Nicolas Sarkozy should leave Albert Camus alone to rest in peace. That sums up the reaction among much of the thinking class and of the late writer's own son to a plan by the President to transfer Camus' remains to the Panthéon, the secular temple where the France inters its greatest men and women.
The country is about to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of the author of L'Etranger and La Peste. He died along with Michel Gallimard, his publisher, in a car accident in January 1960 near Sens, just south of Paris. Camus, a Nobel prize winner, has never been more popular in France and the world at large. Controversial in his life-time, he has emerged in recent decades as a towering figure. While the reputation of Jean-Paul Sartre, his colleague and rival, has sunk, Camus is revered as a humanist who twigged early to the evils of totalitarian ideas, whether of left or right. The problem is not Camus, it is Sarkozy.
The President is merely following a tradition of honouring the nation's heroes. Jacques Chirac, his predecessor, had the remains of Alexandre Dumas and André Malraux, the Gaullist hero and post-war writer, shifted to the Left Bank necropolis which houses Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie Curie, Louis Braille and many less-known heroes.
But the operation looks too much like another stunt by Super Sarko and his slick staff to win public favour while his stock is low (down two points to 36 percent approval according to today's Ifop rating). The literary world and the left are always suspicious of Sarkozy's literary excursions. They also sense that he is using Camus as part of his dubious campaign on national identity.
They claim that Camus, author ofl'Homme Révolté and advocate of the individual over authority, would have been appalled. Olivier Todd, one of the most eminent of Camus' biographers, said "This is a gimmick. It's part of his technique of hijacking the intellectual milieu. It flies absolutely in the face of everything that Camus stood for.... Camus does not need Sarkozy. Sarkozy needs a little intellectual glitter."
Catherine Camus, one of his two surviving children, has mixed feelings [Sarkozy with her in 2007 picture]. On one hand, she approved because "this would be a symbol for people for whom life is very hard." But her father was a man who detested great honours, she noted. "That is why it is not a simple question."
Jean, her twin brother and co-heir to her father's very lucrative legacy, told le Monde via intermediaries yesterday that he is opposed. Moving his remains from his grave in Lourmarin, near Avignon, would be be a "counter-sense" for a man who abhorred pomp and state honours. He also suspects that Sarkozy is trying to cash in on his father, according to le Monde.
The Elysée has twice sent Catherine Pégard, a former journalist who is now a Sarkozy adviser, to try to change Jean's mind.
I have always found something a little macabre in the practice of panthéonisation. I would agree with Alain Finkielkraut (the football-loving philosopher) who says in today's JDD newspaper that he has nothing much against the honour. It would help show that a poor pied-noir-- a north African colonial -- was a component in Sarkozy's famous national identity. But, he said: "I have the feeling, perhaps superstitious, that he should not be extracted from his last resting place."
A small footnote. L'Etranger was the first book I read in French. As a 16-year-old British immigrant in a South Australian high school, I identified with Meursault, the anti-hero, as teenagers have done ever since. That book was for me the beginning of a long affair.
The Simpsons offer clever satire on American culture but they often fall flat when they take on foreigners. Here's a new example, a brief parody of Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy. This clip has taken off in France since it appeared on the internet at the end of the week.
The episode, called The Devil Wears Nada, went out in the US on November 15. Homer is accompanying Carl Carlson on a visit to Paris. They bump into the Bruni character, a femme fatale who throws herself at Carl. Note Sarkozy's office, with camembert on his desk and Bruni with a glass of wine. The President answers the phone: "You're getting cosy with Sarkozy."
French commentators have been noting the obvious. The episode is about American clichés and not about France or the Sarkozys. Don't forget that The Simpsons invented the taunt Cheese-eating surrender monkey. The Elysée Palace had nothing to say about the episode. Perhaps the producers should have asked the Sarkozys to do their own voices. When Tony Blair played himself on The Simpsons, the jokes were gentle in comparison.
A groan of disappointment went up from the commentating classes of old Europe today. After the long and painful birth of the Lisbon treaty, the Union has, they say, anointed nonentities to its two new supreme posts.
The word may be unkind for Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian who has become first President of the European Council, and Baroness Ashton of Upholland, its first "Foreign Minister" [both in picture]. But it is fair if you subscribed to the pitch that was sold to the people.
The Union would finally equip itself with a face who would stand equal to the US and Chinese Presidents. And the US Secretary of State would at last have a phone number for her opposite number in Europe — that of the new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy.
Now these heavy-hitting posts have been bestowed on a kindly Christian Democrat who is known only in Flanders and Wallonia and to a Labour Party stalwart ... with zero experience running foreign affairs. The word heavyweight does not spring to mind.
For the establishment of French, German and other subscribers to the old "European Project", these choices make a mockery of the dream of a robust new Union. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former President who drafted the defunct Constitution of 2004, noted drily: “The Europeans have not picked a George Washington”. My friend Jean Quatremer, Libération's Brussels correspondent, talked of catastrophic choices today and demolished Van Rompuy with a nice French flourish: "Plus simple et plus cliché belge, tu meurs* [Any simpler and more Belgian cliché than him, you die*] Michel Rocard, a former French Socialist Prime Minister, made his case this morning. "This is a bad decision. I deeply regret it. Political Europe is dead," he said on France-Inter radio. But Rocard, a master of old-style backroom politics, knows that there was no chance that the Union would endow anyone with serious power to act in its name. It is not just that the national leaders do not want a rival big-shot, as Tony Blair might have been if he had been given the presidency. The matter is that the 27-member Union is far from a coherent political entity and does not want to be.
Despite British fixations about federalists, the species has long been endangered. France and Germany, the two big powers, have no interest in pooling more sovereignty. President Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel are the least Euro-enthusiastic leaders of their countries for decades. The smaller states to the north and east do not share the lingering federalism of the Benelux nations and the sections of the European Parliament.
The Union does many fine things. It ended Franco-German conflict and has bred prosperity. It runs a single market, harmonises regulations and keeps playing fields level, but its members never planned to stand back while Brussels-based supremos took over the show.
You can even argue that the creation of the new posts and the appointment of minor players have diluted further the notion of centralised power. In answer to Henry Kissinger's famous quip about Europe having no phone number, it now has four: José Manuel Barroso, President of the Commission, Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, Cathy Ashton, the "Foreign Minister" and the member state that continues to rotate every six months chairing the Council of Ministers. From January, that will be Spain.
[* The expression alludes to the title of a popular 1982 comedy starring Aldo Maccione, "Plus beau que moi, tu meurs" -- More handsome than me, you die]
Big football victories are moments of national joy. Hundreds of thousands of French celebrated in the streets in big cities until the small hours this morning after their lads blasted their way into next year's World Cup final. Those were the Algerians, whose team beat Egypt in Khartoum. The rest of France's fans are skulking, voicing varying degrees of shame over the way les Bleus won their World Cup slot with a fraudulent goal against Ireland.
Thierry Henry [above], whose hand helped the ball reach William Gallas, the scorer, has come in for the worst abuse. (For non-experts here, the referee did not see the move. It was flagrant when replayed to the television millions but the ref's word is final in soccer). Henry is being pilloried as a volleyball player. French fans have assaulted his Facebook entry, along with outraged Irish ones. His Wikipedia entry was briefly pirated with obscenities. The sardonic headline in le Parisien said: "Henry gives a great helping hand to the Bleus." L'Equipe, the sports daily, said simply: "The Hand of God" -- a reference to Maradonna's similar exploit in 1986.
There is quiet relief, much disgust and no jubilation over a catastrophic performance by a side that long ago lost the affection of the nation. Henry's offence was worse than Zinedine Zidane's head-butt in the 2006 World Cup final, it is held, because that at least did not make the country feel like cheats.
Roselyne Bachelot, the Health and Sports Minister confessed to mixed feelings "between cowardly relief and great worry". President Sarkozy was less forthright, saying that the match was painful "but the main thing is we won."
They hauled a star philosopher onto the radio this morning to expound on the implications for the national soul. "There was cheating," said Alain Finkielkraut, a specialist in moral matters. "We are faced with a real matter of conscience," he said on Europe1. "From the moral point of view I would almost have preferred a defeat to a victory in these conditions. We certainly have nothing to be proud of." The key word there is "almost".
Along with everyone else, Finkielkraut stuck the boot into Raymond Domenech, the hugely unpopular national manager who saved his job with the dubious win. "Domenech is without shame," said the philospher. The manager did not help matters with typically insensitive comments after the match. He saw no foul and was happy. "All those who love French football are happy," he said on television.
France has at least been given an occasion to savour its love of paradox, or having it both ways. The shoddy victory can be both a source of shame and a great blessing at the same time. L'Equipe conveyed this with a headline: "Miraculously saved on the edge of the abyss". Le Parisien's front page said simply "Miraculous".
Bixente Lizarazu, one of France's 1998 World Cup winners, called the Bleus' performance catastrophic and said France should bow its head. Jean-Pierre Escalettes, President of the French Football Federation, said he understood Irish frustration but advised them to put it behind them. "You have to take a philosophical approach. Football is played on small details, however, qualification is still beautiful."
Away from les penseurs, Vincent Duluc of L'Equipe voiced the general view of the game. "It was an incredibly bad evening.. It was a miracle to have survived so long in such a void, with those little-boy passes and fear of average players, a miracle to have survived all those Irish opportunities in the heart of the most bungled match for ages in the history of the French team."
Back on national identity, last night's excitement offered a glimpse of the challenge that Sarkozy faces with his current campaign to define what it means to be French. I waded through crowds of joyous, flag-waving French-Algerians on my way home across Champs Elysées early this morning. There were very few French tricolors in sight. The young fans were nearly all French, yet they were celebrating a win by their parent's home country, with which they identify. And it's worth noting that most of the Algerian national team were born or trained in France.
Finkielkraut said all this goes to show that "it is ridiculous to say that French national identity is embodied in football."
This one is for Sarkologists. The video here has become an internet hit over the past couple of days because it gives an unusual glimpse of the odd, defensive character of the President of France.
