muslim warfare and African barbary, thanks to 40 years of uninterrupted immigration, of "anti-racist" propaganda and policy ?
If those rules stopped at Vélib vandalism, we'd be very fortunate.
Now that those old leftists are beginning to fathom the consequences of the hostile and deadly immigration they have foisted upon us, all they manage to do in order to repair their mistakes is use our money, from our taxes, to distribute to their friends who'll draw some lame propaganda posters.
I'm sure Cabu will have a nice pension until his last quiet days drawing such rubbish. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 17 Jul 2009 12:41:42
Oh la la - quelle belle phrase - vraiment formidable - "est-ce que le pays a les moyens de ses ambitions"? Really, when you come to think about it, it could apply to practically any other European country and European leader, and to Gordon and New Lab more than most. Helas, trois fois helas, l'Angleterre n'a plus les moyens des ambitions de New Lab. Cher Premier Ministre, que vous le vouliez ou non, vous devrez tres bientot couper les defences publiques, et tout le monde le sait- ca a deja commence- sauf vous. Cher Monsieur Brown, le pays n'a plus les moyens de vos ambitions. Excusez, je vous prie, le manque d'accents - mon PC est plutot New Lab et n'a pas les moyens de ses ambitions- graves, aigues ou petit chapeau circonflexe.
Posted by: Marguerite | 17 Jul 2009 12:24:20
They tried this too in Dublin's docklands for the last couple of years, but being typical Irish summers it rained every day and was a washout
Posted by: Evening Herault | 17 Jul 2009 11:42:27
"No, DOMINIQUE 2, to stop France looking foolish - something her friends DON'T want!" [RICK]
Gardez moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m'en charge.
("Protect me from my friends. I'll take care of my enemies").
Yes, ho ho, but unfunny, undignified too. The sheer capacity some French bloggers have for making for making fools of themselves is a source of constant wonderment.... and great disappointment.
Elsewhere, I wrote two long pieces to YOU. You quote for one (above). They were written in a sense of earnest seriousness. In return I get a snide aside.
Please understand this, PIERRE, I wrote “to stop France looking foolish”. That fact stands, no matter how often you scoff. In the big wide world out there, a lot of people don’t have much time for the French. Undeceive yourself. And recognise a friend.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 10:18:43
The Paris scheme is truly excellent and its a shame so many bikes are being lost. To be honest its not really a French phonnomeon if you put schemes things like this in big cities where people with huge degrees of wealth live side by side your always going to get people inclined to steal or vandalise such things, its just the way it is whethet in London, New York Paris or wherever. I'm suprised there's been such problems in Norway though can't account for that.
Posted by: sct | 17 Jul 2009 10:17:24
RH OMEA
2. And the idea that any American, where most every violent crime rate far exceeds that in France
If you are speaking about violent crime your appreciation is erroneous and this since the early 2000s
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/266umtwb.asp
en français
http://laurent.mucchielli.free.fr/france-usa.htm
which goes deeper into the phenomenon of criminality. So your remarks about criminality should really be checked before you are certain that you hold the absolute truth (stereotyped of course)
A few years back Le Figaro did a long piece on this subject.
But as DOM2 said
We laugh at ourselves much more, and much more cruelly, than you could even dream. I suppose that he also meant that France's own offer a critical eye also.
But lest one of "sang impur" dare raise their voice in opposition to the "esprit de corps" and "pensé unique" of "il ne faut pas affoler les français" then we hear many crying foul.
Posted by: rocket | 17 Jul 2009 09:36:21
"No, DOMINIQUE 2, to stop France looking foolish - something her friends DON'T want!" RICK
Gardez moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m'en charge.
("Protect me from my friends. I'll take care of my enemies")
Posted by: Pierre | 17 Jul 2009 09:35:34
STEPHANE (a bit late) AFAIK a troll is somebody who gets his jollies by incensing fellow bloggers with outrageous posts, which generally have nothing in common with his true opinions (if he has any). AZLOON's posts are consistently monochromous, thus probably sincere, and he's not the most obdurate basher - I'm not even sure I would qualify him as a basher, more as an honestly prejudiced product of his education and environment.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 08:38:03
‘There was a German U-Boote commander who had to be promoted to a land-based posting after he underwent a deep nervous breakdown: a torpedo he launched was one of the many pieces of defective ordnance the Kriegsmarine had in its arsenals... and the target was a dreadnought with Churchill onboard. But for a rusty gasket or a leaking joint, you might now be in thrall of Lord Halifax, Prince of Peace and Gauleiter von der See.’ [DOM2]
Whether this is true or not is a matter of profound insignificance. The past is cluttered with ‘what ifs’.