The scene is a private ceremony at the Elysée Palace a week ago. Sarkozy is praising Dany Boon, the comedian-film director (see last post), before awarding him the Légion d'Honneur. He breaks from his text to ramble in a sentimental and rather bitter way about the vicissitudes of life -- notably on race, religion, love and success. We hear Sarkozy casting himself as the unloved outsider -- the character familiar from his biographies.
Guy Birenbaum, an acerbic commentator, put the video on his blog, calling it "a formidable and fascinating self-portrait of the real Sarkozy." He is "at times tender, sometimes funny, occasionally hurtful without meaning to be".
After praising the fortitude of the people of Sangatte, scene of the former Channel refugee camp, Sarkozy makes dubious jokes about Boon's humble northern France origins as the son of an Algerian truck driver and a Catholic French mother. "Not great as a starting point, you have to admit. Luckily the Republic opened doors for you... You already chose fiction over reality in preferring the name of Dany Boon to the very pretty real name of Daniel Hamidou.... I can take the liberty since my name is Sarkozy. But Hamidou, well, try and make a career with that!" Watch Boon's face as Sarko labours this point.
Then he mention's Boon's conversion to Judaism, the religion of his wife Yael. "To fall in love with someone. To convert. To understand her culture... Not behave in the classical way -- the man full of sucess who leads and the wife behind who follows. I find that quite stunning. We'll have to talk about it, it's a thing that interests me." The husband of Carla Bruni says that he would say more, except he has spotted the video camera.
He says Boon is the example of a man "who can succeed without making a scandal, without insulting anyone, without believing he has to sign up to the dominant way of thinking. That's quite strange, and on top of that people love you." You don't need to be a shrink to see that Sarko is contrasting his own case there.
"I find that very uplifting," he continues. "You don't have to play the false intellectual. You don't need to bite the hand that feeds you (cracher dans la soupe). You don't need to belong to a current of thought that is supposedly obligatory when you belong to a certain milieu. You don't need to brag."
Then Sarkozy, one of France's biggest braggers, reaches a self-revealing conclusion. "As for me, I am not obliged to decorate only people whom I do not know, only people that I do not like, only people who have spoken ill of me. I am going to do something strange. I am going to decorate someone who deserves it..."
Those are bizarre remarks for a head of state but they are pure Sarkozy. Members of his cabinet report similar rambling addresses at their weekly meeting with him. He has always had a persecution complex and it seems to be getting worse under the pressure of the mockery which is showered on him, not just on the internet, but from his own side as well. For the past two months, there has been a stream of anti-Sarkozy polémiques, greatly amplified by the internet (and mostly reported here). Much of it has been self-inflicted -- like the Prince Jean affair and last week's false claim to have taken a pick to the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989. On that story, it was interesting that TF1, the TV network with the most influential news, did not bother to mention Sarko's Berlin wall embarrassment, though it was the top story on internet sites and fed cafe and workplace chatter for days.
The Elysée is working on a strategy to quell these distracting brushfires. They are costing Sarko public support. His approval ratings have dropped some six points over the past month to well below 40 percent.
 Clint Eastwood brings down the curtain on a busy foreign policy week for Nicolas Sarkozy tonight. The President is decorating the Hollywood star with the order of Commander of the Legion of Honour [Picture left from after the event]. Eastwood, 79, is rising from officer grade, awarded to him by President Chirac, to almost the highest distinction that France bestows on anyone. What is the service that Eastwood has rendered ? Sarkozy's office says the honour is deserved because Eastwood "is a global star who is very fond of France."
Eastwood is one of France's -- and Sarkozy's -- favourite Americans. The President's love-hate relationship with the United States has turned out to be little different from that of his predecessors. Sarkozy began in 2007 almost by throwing himself into the arms of the United States. He took his first summer holiday as President in New England, not far from the Bushes. He has cooled off in a big way. Obama's refusal to take up his offer of special complicity has been taken as a personal affront by the French President. On Monday, he tore a strip off Obama over his failure to come to Berlin for the Wall celebrations, according to a leak of his remarks in le Canard Enchaîné.
"Obama is very disappointing in foreign policy. He doesn't just have difficult relations with me," he was quoted as saying. "It's the same with (Chancellor) Merkel and (Prime Minister) Brown. Europe does not excite him. As for the rest of the world, it's a disappointment too. The language has changed. There has been an opening up. The hand is outstretched but it is grasped by no-one."
A few days earlier Sarkozy launched into an anti-Obama tirade at the weekly cabinet meeting, comparing himself highly favourably with the US president, who, he said, had only managed to produce a single reform so far.(Le Canard is usually quite accurate with its Sarkozy quotes. Ministers read it closely to find out what the boss is thinking)
A colleague from the New York Times has just sent me this interesting quote from Obama's book “Dreams From My Father” . It explains his coolness to Europe. Talking of an early visit, he writes:
By the end of the first week or so, I realized that I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t that Europe wasn’t beautiful; everything was just as I imagined it. It just wasn’t mine. I felt as if I were living out someone else’s romance; the incompleteness of my own history stood between me and the sites I saw like a hard pane of glass…”
The image of the rejected suitor also applies to Sarkozy's big event this week -- the presence of Angela Merkel at the Armistice Day ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. Two days after the Berlin ceremonies, it was moving to see a German leader, surrounded by German uniforms, taking part for the first time in France's remembrance of Germany's 1918 capitulation. Sarkozy's aim was to emulate the gesture of reconciliation by the late President Mitterrand when he held hands with Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Verdun battlefield in 1984.
 The ceremony was part of Sarkozy's push to revive the Franco-German axis that was traditionally the core of the European Union. He has returned to the safety of the old European locomotive after giving up on a new cosy relationship with Britain.Merkel has warmed to Sarkozy of late but she is wary of his grand schemes for unity. These include the permanent exchange of Cabinet Ministers. While Sarkozy's Arc de Triomphe speech was long on poetry, the German Chancellor used hers to ask for substance -- closer coordination on the economy, the environment and so on. Berlin deplores France's profligacy while Germany is trying to rein in its public deficits.
It was easy to see that the rekindled Franco-German affair is still much warmer on the French side."France looks a little like the rejected lover in this couple de raison,"le Monde said on Wednesday..
Sarkozy confirmed his conversion to the Franco-German cause in a remark quoted by le Parisien yesterday. Everything in Europe, he said, is finally decided à deux, between France and Germany. We'll see if that is the case when the 27 leaders thrash out their choice for the new President of Europe at a summit next Thursday. Merkel and Sarkozy are reported to be behind Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister.
In the meantime, Sarkozy found a moment to promote his domestic theme of the moment: the nature of the national soul. On the site of a World War Two Resistance monument in the Vercors, he revived a speech from his election campaign on patriotic pride. "One builds nothing on self-hatred, on hatred for one's own kind and detestation for one's own country. That is why we must talk about our national identity. It is a noble debate... not dangerous," he said. In passing, he repeated his view that Muslim women with covered faces "have no place in France".
Down in the polls half way through his term of office, Sarkozy is getting good mileage with his great debate on national identity. The government has circulated a list of topics for public meetings organised by its local officers (Read here). But two days after his hymn to Europe in Paris, Sarkozy neglected in his patriotic speech to make a single reference to Europe or any other country.
It seemed for a while that this year's Goncourt literary prize came and went without the usual row or scandal. Now we have one, of a sort.
There was general approval last week when France's most prestigious book award went to Marie NDiaye, 42, a Senegalese-French novelist. No woman had won the Goncourt for a decade, she is the first female black laureate and her winning book Trois Femmes Puissantes (Three Powerful Women) was a best-seller.
But then the media dug up her less than glowing views on President Sarkozy. NDiaye went to live in Berlin in 2007 "in large part because of Sarkozy," she told les Inrockuptibles, an arts magazine, last August. "I find the police state, vulgar atmosphere detestable. I find Besson, Hortefeux, those people, monstruous. That refers to Eric Besson, Sarkozy's Minister for Immigration and National Identity, and Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister and close Sarkozy friend.
That was too much for Eric Raoult, a prominent MP for Sarko's Union for a Popular Movement. He tabled a parliamentary question to Frédérick Mitterrand, the Culture Minister, asking whether "the duty of a person who defends the literary colours of France should not be to show a certain respect towards its institutions." Her remarks insulted ministers of the Republic and the head of state, he said. A Goncourt laureate should observe un devoir de réserve, the obligation of discretion that is required of servants of the state.
The Goncourt crew hit back today, saying their prize winners have never been bound by a duty of respect for the state and its leader. Christian Paul, a Socialist MP, weighed in, accusing Raoult of "ignoble intimidation... an execrable form of censorship."
But now NDiaye has spoilt the fun by trying to soften her words. On Europe 1 radio today she said she did not mean to cause offence. "I don't like saying things like that. It was very excessive. I do not want to look like I was fleeing some kind of unbearable tyranny," she said. "For a while, I have found the atmosphere in France to be quite depressing, rather morose. It seemed that Berlin is more exciting."
We are waiting for a response from Frédo Mitterrand, who has not said much in public since the media last month dug up his adventures as a sex tourist in Thailand. In the meantime, Sarkozy has been brushing up on his Goncourt winners. He has just finished "re-reading" A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. There was a big row in 1919 when Proust won the prize because he had not fought in the Great War.
Thursday update: Mitterrand has entered the fray, not very courageously. He has refused to take sides. "Writers who receive the Prix Goncourt have the right to say what they like," he said. "Eric Raoult, a friend and a very estimable man, has the right as a citizen and a parliamentarian to say what he thinks."
PS, on the subject of the Great War, did anyone notice that Carla Bruni seemed to be wearing high-than-usual heels and really towered over the President at today's Armistice Day ceremony with Angela Merkel ? And why wasn't she wearing a hat:
[Tuesday update: This is an amended version of earlier post to reflect later developments. Sarko wasn't there on the 9th after all, it seems]
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Nicolas Sarkozy is being challenged today over the truth of his claim to have been in Berlin on November 9 1989 to witness the fall of the wall, and even help knock it down with a pick[end of last post].
The President, who is in Berlin today,recalled his dash to the city on his Facebook site yesterday. There is also a picture of the 34-year-old Sarko chipping away at the wall. Sarkozy was Mayor of Neuilly and a deputy leader of Jacques Chirac's RPR party at the time. .