On the other hand this kind of recourse to the realms of theoretic possibilities – non-realised – is richly illustrative of the state of your troubled psyche.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 08:11:09
‘RENE MOYA : wow, was that a cavalry charge or carpet bombing? you sure don't take prisoners. A pleasure to meet you, sir.’ [DOMINIQUE II]
It takes one to know one. DOM2, herewith your diagnosis:
Denial. Ego defence mechanisms are psychological strategies brought into play by various people to cope with reality and to maintain self-image. The observed features include:
persecution fantasies, morbid fear of straight questions, rationalisation, (deliberate) misunderstanding, misquoting, bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, shooting the messenger, projection, moral cowardice, obfuscation, narrow-mindedness, wishful thinking, mythomania, provocation, the ‘smear and sneer’, hypocrisy (‘cheap and cheerful’), hypocrisy (advanced, tangled), deceit, self-deceit, delusional vanity, ‘fool’s paradise’ syndrome, ‘exceptionalist’ delusions, morbid inability to admit to mistakes, recourse to not-entirely-convincing-or-comprehensible American demotic mode of speech, narrow vision, lacunae in comprehension of standard English, anxiety-projection on near-to-hand ‘hate object’, minimal self-awareness (‘figure of fun’ syndrome), retreat into Oblomovian womb-substitute, compensatory tactics ( ‘Francophonie’), xenophobia, ‘esprit de clocher’, localism, infantilism, and so on... oh, and chickening out of straightforward questions (bis).
Now, how many of these boxes do you tick? Sorry, pal, but your credibility is shot to hell.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:59:20
"the infrastructure in the United States is not crumbling."
Remember what I was saying the other day about believing that 'saying it makes it so'?
"For example, the inter-state highway system is proably the best in the world."
Do not confuse the extent of the system with the quality of the roads. (The Autopista in Spain is first rate. I hear that the Autobahn is something to behold.) The Interstates I've been driving in various parts of the US in the last couple of years are in bad shape. In a couple of places it is downright dangerous. It has not always been this way. Billions have been spent on improvements, while far too little has been spent on maintenance.
"The infrastructure falling down bit was way over exaggerated by politicians from the Left"
Fox or Limbaugh, no doubt. Bridges? School buildings? Power grid?
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 17 Jul 2009 07:40:46
AZLOON, I presume that the first two paragraphs of your most recent posting were not intended for me. We MUST continue to disagree like this and set - as I know you will agree - a fine example in the art of reconciliation.
For the last two paragraphs, thanks.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:13:48
‘CHARLES - I am, as you know, not David Moorcroft, nor he I.
However he (David Moorcroft) makes a very fair point.
A very fair point indeed.’ [DOT KING]
As, usual, DOT KING is her own worst enemy. A few months ago, I complained about her antics. These actions make her ‘fair game’, now and in the future.
‘‘I do not post under anything other than my own name (except I was Henry Wilt briefly last week only to take the p-ss, quite gently, out of Rick as a teacher*’ [DOT KING] Beneath contempt. Worse, the problem of assumed identities again rears its head. (Henry Wilt from the Tom Sharpe novels) In this writer’s case, we’re into anonymity and poison-pen territory. How charming! Like the Yanks, I can take this kind of thing, but can’t help wondering: ‘What if it had been someone else?’’
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:02:49
"They convey a reaction against the problems of mobility in general." -- Bruno Martzloff
I think he is referring to the difficulty of getting around in a large city. So many people spend a couple of hours each day going to and from work and doing other errands, which can be tiring and frustrating and sometimes infuriating. People may lash out at the bicycles because they are seen as taking money away from the metro, buses and roadway improvements, which would more directly improve the lives of the vandals.
How respectful of pedestrians are bicyclists in Paris? I have been run over and knocked to the ground three times in Boston, each time while walking down the sidewalk.
I imagine that it is difficult to know if the vandalism is being done by various types of people for various reasons, or if there are a handful of people doing most of the destruction. A dedicated few can wreak a great deal of havoc, as with graffiti.
In fighting graffiti in New York, the metro found that if no train which had been painted left the yard, the graffiti artists derived no pleasure from their work. Eventually, most of them lost interest, and went on to other venues where their work would be seen.
In Australia or New Zealand, they have tried insinuating that men who drive too fast have small penises. I have heard how well this has worked.
Others perception of one's act seems to be important in anti-social behavior. Maybe the ad campaigns should focus more on only losers vandalize bikes, or cool people ride bikes, or girls don't date boys who do such things.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 17 Jul 2009 06:45:16
To all those forlorn French (and French-loving) souls who are offended by my remarks, let me try to establish my bona fides as an admirer of things French. I came to this blog as a lifelong admirer of French culture which began when I first encountered the wonderful word of french film as a teenager. If this is 'trolling,' I plead guilty.
So Let Us Now Praise the French:
Agnes Varda, whose wonderful film autobiography is just opening here, is one of the world's truly great film makers, and she only happens to be a woman. And she had the good taste and good fortune to marry another of the planet's true film masters, Jacques Demy. The French invented great film making, and the world is in its debt.
Nuclear Power. The French fearlessly surged forward in this fleld when the rest of the world cowered. It will now reap the benefit of being the 'go to' country for all things nuclear which is as it should be. Chapeau.
Health Care. French citizens can rest easily knowing that their health care is provided for, and high quality health care at that. Not having to face debilitating anxiety, as many do in the u.s., about catastrophic illness, the French can pursue their life interests with more zest and assurance. The country also has world-class pharmacological research and development.
Cultural Preservation. With a culture worth preserving, the French do this as no other country. And the natural beauty of France is taken seriously and protected. A great example for others.
Innovational Financial Instruments. France has been ahead of much of the rest of the world in the development of sophisticated derivative instruments used in risk management. It's regulatory approach to its financial services industry is an example the u.s. might well have followed (and may yet:)) A nod to you, Daniel.
This may or may not dissuade you from your impression of some of us inveterate critics of contemporary French goings-on as cretinous French bashers. Some of us actually like the place. And we take our cue for our criticism from Voltaire, and our deep solace from Montaigne
I believe that if this were a blog about Fiji, we'd be talking now about Fiji-bashers. Please lighten up a bit. Life is short.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 02:24:35
DON -
And how is California doing?
Posted by: christopher muir | 17 Jul 2009 02:23:43
1. Discussing bike theft as if it were a uniquely French tendency is bollocks. In Holland, bicycle theft is as normal and expected as the sunrise. The expression quoted in a WSJ article concerning the composition of the canals below the water line was:
"een derde Modder
een derde Water en
een derde Fiets"
2. And the idea that any American, where most every violent crime rate far exceeds that in France - while many LE budgets have been slashed, has any moral high ground from which to lecture about enforcing the law is laughable at best.
Posted by: RH Omea | 17 Jul 2009 00:40:32
GILL,
Bona fides is also used occasionally in French. However, one would not use it (or its translation "bonne foi") to say that a word or expression is correct because it is listed and defined in a recognised dictionary.
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 00:21:11
AZLOON,
No major problem with French bashing or whatever bashing, as long as it is not morbidly obsessional and not courageously :) anonymous.
Fortunately, you don't fill these criteria since old hand posters like myself and others know your name and address and know also that you are not morbidly persuaded that you alone (along with your country) hold the universal truth :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 00:09:07
The 14th July always produces mixed feelings. There is the toy soldiers' bit like the parade of tanks and bridge layers in my local High street or our miniature Joan of Arc military parade in front of the statue in my street (8th May).
But it might be worth reflecting on the ambiguity of the situation : a French army and navy with its aristocratic officers still in a very anti-British tradition. No meaningful participation in World War II (the soldiers were all made German prisoners). Yet a Franco-German axis it is said (German president was there too). Yet an army that put down immediately after the war the Algerian, Vietnamese etc populations using Gestapo torture methods. I would like to think that modern France is that creator of republican freedoms.
In, case in any one thinks the Sarkozy interview was an exceptional example of bad French journalism, remember the exploitation by Giscard and Mitterrand of journalists who could be on very intimate and private relations with the same politician (the French word is 'couché'). On the other hand French viewers who look around their channels can find excellent discussion programmes for the happy few (C dans l'air, or the excellent parliamentary channel LCP AN.
,
Posted by: paul | 16 Jul 2009 23:29:14
DANIEL,
I had thought perhaps that nous was only UK English and not American English but I was obviously wrong. It is in the Oxford English Dictionary which I think proves its bona fides (bonne foi in French?)
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:59:18
The problem in Paris must be related to the fact that it houses a large proportion of the under-priveleged in relation to the highly priveleged but I cannot understand why Norway should have the worst vandalism. I am sure if this scheme is introduced in London, as has been mooted, we would also see a high level of vandalism.
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:51:02
RENE C MOYA AND STEPHANE,
I know that Azloon is old enough and big enough to look after himself but I cannot ignore your comments. Azloon made valid comments on Charles' article and asked some equally valid questions. You, however, have contributed nothing constructive to the discussion and I am not even sure if you have read Azloon's comments in their proper context. All you have done is to criticise another blogger for no readily apparent reason. Who are the trolls?