"On the morning of the 9th of November, we were were following news from Berlin that seemed to announce change in the divided capital of Germany," Sarkozy says. "Alain Juppé and I decided... to leave Paris to take part in the event which was taking shape. When we arrived in West Berlin, we went straight to the Brandenburg gate where an enthusiastic crowd was already gathered on news of the probable opening of the wall.."
Along with Alain Juppé and François Fillon, who is now Prime Minister, they went to Check Point Charlie to cross into the east and look at the wall. "We were able to take a few shots at it with a pick. Around us families were gathered to demolish the concrete.."
But there were immediate claims that Sarkozy could not have been in Berlin that day. He was in France marking the anniversary of the death of Charles de Gaulle, according to today's reports. Alain Auffray, the Berlin correspondent of Libération at the time, says on his blog that the account of the November 9 excitement in west Berlin is "total fantasy".
On the morning of November 9, there was no news from Berlin of an imminent opening of the wall, he says. It was only at 11 pm that east Berliners, gathered at a frontier post, began entering the west, he says. "On my word as a witness, there was no advance warning,"Auffray writes.
Auffray kindly blames an over-enthusiastic internet scribe in the President's office for exaggerating his role as witness to the fall of the wall. But the Elysée palace is sticking by its story and Fillon says that he did indeed bump into Sarkozy on the night of November 9. Other accounts contradict this. Sarkozy, we are told, took a private plane to Berlin for an overnight visit along with Juppé and two other Gaullists. He then went back for another visit on November 16.
The story sounds fishy. Various former officials, roped in to stand up Sarko's tale, have conflicting versions. Confusion remains because of the details Sarkozy recounts. His travelling companion Juppé now says that he cannot recall the date of their visit. In a book in 1993, he only talked of a visit on the 16th November 1989. Juppé today modified his own blog entry on the subject, saying that it was "the 9th or several days later, my memory is not precise about the exact date." All a bit of a storm in a tea-cup, but Juppé must be one of the few people who do not remember what they were doing on the day the wall came down.
The affair has prompted a little fun. Sarkozy was on the moon in July 1969, and so on. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist who still wants to be president, had her own dig. "Manifestement, Nicolas Sarkozy n'était pas à Berlin le 9 novembre. Donc il n'a pas dit la vérité. Heureusement qu'il n'a pas prétendu être là le jour de la prise de la Bastille, parce que je ne sais pas comment il s'en serait sorti!"
Obviously, Nicolas Sarkozy was not in Berlin on November 9. So he has not told the truth. It's lucky that he didn't claim to be there the day the Bastille was taken, because I don't know how he would have got out of it."
Below: Plantu of le Monde. Sarkozy tells Gorbachev: "I remember, I was tapping with my little pick. Then Snow-White arrived. And there she is..."
It's rare to be really moved by a television programme. That happened for me this week with a show on France 2 in which Hubert Védrine, a former Foreign Minister, interviewed Mikhael Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union. Old Gorby stirred some strong memories.
Védrine, a Socialist, was diplomatic adviser and spokesman for the late President Mitterrand at the end of the cold war. In the Thursday night programme, he took Gorbachev through the events that led to the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the nation that he headed.Gorbachev (pictured with Védrine below) has said a lot about the period. But Védrine's authority and gentle touch helped him open up and give a few insights. They went over the story of how this boy from the southern Russian farmland managed to rise to the top of the sclerotic Soviet state, then let it unravel, along with its empire. He remains bitter over what he sees as the west's betrayal of the emerging democratic Russia.
Back in 1985, when Gorbachev was picked by the Politburo (the Communist Party body that governed the USSR), we had not the tiniest inkling that the nuclear super-power was about to collapse peacefully.
By 'we', I mean the journalists and diplomats who were based in Moscow. I was Moscow bureau chief for Reuters news agency at the time. We cheered Gorbachev's arrival after the chain of sickly old men who had been running the country. He was different. He was 54,charming, spoke directly and had the touch of a western politician. But he had still come up the totalitarian machine and we never imagined that the grey apparatus and its KGB security arm would promote a man who would close them down. We knew the Soviet state was a sham, the economy was hollow and that the long-suffering people had no time for their rulers. But it did not seem anywhere near collapsing.We were too close to the story, living the odd life in that parallel universe where black was officially white. Though under KGB surveillance 24 hours a day, we were oddly attached to the place. We had a love-hate feeling for the country that Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire.
Gorbachev of course did not intend to scrap the USSR and was aiming for a more democratic version with his project for glasnost -- openness or transparency. He was caught up in the tide when the flood-gates opened in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.
He told Védrine that he came to understand very early as a young Communist official that the system was doomed. He described paying a "fraternal" visit to a Czech factory after Soviet tanks had put down the Prague Spring uprising of 1968. "The workers turned their backs to us. I understood why," he said. As an illustration of how things are not simple in Russia, he spoke highly of Yuri Andropov, the longserving boss of the KGB, who was his mentor. (My closest contact with Andropov, apart from seeing him in his open coffin, was when his Kremlin invited my daughter to a children's New Year party with kids from the high Soviet nomenklatura).
Gorbachev said that his first step to reform was at the funeral for Konstantin Chernenko, Andropov's short-lived successor. Newly appointed as Kremlin boss, Gorbachev summoned the heads of the satellite states of central Europe (known at the time as 'people's socialist republics'). He said he told the puppet leaders bluntly that they were on their own and that Moscow would not impede their people's desire for freedom.
Gorbachev recalled his first meeting with Reagan in November 1985. "My immediate impression was that I was facing a dinosaur," he told Védrine. Hearing that, I thought Wow, that was my impression too. I was in the room at the time, one of three pool reporters in the cottage in woods near Geneva. There was a fire crackling by their two arm-chairs. Gorby and Reagan made small-talk via their interpreters before we were ushered out to recount the event to the rest of the media [that's the moment in the picture. The interpreters were behind the chairs]. 
You have to remember that only a year or two before, Moscow and Washington were accusing one-another of planning nuclear war. I had never been with Reagan before and was struck by how unfocused he seemed alongside the sharp new Soviet leader. The next autumn, as a Washington correspondent, I went to Reykjavik to report on the second summit. Gorbachev, to the horror of Reagan's advisers, almost persuaded the US president to sign away all nuclear weapons.
This week, we had confirmation from Jacques Chirac of western worries about Reagan's state at the time. Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister and friend of Reagan, told Chirac ahead of the following year's Washington summit that she did not believe that the US leader was up to facing Gorbachev.
Gorbachev talked sadly of western suspicions towards him and what he said was the cold refusal of the first President Bush to give Moscow a hand in its time of need. Prodded by Védrine, who was at Mitterrand's side in his meetings with the Soviet leader, Gorbachev said France was the most helpful of the westerners. Mitterrand still opposed the re-unification of Germany, along with Thatcher, and went to Moscow (with Védrine in tow) to ask Gorbachev to stop it.
By selfishing turning their back on Russia, under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, the west helped foment chaos and created a new European divide, pushing the western frontier eastwards, Gorbachev said. But he has no regrets about his attempt to recast the Soviet Union. "I lost as a man. But from the point of view of history, perestroika won," he told Védrine.
Gorbachev is not much loved in modern Russia. He is blamed for the mess that succeeded him. And as they salute the Berlin anniversary this week, the younger generation of western leaders may, I feel, not all realise how huge was the role of this single visionary man in ensuring the near bloodless end of the cold war.
Below, a picture that I took of Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв (Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev) with Raissa, his late wife and a little girl voting in Soviet "election" near our office just before his rise to power in 1985.
We have a ripe example of the linguistic minefield between France and Britain today. A French minister has caused offence in Britain by calling the Conservative Party autistic.
Pierre Lellouche, 58, the Minister for Europe, should have known better since he speaks pretty good English. His spokesman said that he was talking French when he had a brief telephone conversation with the Guardian while in a car between two meetings. But according to my Guardian colleague who spoke to him, he used only English [Day-after update. See footnote]. So Lellouche fell into the old language trap. He should have been aware that words often carry quite different tones on opposite sides of the Channel.
In France in recent years, autism has become a standard term in the political-media vocabulary. It does not shock. Handicap organisations complain about it, but the word has become a routine put-down for someone who seems determined not to listen to your point of view. Trade union leaders use it against the government. Teenagers use it in school yards. In Britain, of course, it is an outrage to use a metaphor that is akin to the old insult spastic.
Lellouche's remark has caused no surprise in France, but we asked Patrick Sadoun, a member of an association called the Sesame Autism Association what he thought. "The English are right to be shocked. I congratulate a country that reacts to this. I am horrified that French politicians, at the slightest occasion, call one-another autistic," he said.
Lellouche, a maverick with a sharp tongue, was voicing what the Sarkozy Government thinks in private of the Conservatives' hostility to the European Union. He was trying to shake up a party which seems headed for government next spring and with which he is allied. He used other strong language, saying the plans of David Cameron, the Conservative leader, were 'pathetic' and would 'castrate' Britain in Europe. "They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament," he said.
Lellouche does not seem to be very sensitive to the strong overtones of these words in English. Saying that someone's power has been émasculé in French is not as strong as saying that he has been castrated in English. Lellouche has been saying on the radio that he meant pathetic in the French sense of pathéthique -- meaning sad, like Tchaikovsky's symphony. The English sense is lamentable in French. He also said that he had no idea that autistic was offensive in English. These are among dozens of terms -- like miserable and misérable (destitute in English), seduction and la séduction (the act of charming or winning over) or ...politician versus politicien, which refers to petty politcking. A politician in French is un homme or une femme politique.
The word autistic has stung most in Britain because sensitivity over the condition has put its metaphoric use beyond the pale. France is less sensitive over using human iimpairment and physique in invective. Crétin is a more acceptable insult in French than English. Things are however changing. An association called Autisme France has been campaigning in recent years to have the media and politicians stop wielding the condition as an insult. "In colloquial French this designates someone in a bit of a bubble, who is a little dreamy," the association said recently.
The threshold of offensiveness is always moving. It is still acceptable in both languages to 'turn a deaf ear' or be 'blind' to something. The British call people dumb now in the American sense of stupid (which came via German). In French it remains acceptable to allude to bodily functions that are unmentionable in English. A senior radio commentator last night dismissed President Chirac's new memoirs as "chiantissime". That would politely be rendered as ultra-boring, but literally and crudely, it means that it provokes extreme excretion.
And then there is the matter of race. Anything remotely ethnic cannot be used metaphorically in English. France is not quite there yet. The French for speech-writer or ghost-writer is still un nègre -- a negro.
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Saturday Footnote: For the record, the original version of this post said that we did not know which language Lellouche had been speaking in. Later the same day, Lellouche's spokesman said he had been speaking French and there had been mistranslation, so I inserted that. Yesterday the Guardian said they only spoke English, so I corrected the first insert with a note. None of this changes the point of the post which is about Lellouche's linguistic gaffe. He confirmed on Europe 1 radio yesterday that he had been unaware of the English sense of the key words. He maintained the substance, that the UK Conservatives were in danger of sidelining Britain from Europe. CB]
Nicolas Sarkozy must be annoyed. Jacques Chirac, his former mentor and predecessor, has been snatching the headlines for nearly a week.. Hard on the heels of his indictment on ancient corruption charges,old Jacques has made a splash with his first volume of memoirs.
Usually quite private about his thoughts, Chirac unbuttons himself to some extent and settles scores with old rivals. The book, Chaque pas doit être un but [Every step must be a goal] has a terrible title. He says nothing about the sleaze around the Paris city hall during his 18 years tenure as mayor, but he provides a good glimpse into his four decades at the top of the French political pile.
A whizz through all 500 pages throws up a few nuggets. One of them involves Margaret Thatcher, the tough British Prime Minister with whom he did business while serving as President Mitterrand's premier from 1986-88.. I'm writing this from London today, so I'll start with her. The legend that Thatcher fought tooth and nail with Paris over EU spending takes a knock. Chirac says that he was a big admirer of the former "Iron Lady" and their closeness even made the late Mitterrand envious.
She was a fierce and stylish defender of British interests in her battles over EU spending and its farm policy, but she was always fair, Chirac writes. "Her inflexible, intransigent positions made her one of the most redoubtable personalities on the international scene...Her grandeur, in my eyes, stemmed first from the force of her conviction. She did not try to impose the authority of her point of view, but used all her energy to convince..." Under his premiership, Britain and France enjoyed a honeymoon, he said. "Our complicity even irritated Francois Mitterrand, who took umbrage in November 1986 at a Franco-British summit."
The former Gaullist leader, said his views on Europe were closer to those of Thatcher than of Mitterrand, a Socialist. In 1988, in the midst of her "handbagging" over EU spending, Thatcher agreed to "kick the matter into touch" to help Chirac's campaign -- ultimately unsuccessful -- for the presidency that spring, he writes. (Thatcher dealt directly with Chirac because he was the elected head of Government in "cohabitation" with the President, not appointed by him).
In November 1987, Thatcher told him of her fears for President Reagan on the eve of the Washington summit at which the USSR and the United States agreed to limit their intermediate nuclear forces (INF). "Ronald Reagan did not appear to her to be either intellectually or physically up to handling a long bout of negotiation," he writes. (I covered that summit and can testify to Reagan's shakiness).
The disclosure of the complicity between the pair undermines one of Chirac's most famous quotes of the period. After a heavy negotiating round with Mrs Thatcher in 1986, he asked aides: "What more does this housewife want from me ? My balls on a plate?"
Chirac writes for the first time of Laurence, 51, his elder daughter, who has made repeated suicide attempts and has been in psychiatric care with anorexia for three decades. He blames himself for neglecting his two daughters and wonders if this caused her illness. He makes no mention of his famous love life and talks of his devotion to Bernadette, his long-suffering wife, though she can be "too blunt" for him sometimes. His sexual initiation came while serving as a crewman on a merchant vessel at 18. In Algiers, the boatswain asked if he was a virgin. "It was very nice of him. It had to be done. He took me to the famous Casbah quarter... In the morning, I was no longer the same man."
Chirac writes with sadness and bitterness over his betrayal by two subordinates -- Sarkozy and Edouard Balladur, the Prime Minister who ran against him for the presidency in 1995. He writes off Balladur as scheming and out of touch. He is harsher with Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the President whom he served as Prime Minister in the mid-1970s. Giscard d'Estaing is vindictive, arrogant and self-obsessed he says.
He is gentler with Sarkozy, his former protege. "He had an iron will, which has not changed, to make himself indispensable, to always be visible. He was nervous, he would fuss over me, he was impatient to act and undeniably had a talent for generating publicity," he writes.Stronger stuff will come in the next volume, which covers his 12-year presidency.
Another surprise in the book is Chirac's high esteem for Mitterrand, the Machiavellian opponent who ran rings round the impetuous Gaullist when he was Prime Minister. He salutes Mitterrand as a political artist.
"The man I got to know during our meetings had excellent judgment and a tactical intelligence that I have rarely encountered in political circles,"
Chirac will hear tomorrow whether the Paris prosecutors are going to appeal against the examining judge's decision to send him for trial. They may bear in mind that over 70 percent of the country believe that the legal process must go on, despite the fact that he is France's most popular politician.
After a streak of damaging news, Nicolas Sarkozy has just switched channels. Forget the Culture Minister's sex tourism, presidential nepotism, political trials and a slide in Sarkozy's ratings. Attention must now turn to the matter of what it means to be French.
The ploy is transparent. The strings are too thick, to use a good French expression. By suddenly decreeing a four-month "great debate" on national identity, Sarkozy is reverting to the menu that won him the conservative vote in 2007. He will defend traditional values of Frenchness.
These are deemed to be under threat for a lot of reasons, including American-dominated globalisation and the financial crisis. The main fear in the minds of many arises from the minority of Arab and black origin who do not fit the old French model. In a speech last week, Sarkozy revived a line from his 2007 campaign, saying that Frenchness had been forged by the "singular relationship of the French to the land". In case anyone missed the point, he noted: "All French families have grandparents who at one time or another worked the land." (Hilariously, Sarko's speech was word-for-word the same one that he had delivered to an agricultural audience at the start of the year. He didn't apparently realise that his staff had cut and pasted.)
Sarkozy is a lifelong city-slicker with a Hungarian immigrant father and no farming grandparent but he knows that his theme is a sure-fire winner. It touches on a spectrum of public fears, which are by no means all unjustified.
Continue reading "What makes us French, Sarkozy asks" »
When the judge comes calling, French politicians always declare themselves "serene" because they are not guilty of anything. Today it was finally the turn of Jacques Chirac. From his luxury hotel in Morocco, he had his spokesman issue the traditional serene statement as France pondered on the prospect of putting its last president on trial. The charges that have caught up with Chirac, 76, are a trifle compared with the shenanigans that went on at the city hall during his 18-year-reign as the first Mayor of Paris since the 19th century. Against the wishes of the prosecutor -- an old friend -- the examining judge wants Chirac to stand trial over a couple of dozen allegedly fraudulent jobs on the city payroll when he was Mayor, from 1977-1995. Back in his 1980s and early 90s, when Chirac used the baronial city hall as his power base and seat for his Gaullist party, the mayoral machine was celebrated for this kind of largesse. Generous to a fault, Chirac commanded a grace and favour system that benefited friends, supporters and their associates. If you had the connections, someone in the Mayor's big private office could help your children with jobs or fix you up with a handsome Paris apartment at council-house prices. The son of Alain Juppé, Chirac's first Prime Minister, was among beneficiaries of such cut-price accommodation -- until he was exposed and forced to leave in 1996. Two of the charges facing the former President now involve the provision of chauffeurs on the mayoral payroll to a former prefect and a former trade union leader. Money was no object for the Chirac family, according to accounts from former insiders and judicial investigators. When Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, followed Jean Tiberi, Chirac's successor, as Mayor in 2001, his inspectors found that the city's tax payers had been funding 600 euros a day in food and drink for Jacques, Bernadette and Claude, their daughter. The funds did not even cover entertainment expenses, which were separate. Until today, the former President has escaped the legal fall-out from a period when the city hall was raking in millions of pounds a year in kickbacks from building contractors and other businesses. Several of Chirac's former lieutenants and about four dozen businessmen and former officials have been convicted in recent years for their role in the illicit payments and use of public money for financing the Rassemblement pour la République, the Mayor's party. The most prominent among them was Juppé, who received a suspended sentence and a brief ban on holding elected office in 2004 for corruption while he served as Mayor Chirac's deputy in the 1980s and 1990s. The fall-out from the case forced him to resign a cabinet post from President Sarkozy's first Government but he has bounced back as Mayor of Bordeaux. It is acknowledged in the political world that Juppé carried the can for his boss, who as president enjoyed immunity from prosecution for 12 years until Sarkozy succeeded him in 2007. But it was not always plain sailing. The cloud of sleaze dogged Chirac for much of his presidency, as it became ever clearer that the city administration had been a money machine. Until appeal courts confirmed a judicial ruling on his immunity in 2001, Chirac skirted disaster after the publication of a posthumous video tape made by Jean-Claude Méry, one of the RPR's clandestine financiers in the 1980s and early 90s. Méry depicted Chirac as the instigator and controller of the biggest kickback schemes. He claimed to have regularly collected suitcases of cash from donors and deposited them with the Mayor. At the same time, investigators found that Chirac, his family and friends, including a woman journalist, had recently made expensive trips to Indian Ocean resorts and the United States, with expenses paid in cash. The President's staff explained -- with difficulty -- that the money came from cash which he had legally accumulated when he had served as Prime Minister under President Mitterrand from 1986-88. Chirac shook off the brewing scandal by deploying his charm and an obscure word in a celebrated television appearance in September 2001. The sleaze allegations were "abracadabradantesque" -- pure fantasy -- he said. Nevertheless, the government of the time, under Lionel Jospin, put an end to the so-called "special funds". These were bundles of cash which were traditionally distributed to cabinet ministers once a month for use at their discretion. The money was supposed to be used to top up staff pay, but no records were kept. Chirac, who now enjoys his country's affection as its genial elder statesman, has always succeeded in 'passing between the raindrops', or staying dry, as the handy French expression puts it [passer entre les gouttes]. He has escaped serious scrutiny in other matters, such as persistent reports that he had held secret bank accounts in Japan, and may have had a second family there. This month, he was an invisible presence in the court in the so-called Clearstream trial. Dominique de Villepin, his former Prime Minister, was accused of plotting to smear Sarkozy and witnesses said that President Chirac had been involved. But the former President was not asked to testify. In yet another case, Charles Pasqua, a former Interior Minister and old Gaullist colleague, claimed this week that Chirac was implicated in bribery over arms sales to Angola in the 1990s. Pasqua was sentenced to 12 months' prison. The sentence was very stiff by the standards of French political corruption cases. Pasqua may never serve it but it is just possible that Chirac's alleged role will be investigated. Few people expect that case or yesterday's corruption charges to go far. Even if he is tried and convicted on the new city hall charges, the most Chirac can expect is a fine or suspended sentence. There is a lot of sympathy for the old man. His presidency achieved little and will probably be remembered by historians as an uneventful 12 years. His chief act in public memory was his opposition to George Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003. But he now enjoys the rank of most popular politician in France, according to polls. Even old foes think they should just leave him in peace.