Sorry, Charles I do not normally get this uptight but this incensed me.
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:42:44
On a more practical note, I've been using Velibs in Paris since the beginning.
The system was horrendously complex to work out on the first time, but once you'd went through the hoops once, it was OK.
However, there has been a dreadful fall in the quality of service since the system was launched. The proportion of out of order bikes, docking posts or even whole stations is staggering.
Vandalism is bad enough, but it's not the only culprit. Many bikes obviously in working order are locked onto their posts, with a red light signalling that the computer won't release them. Sometimes, half of all the bikes on a given station are unavailable because of that.
It's not uncommon for a whole station to be out of order, because of a mysterious computer glitch.
There's also one particularly irritating and now frequent failure -- or should I say deliberate scam ?
If you pay by the day as I do, the machine gives you a ticket. You need it if you want to take advantage of your "subscription", which enables you to as many further free rides as you wish during the next 24 hours, provided they last less than 30 minutes.
More and more often, the expected ticket does not appear at all. If you wait too long for a ticket that refuses to come out, you've lost your 1 euro : you are entitled to begin the process all over again for free -- except that you need to punch in your client number, which is supposed to be printed on the ticket, which doesn't exist.
Knowing the French, I suspect some foul play is at work there.
I'm about to give up Velibs altogether.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 16 Jul 2009 22:27:14
And then you surpassed yourself, RENE:
‘I've got to say, Charlemagne, that this post by itself--and the tendentious Europhobia it displays--is more than enough to get me off reading your blog, and almost enough to get me off reading the Europhobic, Psycophantic/America-Praising Economist as a whole.’
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 22:09:44
On March 12 of this year a RENE C MOYA addressed the European correspondent of ‘The Economist’ as follows:
‘Charlemagne, Your logic is impecable(-ly stupid).’
‘...but did The Economist hire you because there was a gap in the 'tortured logic' department?’
Needless to add, you continued in this way for a long time. You’ve got ‘form’, boy.
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 22:06:23
"I don't really know what that means."
A delightful understatment by our favorite British correspondent.
Actually, he's far too polite to give it straight to you : most French sociologists, and 100 % of those who get quoted in the media, are half-wits on the state payroll churning out leftist propaganda -- and that's in the rare cases where anyone can make some sense out of their pronouncements.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 16 Jul 2009 21:56:50
DAISY "Perhaps the french [sic] should learn to lighten up a bit and poke fun at themselves. If they did, others wouldn't have to do it for them."
Ma petite Marguerite, perhaps you should learn some French and peruse some French media. We laugh at ourselves much more, and much more cruelly, than you could even dream. Why, think you guys actually keep bleating Sarko is the best ever thing that happened to France... when he is the most mocked man in the country.
What we find unpleasant and boring is the endless repetition of prejudiced stereotypes which only advertise the inanity of those who mouth them with such naive self-assurance. And what makes these inanities unpleasant is not that they hurt our pride, which they don't; it is that they end up building a wrong, adversarial, despicable picture of a great people we always liked and admired.
Now, Daisy dear, do feel free to "poke fun" at us. As long as it is - you know? witty. Funny. To the point. Otherwise, don't be surprised if you're booed. And, it now appears, from both sides of the pond.
Posted by: Dominique II | 16 Jul 2009 21:50:32
RENE MOYA : wow, was that a cavalry charge or carpet bombing? you sure don't take prisoners. A pleasure to meet you, sir.
Posted by: Dominique II | 16 Jul 2009 21:35:50
p.s. to Daniel
You can't be oblivious to the fact that there is liable to be more french-bashing on a blog about France that there is to be A-S bashing. Just the way it is. If we had met on a blog about Fiji, we'd be arguing about Fiji-bashing. :)
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:26:03
[Azloon, may be you are not the best placed to qualify a person or a nation as being hypersensitive - I remember some of your reactions which one could have qualified as "réactions de vierge outragée" :)).]
sans doute, c'est vrai. why am i supposed to 'best placed to qualify' in order to spout off? that' no fun.
and do i have to be insensitive myself in order to accused others of excessive sensitivity? not possible :)
Rick, my comment about Indian troops was truly simpleminded, in keeping with my simple mind. Marching 'british style' means behaving marginally like those who are occasionally derided by he French. that' all. about u.s. troops? just another potentially controversial invitation. no big deal, or deep meaning.
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:23:00
'the xenophobia of some half-wits'
'Perhaps WASPs could stop being so self-righteous. That includes you, in case there is any doubt.'
STEPHANE, are you applying for the post of judge or the accused?
By the way, you have a nice line in reasoned argument - not.