France Television prefaced its Jean Sarkozy interview (last post) with a report on funny flash-mob demonstrations in which young people wielded bananas like mobile phones (video). At the risk of trumpet-blowing, this blog can claim a little credit here.
I made the banana republic comparison in a slightly cheeky post the other day which was picked up by French media and the net.(Last week's Paris Match: De toutes parts, les critiques fusent. Charles Bremner, le chroniqueur du très sérieux « Times », parle même de « Banana république » dans son blog.)
The fruity image was taken up by Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, a former TV executive and reader of this blog, who set up a site www.bananarepublique.org. Several hundred people signed up for instructions to appear at 1.13 pm yesterday in about 20 towns around France in a mobilisation éclair (official French for flash-mob). The idea was to gather bananas, which become 'magic telephones' for calling the Elysée Palace and asking for a job at La Défense. A few dozen people made a splash in front of the TV cameras under the great Arch of la Defense yesterday afternoon (top picture).
Jérôme told me today: "The flashmob bananarépublique is a citizen's initative which I organised spontaneously with Olivier Auber and Gilles Misrahi after a chat on Twitter. I had read on your blog that you had revived the term 'banana république' and it's with that Twitter tag that we mobilised the internet. Part of this success naturally is due to you. Thanks to you, and the foreign press, our regime now has a few fewer bananas."
It was quite a coup for Bourreau-Guggenheim and friends to land up as the intro to Jean Sarko's big moment on the TV [watch here]. It is a little revenge for him. Regulars here may remember that last year he lost his job as chief of technical innnovation at TF1, the biggest network, for the offence of lèse-Sarkozy. He had written to his parliamentarian to criticise the president's new law against internet piracy. The e-mail was passed to the government and TF1, owned by a friend of Sarkozy, dismissed its employee.
And no, The Times is certainly not attempting to foment unrest. I'm just reporting this because I was rather tickled to have contributed to a French buzz.
Nicolas Sarkozy finally called a halt to the massacre. Assailed by world-wide ridicule, he pulled the plug on the scheme to catapault Prince Jean, his 23-year-old student son, to the head of La Défense business district.
Jean announced his withdrawal in one of those only-in-France moments, interviewed with reverence live on the evening TV news. Coached by Dad's aces from the Elysée Palace, Sarko Junior did quite a good job -- at imitating his father. His self-assurance and rhetorical touches were pure Sarko. Was it an error to claim such an august post at his tender age? "One never makes an error by being candidate in an election. It is not a fault to commit oneself," said Monsieur Fils. "My passion for political engagement is unaltered because it is unalterable," he concluded. He has got the language down with all that noble talk about 'combat' in service of the public
The suave, self-confident mini-Sarko is still on the very fast track, despite his lack of work experience and his struggle to finish his second year of university studies.
This is not even a pause in his fabulous destiny. He is still being elected today to a seat on the board of the Epad, the development agency of la Défense which commands a budget of 115 million euros a year. He is just not going to grab its chairmanship for the time being, as Dad had planned for December. He is also still being lined up by the President and his local barons to take over the Hauts-de-Seine département council in 2011.
But the affair has left a stain on Sarko senior. His breathtaking act of nepotism will not be forgotten, no matter how much he and his team blame the media. The final straw was a flash-mob demonstration at la Défense yesterday -- shown on TV -- in which people turned up holding bananas to their ears, mocking Sarkozy's republic [see later post].
Sarkozy's troops, having been forced to sacrifice their dignity in the impossible defense of the royal appointment, have been humiliated. Today, ministers and spokesmen are dutifully praising Junior's courage and congratulating him on his wise decision, which was the right thing to do, his great maturity and so on. If it was so right, one wonders why no member of the government or parliament said so before the presidential order to retreat ? I feel sorry for François Fillon, the Prime Minister, but at least he kept his head well down throughout the storm.
In a crowded field of flatterers, the prize for best courtier goes to... Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister and lifelong friend of le Président. He came on TV right after Jean and attacked "the lies, the contempt, the arrogance, the stupidity" of the opposition and media in the affair. He then saluted brave Jean -- who is his godson. ""This is a difficult moment for the son of the President. It is a moment that inspires respect," he said. Not -- as my teenage children say.
Admirers of Philippe Pétain, head of the wartime Vichy government, are dwindling but they still have some money. Today they paid 40,000 euros for the desk from which the old marshal ran his collaborationist regime.
The mahogany, empire-style bureau and two armchars and book cases were snapped up by the Association for the Defence of Marshal Pétain after intense bidding from a starting price of 4,000 euros. The furniture, sold in Saint Dié in the Vosges, belonged to a Jewish family from Alsace. Pétain's staff requisitioned it from storage when they set up the puppet government in the Hotel du Parc in Vichy in the summer of 1940. The family got it back in 1948.
"We have been searching for this furniture for a long time. We thought it had disappeared," said Hubert Massol, 72, a Parisian who heads the late Marshal's fan club. "This is quite an emotional thing." The items are to go to a Pétain museum that Massol said is being planned by the association. It has thousands of members, he told Agence France-Presse.
The marshal still stirs strong emotion among the older generation. Massol would only have been three when the parliament voted Pétain into office as dictator in charge of a new French State. He and his supporters subscribe to the belief, dogma for the far right, that the national hero of the first world war was a decent sort who saved France in its darkest hour. François Mitterrand, the late Socialist president, served the marshal as a senior official and revered his memory all his life.
The Association's site -- which is not very up to date -- explains that it is devoted to rehabilitating the memory of the leader whose early military honours saved him from a post-war death sentence.
"If Philippe Pétain was glorious in 1914-1918, he was great in the 1940s," Massol says in a speech on the site. "He sacrificed his prestige and his tranquility after a well-filled life in the service of the motherland.... making the gift of his person to France in order to ease its misfortune."
A new book, Naufrage: 16 juin 1940, by Eric Roussel, shows the extent to which the marshal was adored when he took over in 1940. Le Point magazine published extracts this month.
Over 10 days have passed since the eruption of l'affaire du Prince Jean. Here's a quick look at the fallout from the catapaulting of the 23-year old undergraduate to the chairmanship of La Défense, France's premier business district.
It's possible that the public outrage will prevent the President's chums and appointees from hoisting Jean Sarkozy into the post on December 4. Signs of a withdrawl have begun appearing. But the episode -- which ignited interest in the foreign media before the French -- offers a lesson. It has shown how an otherwise consummate politician can inflict long-term damage on himself by persisting in a blunder over a minor matter.
The mess has been compounded by Sarkozy's dogged determination to force through the promotion, dragging his government with him in support of the indefensible. Ministers have been humiliated by having to line up behind Sarkozy's argument that young Jean is the victim of a campaign aimed at his dad.
"Who is the target?" Sarkozy asked in a rambling Q and A interview that was dutifully printed by Le Figaro, his house newspaper, on Friday. "It is not my son. It is me. Those who have never got over my election and who have nothing to say of substance are trying to attack me on all fronts with a bad faith and malice which will not deceive the French."
He was wrong on that point. The same day, Le Parisien published a poll that showed that 64 percent of the country disapproved of the imminent elevation of Sarko fils. I was surprised that it was not more, given the mockery we are hearing on all fronts.
Sarkozy's camp are appalled. They recognise in private that there is no argument to justify this act of nepotism. Sarko junior, who is taking a second crack at his second year university studies, is no doubt a genial fellow, but he has no credentials beyond a year on the county council that is run by his father's pals. His future post, albeit supervisory, involves decisions involving billions of euros and a mission to promote La Défense in the face of competition from the City of London, Frankfurt and other big corporate and financial centres. Never could he be in line for it if Dad was not the monarch.
Le Monde tried to explain the phenomenon yesterday. Sarkozy has, it said, fallen victim to the "reflexes of the court", the phenomenon that has afflicted all French presidents in the 51-year-old Fifth Republic. The courtiers do not dare tell the emperor that he is naked.
The affair has left its mark on Sarkozy's approval rating, which has sunk back to 38 percent from 45 percent in August in the Ifop version published today by Le Journal du Dimanche. Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Majority, is concerned because the absurd gift to his son is largely deplored by their electoral base.
Whatever happens in coming weeks, Sarkozy will be damaged by the episode. Even if Jean withdraws or fails to win the appointment, the President loses face.
The term banana republic has been used by a couple of French friends in reaction to the news from Paris this week. They were referring to the high-handed way that France's ruler and his caste have been behaving in two or three current matters.The latest involves an astonishing act of nepotism by Nicolas Sarkozy. His barons are about to elevate Jean Sarkozy, the President's 23-year-old, undergraduate son, to a powerful and prized executive post.
More below, but first the other items. We have already visited the Clearstream trial here. As the case grinds on, at great expense to the people, it looks more than ever like a revenge play staged by President Sarkozy to demolish Dominique de Villepin, his erstwhile rival.
Royal revenge is more civilised than in the old days. When King Louis XIV decided, in similar fashion, to punish the noble Nicolas Fouquet, the Villepin of his day, he threw him into jail and let him rot. Villepin is not in jail. He is cocking a snook at Sarko by running in the Paris 20 kilometres foot-race today. His alleged crime -- abetting an amateurish and ineffective scheme to smear Sarkozy -- should never have been sent to a court. That's not just my opinion. It came today from Eva Joly, a formidable former investigating judge who specialised in corruption in high places. "The conflict between Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin should be settled on the political field and not in a court," she told le Parisien. Huge resources had been wasted in indulging the president's whim, including the full-time work of two judges and teams of investigators for five years, she said.
Then there is l'affaire Mitterrand [last post]. Sarkozy and the Paris thinking class has decreed the matter closed, a case of circulez, il n'y a rien à voir ['Move along, there's nothing to see' -- an old police expression]. Frédo submitted to his television grilling on Thursday night. He denied that he had ever paid for under-age prostitutes. All the "boys" he bought on visits to Bangkok were consenting adults, he said. He also condemned sex-tourism. That's that then, it's over, said the Sarkozy camp.
The serious media have sided with them, depicting Mitterrand as the victim of a witch-hunt by scurrilous muck-raisers. But the affair has left a bad taste. The fact remains that Sarkozy appointed a senior minister who, he knew at the time, had written about his exploits as a Bangkok sex tourist. People outside le microcosme, as the Paris chattering classes are known, are not impressed and they are telling their members of parliament. Paris gay activists are also angry, they told today's JDD newspaper, because Mitterrand has tarnished homosexuality by at least appearing to associate it with paedophilia and prostitution
And then to Prince Jean, Sarko's second son. He is to be appointed chairman of the Epad, the public agency which runs La Défense, the big business district on the west side of Paris. La Défense, an island of corporate towers that is seeking to rival the City of London, is in the heart of Sarkoland, the Hauts-de-Seine département which includes Neuilly, the President's fiefdom. Sarko Junior, who is repeating his second year of undergraduate law at the Sorbonne, was elected to a Neuilly seat on the notoriously sleaze-ridden departement council last year. He was immediately given the job of heading Dad's Union for a Popular Movement on the body.
Even Sarkozy stalwarts are embarrassed by the decision to catapault le Dauphin to the head of Epad, which oversees a billion euros of annual spending.Patrick Devedjian,a cabinet minister and retiring Epad boss, is bitter. To avoid lèse majesté, he voiced his thoughts with a quotation from Corneille, the 17th century dramatist. "For souls nobly born, valour does not await the passing of years."
The opposition are talking about dynasty-building. Putting Jean in charge of la Défense is part of Sarkozy's scheme for taking control of a new Greater Paris, say the Socialists who run both the city and the regional council. Sarkozy senior was boss of the Epad right up to his election in 2007. Young Jean says that he is qualified for the job "because I know all the issues" (see video below of FR3 tv news report) and he dismisses criticism as "pointless and frankly facile".
An internet petition is calling on Jean to do the decent thing and get his degree and some experience in life before rising to high responsibility. But we are told that Sarkozy père is determined to put the lad in the job. He will get the post in December at about the same as the dynasty enlarges. Jean's heiress wife is expecting the President's first grandchild in the same month.
The Polanski case may end up costing the job of Frédéric Mitterrand, the popular nephew of the late president who became Nicolas Sarkozy's Culture Minister four months ago.
You may have heard that Frédo, as he is known, been hit by a nasty boomerang. His outspoken defence of Roman Polanski on the paedophile charges last week opened a boulevard for the far right National Front to recall the minister's own past as a practitioner of gay sex tourism.
[Mitterrand has spoken on TV this evening, See update below]
This is a very French, or at least southern European, affair because in the protestant political cultures of the north, Mitterrand, 62, would never have landed his job. His sulphurous autobiography, published in 2005, would have made it unthinkable.
Sarkozy appointed Mitterrand, a presenter of television arts programmes, knowing that his book, La Mauvaise Vie (The Bad Life), recounted his visits to brothels in Thailand where he said he paid for sex with boys. Sarkozy, who read the book in June, said this summer that he found it "brave and full of talent". In nominating the new Culture Minister, he was following the French tradition that the private lives of public figures are not a matter for public discussion. He should have known from his own much-reported love life that the old rules that protect the elite are breaking down. 
When Mitterrand took office, everyone (including us) mentioned his homosexuality and alluded to the critically admired memoir, but very few raised the details. These have blown up in Mitterrand's face, thanks to Marine Le Pen, heiress to her father's xenophobic Front National. She read out extracts on television on Monday night. "I got into the habit of paying for boys," said one line. "The profusion of very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide."
There is much more of this lurid stuff. Mitterrand himself calls it sordid. He writes, in Proustian style,of the exquisite pleasure of paying for sex. He refers to the Thai male prostitutes as garçons and sometimes gosses (kids). You could feel the embarrassment in the political world as Sarkozy administration and the mainstream opposition flinched from touching a cause launched by the unspeakable far right. The Socialists finally jumped in yesterday and condemned Mitterrand without calling for resignation. Today's main newspapers could still only bring themselves to give the affair minor mention.
Mitterrand has tried to take the high ground, saying: "If the National Front drags me through the mud, it is an honour. If a leftwing MP drags me through the mud, he should be ashamed." Sarkozy's team have tried to divert attention to the Front and invoked the old private-life defence. Xavier Darcos, a senior minister, said this morning: "It is the private life of a man which is in question, not the minister." Darcos also cited the literary defence -- that an author's words do not necessarily report reality. Sarkozy's advisers are talking about gutter tactics by the Front and a vile smear campaign.
These arguments do not wash. You can feel the tide turning. Mitterrand, a troubled soul with a gentle style, insisted on television after the book's publication that he never had anything to do with "little boys". But the damage has been done. France now knows that the holder of one the most prestigious government posts is an avowed practitioner of gay sex tourism.
It is unfair that Mitterrand is being crucified over a four-year-old book. And if a minister confessed to spending time with prostitutes in the past, there would be little fuss in broad-minded France. It is the suspicion of paedophilia that makes the difference. The possible involvement of children, that ultimate crime of our times, suggests that Frédo may be heading for the political guillotine.
Mitterrand is going on the main tv news tonight to account for himself. He is an eloquent and familiar figure after three decades as a television favourite and he will benefit from sympathy. It is possible that he will save his skin. Sarkozy will be very reluctant to fire a star appointee in response to a National Front campaign -- greatly amplified by the internet. But Mitterrand is now damaged goods and Sarko does not like that in his ministers.
Update: On TF1 television tonight, Mitterrand delivered an indignant but confusing defence. His memoirs were partly fictional, he said. He conceded that he had paid "boys" for sex in Thailand but insisted that they were all consenting adults. He abhorred sex tourism and was outraged by the notion that he was advocating paedophilia. Sarkozy had full confidence in him, and so on. The appearance was highly emotional but it has not cleared the air.
Brains and political talent are no longer enough to land a job in the French Cabinet. Under President Sarkozy, would-be members are also expected to have a trim figure.
Sarkozy's demands on his ministers' waistline have become a talking point in recent months. Eager to be surrounded by fit-looking people, he is said to have told at least one would-be appointee to drop some weight and change his hair style if he wanted the job.
Sarkozy acquired his passion for thinness after meeting Carla Bruni -- and Julie Imperiali, her fitness coach -- in late 2007. That was a few months after Paris Match air-brushed fat off Sarko's torso in a photograph of him canoeing
Living off cottage cheese, fruit compote and mineral water, the teetotal Sarkozy is said to have lost some 15 pounds over the past 18 months. His resolve was no doubt stiffened by Barack Obama, whose style he deeply envies.
"Nicolas Sarkozy is very attentive to the physique of his ministers. They have to show an example, keep in shape," an Elysée Palace insider le Point news magazine in July. Le Parisien yesterday noted a spectacular weight loss by several ministers. "You would think that the Elysée Palace has launched a real policy of political correctness for the figure," it said.
Gérard Apfeldorfer, a Paris psychiatrist specialising in nutrition, told us: "I know that Sarkozy is putting pressure on his ministers to have a flat stomach. He is a prisoner of the stereotypes of our age, to the point of imposing it on the others and making his choice as a consequence."
Ministers have grumbled privately about the pressure. Patrick Balkany, a senior figure in Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) also blamed the President's radical diet for the episode last July in which he collapsed while jogging.
The winner in the thinning stakes is Brice Hortefeux, the new Interior Minister, who shrunk visibly earlier this year as he strived -- successfully -- to win promotion [second left in top picture] . Friends worried about his health but were told that the bon vivant Hortefeux had just taken up a diet of soup, cream cheese and red berries, le Parisien says. Eric Besson, the new Immigration Minister [left in picture], has also drawn attention with his Sarzkoy-style new look. Christian Estrosi, 55, a former motor cycle racing champion, has regained his youthful shape since becoming Industry Minister in the summer.
Women are the perma-slim stars of the Sarkozy's Cabinet. Christine Lagarde, 53, the ultra-trim Finance Minister, was a champion synchronised swimmer in her youth and remains an active sportswoman. Michèle Alliot-Marie, 63, Justice Minister [picture below], has a model's figure. I can vouch for this after sitting beside her in a TV studio the other day. Rachida Dati, the glamour figure of his first Cabinet, made headlines with her spectacular weight loss after the birth of her first baby last January. The female exception is the well-rounded Roselyne Bachelot -- Minister for Health and Sports [with hand on Sarkozy's shoulder in picture].
"The fashion for dieting comes from the boss," said Jean-Michel Cohen, a nutritionist who advises politicians. "The trim figure has become a vehicle of political communication. The time when fat men were reassuring is over. The chief is sweating to lose weight. They others have to control themselves too," he added.
The push for slimless has proven especially challenging for UMP party heavyweights. Xavier Bertrand, the slightly portly party chief, is especially partial to traditional French cuisine. Dieting is anathema to many members of the senate, which has long enjoyed an image as a club of plump elderly men.
There was no official reaction from the Elysée to the latest talk about the chief's physique. Last month, you will recall, the palace was embarrassed after short people were chosen to stand around Sarkozy on a televised visit to a factory in Normandy.
A casualty of Sarkozy's "politique de la silhouette" has been the cuisine at the Elysée and Paris ministries. Meat, cheese and traditional desserts have given way to frugal servings of fish, vegetables, salad and sorbets. Wine is still served, but it is hard to enjoy it when the host is sipping mineral water.