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 21:12:12
Daniel
"The reason why the American army deems it necessary to have more personnel in logistics than for instance the French army is now fully clear for me: they have to transport all the extra stuff needed by their lady warriors - creams, powders, mirrors, combs, mobile showers with huge water reserves, hair dryers with powerful generators to feed them adequately in the desert and so on :). I am not sure whether the yield is optimum..."
Whereas in the case of French soldiers, both men and women no hygienic products necessary. (very wide grin)
Posted by: rocket | 16 Jul 2009 21:10:16
[Perhaps the french should learn to lighten up a bit and poke fun at themselves. If they did, others wouldn't have to do it for them] Daisy
Daisy, your check is in the mail. :)
and, of course, as usual, you are spot on !
But don't expect widespread French 'lightening' soon. it's a bit endemic, but mercifully not universally accurate, witness several French posters here, Dominique II being a prominent example (he will probably disavow any praise from me out of concern for his reputation :)).
-----------
To: Rene C. Moya
Rene, I welcome your characterization of me, unflattering though it is. You've got spunk, a good brain and write well.
But, of course, as we all are from time to time, you're dead wrong in this matter.
You said:
[And then of course you round on the French by obliquely suggesting they're either law-breakers ('...a population that thinks taking your boss prisoner is just fine.') or too watery to hold criminals to account] Rene
'Lawbreakers' is a perfect description of the French in the matter of sequestration (what the rest of the world calls 'hostage-taking'), and it's done with a wink of the eye from police. If you had participated on this Blog as long as i have, you might recall CB's piece that cited a poll showing more than 50% of all French approve of 'sequestration.' Enough said?
And as for bicycle vandalism? Is it not fair, and completely logical, to inquire of about law enforcement efforts to catch offenders? You may not be a particularly curious person. I am.
I obviously feel no compunction about defending France's reputation, or the u.s.'s for that matter. Stupid is stupid, wherever it occurs, and there's no known cure for stupid. If you want a tamer blog, a little more polite, and sugar-coated, may I suggest La Petite Anglaise.
---------
[But on most blogs and chatrooms the likes of Azloon are just called trolls] Stephane
About other chatrooms/blogs, I wouldn't know since I participate in none of them, and never have. I've been here two and half years and have made my share of outrageous comments. But my reading of the various definitions of 'troll' leads me to believe I don't quite achieve a level of troll pathology.
But I'll accept your verdict if enough other posters here agree with you. You're off to a good start with Ms. Moya, and Jay Whachamacallit.
BTW, are you aware that you are not required to read the posts of those who annoy you? This isn't a school exam. You won't be tested on everything printed here. :)
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:03:20
[I wonder, Azloon, how you manage to have nothing better to do than come to this blog just to make snotty comments about the French. …. Because that's a sure-fire way of getting the generally high-quality public services the French have...as opposed to, say, a decrepit train network as in the UK, or a crumbling public infrastructure as in the United States. - Rene C. Moya]
Rene, the infrastructure in the United States is not crumbling. For example, the inter-state highway system is proably the best in the world. The infrastructure falling down bit was way over exaggerated by politicians from the Left to get the Obama stimulus bill passed a few months ago.
You think the French have “generally high-quality public services”? Tell that to the 15,000 older people who died in ONE month in France a few years ago (Aug. 2003). That would be equivalent to 75,000 older people dying in one month in the United States. Not even close.
Or how about the deficit of 200,000 people willing to work in the French health care system.
http://www.webinfrance.com/france-hopes-to-recruit-200000-young-people-over-5-years-to-hospital-jobs-in-france-221.html
For two generations young French people have been avoiding going into probably the most important of the public services in France. If it is so ‘high quality” then why are they avoiding it like the plague?
Or the fact that the average age of a French surgeon is over 55 or that they periodically go into exile in Spain or Britain (strike). Why is this? Or the fact that almost no new drugs, diagnostic procedures, surgical procedures have been developed in France over the past two generations. The U.S. produces 80% of the world’s new drugs, diagnostic procedures (e.g. MRI scanners) etc.
You might want to read several books by French authors who have detailed the many, many years of America bashing by the French. (“Anti-Americanism” by Revel, “The American Enemy – History of French anti-Americanism” by Philippe Roger.)
The criticism of the French by Americans is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the bashing the Americans have taken from the French for many decades. Think I am
exaggerating? Read those books and contradtict the facts that they recount and document copiously. Revel was a member of the Academie Francaise and hardly a Francophobe.
Wouldn’t you do better to get your facts straight before going after Azloon? Just a suggestion.
Posted by: Don | 16 Jul 2009 20:28:20