[Below: Hortefeux before and after diet]
If you wanted to parody a Carla Bruni website it would be hard to do better than the real thing which has just opened. The new showcase for the chanteuse-supermodel looks like a caricature of the persona which President Sarkozy's image minders have shaped for the new première dame since their marriage early last year.
Opened yesterday to great fanfare, carlabrunisarkosy.org has been unable to keep up with demand. It froze for much of the day, but now works in sticky fashion.
In impeccable pastel tones, Bruni is cast as a caring, free-spirited but demure artiste and patroness of noble causes. Portraits of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suukyi, the Burmese opposition leader, are among the heros in Carla's gallery. Her other acquaintances, such as the Obamas and Sarah Brown, the wife of the British Prime Minister, appear in rather odd line drawings. The home page is topped by an interview with Jean-Paul Gaultier, the fashion designer.
A gushing Paris Match-style biography notes that the single name Carla now suffices to identify the French first lady the world over.
"Born at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement, she questions the contradictions that afflict all self-assured people in this period," it says.(What does that that mean ? She lives with one of the world's most self-assured men). Then they drag in that good old tabloid invention, "a close friend", who notes: “She may not have been a suffragette or invented the miniskirt, but she is the very epitome of the modern woman in the way she approaches the world”,
The first lady's hectic first two years with the President are sketched thus:
What memories will France’s current First Lady take away with her? Her state visit to the UK making her title official? Her trip to Burkina Faso after taking up her functions as ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS? The shot fired just a few metres away at Tel-Aviv airport on leaving Israel? This exposure to the cameras in life and death situations is unavoidable for anyone who has to face history with a cool head and a smile on their lips.
The site -- much slicker than Ségolène Royal's disastrous new internet base -- is meant to publicise Bruni's charity work in France and her post as ambassador for the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
It comes in French and English versions -- with a few adjustments in the translation. For example, Bruni was "born into a wealthy family of Italian industrialists" in the English one, but "into a rich family" in the French. Bruni's showbiz friends get a mention. There are links to Bob Dylan, Cindy Lauper and the Rolling Stones, to whose leader she was once especially close.
An "A to Z" of Carla mixes causes and first lady-like pursuits with some light nods to themes that have not helped her husband. For example, "Bling bling", the showy style which Sarkozy brought to the presidency, is dismissed as an invention of the media. It gets a mention above Sarah Brown, wife of Britain's Prime Minister.
The delicate, sugary site, with its emphasis on fashion and hip causes, fits the mission that the Elysée Palace has conferred on Bruni -- that of antidote to her brash, combative husband. Occasional web visitors may find it pleasant enough. The trouble is that bland corporate-style communication of this type does not work in a medium which prizes spontaneity and sharpness. Reaction on the French web to the Bruni site today has been contempt. "Nauseating...propaganda...they take us for fools..." was one of the more caustic lines.
Those wishing to visit Carla Bruni the singer can always go to her old site, carlabruni.com .
Super Sarko is also benefiting from a web remake. Under the direction of Nicolas Princen, its 25-year-old manager, the presidential site has loosened up a little. This week they are featuring a "making of" video from behind the scenes of a television interview with Sarkozy in New York last month. It neglected to include the scene in which Sarkozy tore a strip off Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, in front of the television crews. Sarkozy's official Facebook entry is being freshened and a Twitter account has been opened for the President's visit to the Copenhagen environment summit in December. Twittering is still not deemed presidential activity, so staff will be pecking out the copy.
Ireland's 'yes' to the EU Lisbon treaty clears the way for Nicolas Sarkozy to stage his next big splash on the diplomatic front. This will take the form of a grand proposal to Chancellor Angela Merkel to renew the marriage vows that have bound Germany and France since 1963.
Europe (don't yawn, British and American readers), is now about to enter a new political phase after a decade of paralysis and self-absorption. It is to get a voice, in the person of a permanent President and Foreign Minister. The new boss might be Tony Blair, but I wouldn't bet on it yet -- see below.
Paris ministries have been under orders since the late spring to come up with ideas for putting Europe's famed Franco-German locomotive back on the rails. These include the possible assignment by each of a minister to the other's government and alignment of energy and industrial policy. Other ideas, outlined by the Institut Montaigne think tank, include co-ordinating budgetary and fiscal policies and merging the Paris and Frankfurt stock markets.
In a symbol of reconciliation, Merkel is expected to become the first German leader to attend world war one Armistice Day ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe on November 11. That's just after the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which Sarkozy aims to use to relaunch new Franco-German friendship. This was first formally enshrined in the 1963 Treaty of the Elysée, signed by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer . Pierre Lellouche, the French Europe Minister, hinted this morning that we should expect something special on the Berlin wall day.
Sarkozy is taking a well-trodden path. Every new French president for decades has strayed from the Franco-German core and flirted with other partners before reverting to it. François Mitterrand, for example, fell out with Helmut Kohl in 1989 when he joined Margaret Thatcher in trying to stop Germany reuniting. They made up and launched monetary union in the early 1990s.
Sarkozy took France back into the heart of Nato but his shine for Britain and its big Anglo-Saxon brother across the Atlantic has faded. He blames them for the financial crisis and is frustrated by their failure to back his plans for "remoralising capitalism" -- which Merkel has supported. Sarkozy is said to be bitter over President Obama's rejection of his attempts to forge complicity between them [See a new account of Sarkozy's Obama envy by my old friend Chris Dickey of Newsweek]. Britain will become Europe's main troublemaker again if, as expected, David Cameron wins power at the head of a Conservative government next spring.
Merkel's enthusiasm for a new 'Franceallemagne' (note which country comes first in the French coinage) is not as hot as Sarkozy's. The chemistry has improved between the pair since their early friction. But Germany still sees France as hopelessly profligate and it is suspicious of Sarkozy's return to state dirigisme of the kind that they do not like across the Rhine. The French are, on their side, unhappy with Berlin's intervention last month to save the German operations of the Opel car firm. Sarkozy has been trying to sweeten the Germans by putting Germanophiles in high places. Chief among them is Bruno Le Maire, his new German-speaking Agriculture Minister.
Wishful thinking may be part of the new romance. Enjeux des Echos, a business magazine, gave this impression last week when it said: "There is a common will in Paris and Berlin to break with the ultra-liberalism of a Brussels Commission that has fallen into the hands of the English. Now that the Anglo-Saxon model is on its way out, the future is once again focused on an economy regulated by states." I'm not sure that Germany goes along with that.
An important factor in the Franco-German relaunch will be the carve-up of new jobs. Sarkozy would, we gather, be quite happy if Blair took over as president and the 'Foreign Minister' job went to France, possibly to Hubert Vedrine, a former Socialist French Foreign Minister who is well thought-of around Europe. But Merkel, strengthened by her re-election last month, does not want a Blair presidency. Germany will need something big in return and there is the small matter of winning the consent of all the 27 member states. Blair is broadly accepted because he is the only heavyweight in the running, apart from Felipe Gonzalez, the former Spanish Socialist premier. But there is little enthusiasm for him. Expect a heavy bout of old-fashioned EU horse-trading at the late October leaders' summit in Brussels.
In the meantime, Sarkozy has been taking the credit this weekend for the success of the Irish referendum. It was he, we are reminded, who insisted in the face of widespread opposition that the Irish should be asked to think again after they refused the Lisbon treaty the first time around.
And to close, my slightly bleak view of European politics should not be put down to hostility to the Union. Okay, the machine is bureaucratic, elitist and all the rest of it, but it has succeeded in uniting former enemies, reinforcing democracy and spreading prosperity across the whole continent. It is hard to fathom the hostility that still prevails in Britain, 36 years since it joined. The EU has been of enormous benefit to Britain, whatever its drawbacks. I see that Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and a former Brussels colleague of mine, has been ranting against the Union this weekend, demanding a British referendum on the ratified Lisbon treaty. And the Daily Mail, the Little England newspaper, has a ludicrous lament today, headlined So Our 1,000 Years of History Ends Like This.
The Russian navy has its eyes on a new helicopter-carrying warship. The impressive model that they want to buy could have let Russia drive Georgian forces from the north Caucausus last year in a flash,says Admiral Vladimir Vysotski, the navy chief.
And who makes this great vessel ? France. In Moscow yesterday, two ministers -- Bernard Kouchner of Foreign Affairs and Hervé Morin of Defence -- settled the outline of a deal to sell a 700 million euro Mistral-class helicopter-carrier to the Russians.This would be the first sale of a major western weapon to Russia since World War Two, so President Sarkozy will have some explaining to do with Washington and the Nato allies.
Paris is optimistic. Kouchner, a lifelong human rights activist, waxed enthusiastic about the imminent sale. "This political agreement should be reached, I think, but it's not up to me to decide ... concerning this wonderful warship," he told Moscow Echo radio station.
Moscow is aiming to order one or two Mistrals from the French naval dockyards, plus the technology to put together their own versions. The ship, which is France's second biggest after the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered carrier, is capable of carrying more than a dozen helicopters and 470 infantry along with dozens of tanks and other armoured vehicles.
Moscow wants the ship to supplement its antique surface-fleet. It is just the thing to project Russian power around the world -- and close to home. Russia's Black Sea neighbours are appalled and Admiral Vysotski helpfully spelt out why. Talking about Russia's ejection of Georgian troops from the rebel province of South Ossetia last August, he said that a Mistral "would have meant that our Black Sea Fleet could have accomplished its mission in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours by road."
France, you may recall, claims credit for stopping that conflict. Sarkozy flew to Moscow and Tbilisi and brokered a ceasefire after three days of fighting in August last year.
Dutch and Spanish firms are also bidding for the Russian deal but the French are confident that they have it sewn up. But there are obvious hurdles. The United States jealously guards the export of its technology, especially of a military kind. It is pretty likely that despite French expertise, the Mistral class carries a load of US patents. So if France is determined to go ahead, Washington will become involved.
The Obama administration would have to decide whether it will accept what would in Cold War times have been an unthinkable deal in the interest of the famous US-Russian reset button. Washington is unlikely to be happy about a western ally giving a helping hand to the Kremlin to flex Russian muscles on the high seas. Whatever happens, Moscow has a good chance of driving a wedge into the Nato alliance over the affair.
The sale would be a nice boost to the French arms business after last month's provisional agreement by Brazil to buy 36 Rafale fighters plus the technology to build them.
But before everyone piles in against French "merchants of death", here is last year's table of suppliers. The USA was top with 49 percent of the world military export market. Britain was second with a 15 percent share. Russia scored eight percent and France seven percent.
You remember this picture of Rachida Dati, the former star of the Sarkozy government, leaving the clinic with her new-born baby in her arms ? Her immediate return to work as Justice Minister earned her headlines around the world. We hear today that she wasn't holding Zohra, her daughter, just an empty baby-carrier swathed in a blanket.
This is related in a book out this week by Jamal Dati, the younger brother of the ambitious and difficult Sarkozy protegée who was cast out of the government last June and exiled to the European parliament. Scraps of A l'Ombre de Rachida [in Rachida's Shadow] appear in le Parisien today. They make clear that Jamal, who recently spent a few months in prison for drug dealing, is out to settle accounts with the sister whose Cinderella life story was meant to inspire France's immigrant working class.
Dati, one of 12 children of a Moroccan-Algerian couple, is depicted as hard-hearted and ruthless. Those qualities are usually mentioned by those who have fallen out with the woman who is seen by the establishment as a pushy parvenue. Dati refused to have anything to do with her black sheep brother when she was minister, he says. "Every time I tried to talk to her she turned a deaf ear." He accuses his sister of having him locked up because he was a nuisance. He gave a bracelet to Zohra, he says. "She did not even thank me. She just said 'put it down there'. She did not want to take the gift in here hands. That hurt me." 
The stunt on leaving the hospital last January was part of Dati's meticulous management of her image, he says. The child was taken away through a side entrance and then cared for by Dati's sister for months, says the brother.
Jamal apparently says nothing about the paternity of Zohra, which remains a mystery. But he describes the mortification of their widowed father, a strict Muslim, when it became known that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock. "For two months, he kept saying, 'It's finished. I don't want to see her any more'... We experienced the affair as a matter of dishonour. We are Muslims before anything else. My father... had to swallow his pride in front of the Arab families around us."
The brother says that his other siblings tried to prevent the book being published. They told him that he would be sent back to prison and that he would lose his own son, he says.
The book will no doubt sell well because Dati, with her glamour and steely style, continues to fascinate people well beyond France. She is already clambering back up the ladder, seeking status posts in the European parliament and keeping a firm hand on the 7th arrondissement, the Paris Left Bank district where she became Mayor before her fall from Sarkozy's grace. She is manoeuvering to run for Mayor of Paris in 2014. Sarkozy's local party chiefs are fiercely opposed, but she has a habit of getting her way.
The radio offered a familiar song today as I was driving down from the Channel: the French intellectual classes and government were in full cry against the United States.
The cause this time is Roman Polanski. His arrest in Switzerland has dominated the news for 24 hours in France and Poland -- ahead of the election of a new German government -- and it has been big elsewhere.
[See Wednesday update below*]
Like everyone, I feel sorry for Polanski. Aged 76, a naturalized French citizen and one of the star directors of his generation, he was arrested while on his way to a Swiss film festival held in his honour. California wants him extradited over a 1977 offence. But he is not helped by the explosion of outrage from the intello-celebrities and the way the French Government has succumbed to its anti-American reflex.
C'est normal that Bernard Henry-Lévy, the Left Bank's star thinker and auto-publicist, should be raging on the radio as I write this. It's fairly normal that France's Society of Film Directors should warn that the arrest "could have disastrous consequences for freedom of expression across the world".
It is more difficult to take the intemperate response of President Sarkozy and his government. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister and friend of the stars, used the logic that Polanski's high artistic achievement should protect him from ordinary justice. "This affair is frankly a bit sinister. Here is a man of such talent, recognised worldwide, recognised especially in the country where he was arrested. This is not nice at all,"Kouchner said on France-Inter radio.
Frédéric Mitterrand, Sarkozy's Culture Minister and big film fan, went right over the top, calling Polanski's arrest "absolutely horrifying. Polanski had been thrown to the lions, he said. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also an America that frightens us and that one has just shown its face," said Mitterrand.
It is true that Frédo, as they call him, and Kouchner, are from the leftish wing of the government, but Sarko himself took Polanski's side, in more diplomatic language.
There are mitigating factors. Polanski has suffered terrible events in his life -- his mother's death at Nazi hands and the murder of Sharon Tate, his pregnant wife, in 1969. The Los Angeles judge and prosecutor in 1977 appear to have reneged on a deal for a guilty plea to sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl. But some perspective would help. Polanski is not a victim of monstrous injustice -- or persecution by Hollywood, as Le Monde suggests this afternoon by comparing his case to that of Charlie Chaplin in the 1950s.
Since fleeing to France in 1978, Polanski has refused return to Los Angeles to end the case (He did not collect his 2003 Best Director Oscar for fear of arrest). After his LA lawyers asked last year for the case to be quashed, the judge indicated sympathy with his arguments. But Polanski still did not turn up in court for the hearing in May this year so the judge rejected the request.
You can argue about Switzerland's role. Polanski spends time there every year in his house at Gstaad and had never been molested. There are suspicions that Berne acted to extradite him this time because it wants to redeem itself with the United States after the affair of tax-evading bank accounts and other scandals.
But Polanski is in his predicament simply because the justice system, especially in the United States, is relentless once the wheels are in motion. The outpouring of sympathy from France's high and mighty is playing right into the hands of their populist opponents. Marine Le Pen, heir apparent to her father's National Front party, took an easy swipe today. "Does belonging to the super-protected show-biz caste exonerate you for 30 years from judicial pursuit?" she asked. Sarkozy's administration is setting a bad example for people fighting against sexual violence towards children, she said. For once, it difficult to disagree with Madame Le Pen.
------------
*Update Wednesday: Since I posted this on Monday, the pendulum has swung back in France. The Socialist opposition finally came down against the government for criticising the Polanski arrest. Several eminent figures in Sarkozy's UMP party are also unhappy with the way Mitterrand and Kouchner jumped to take sides against the USA. A few from the film world, including Luc Besson, are also unhappy with the rush to defend Polanski.
Few nations have cultivated beauty and its attendant artifice as much as France. Now it could become the first country to impose health-warnings on all published photographs that have been retouched.
A parliamentarian from President Sarkozy's UMP party has tabled a bill that would require a "photo retouched" label on every improved picture that appears in advertising, the media or product-wrapping. Failure to signal Photoshopping or other enhancement would be punished with a 37,500 euro fine.
The idea is to end the "erroneous representation of the human body", says Valérie Boyer, an MP for the Marseilles area, who is behind the proposed law. The perfect images of women and also men in advertising and magazine portraits can drive people to despair and anorexia, says Boyer, who is a longtime campaigner in this field.
"These pictures can lead people to believe in realities which very often do not exist... There is a form of indecency in making people believe that only a certain category of humanity can attain perfection, without yellow teeth or love handles."
It's uncertain whether Boyer's bill, which has the signature of 50 other members, will reach a vote in parliament, but she has won applause from mental health advocates and drawn attention to the fact that most photographs -- except on news pages -- have been doctored. Celebrities expect electronic flattery whenever they sit for a picture. Elle Macpherson is said to travel with her own retouch artist.
The fashion world says that Boyer's law is laughable. Improving on nature has been part of the beauty business since time immemorial, they say. Michèle Fitoussi, a journalist on Elle magazine, joked on RTL radio: "While we're at it, why not write 'They have had their breasts redone and had a rib removed'."
France witnessed an egregious case this summer when Paris Match produced a feature on Sharon Stone. Under the headline "I'm 50 and so what!", the actress (who's actually 51) posed topless on the cover and across several pages, flaunting a flawless physique that a 20-year-old could barely dream of. The magazine cover, on all news stands in France, was pure provocation unless you knew that you were not looking at reality.
For men, the recent Vuitton adverts starring Sean Connery had a similar effect. It is very hard to believe that that is really the waistline of the 79-year-old former Bond.
Match was mocked a couple of years ago for tightening up Sarkozy's midriff in shots of the bare-topped President (This summer he did the job for the paparazzi by sucking in his stomach when they showed up).
Retouching of course remains taboo in the serious news business. There have been scandals when the rules have been broken. Photographers have been dismissed from news agencies for giving a little electronic tweak to shots of war and disasters. But given the ease of electronic fiddling I wonder how long the news industry can resist the temptation.
Below: a video which shows the wizardry of today's glamour trade
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The Clearstream trial has opened with the expected theatre at the Palais de Justice. The spectacle yesterday afternoon was not in the court, where the lawyers argued over procedure. It came from the melodramatic performance outside by Dominique de Villepin, the former Prime Minister and star defendant.
Villepin, a man who has never been accused of modesty, swept up with his wife and three children and delivered a grandiloquent speech in which he cast himself as the victim of epic injustice. He was, he told the cameras, the target of a political prosecution that has been staged by a vindictive ruler. Here, in English, is a taste of the amazingly inflated rhetoric which Villepin uses about himself. Don't forget that he is accused of complicity in dirty tricks, including forgery, to discredit Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the last presidential campaign.
"It is September 21. This is the anniversary of the creation of the French Republic. It is also the day dedicated by the United Nations to peace in the world.... I am here because of the will of one man and the relentlessness of one man - Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also President of the French Republic. I will come out of this a free man, exonerated in the name of the French people.
"Some would have us believe that there is in our country no such thing as a political trial. I would like to believe that too, yet here we are in 2009 and we are in France. I wish to restate that my combat is not personal. It is the combat of all those men and women who have fought against injustrice. It is the combat of all men and women who are victims of abuse of power. Justice is a very precious commodity and it is also very fragile. It requires the engagement of everyone. I know that the truth will triumph."
In French, his language does not sound quite so much like ham Shakespeare. It landed him, as planned, the opening slot of the evening news. But Villepin is taking a risk in claiming the high ground. When the trial gets down to the detail, he will face rough cross-examination on what he was doing when he allegedly colluded in, or perhaps instigated, the plot to blacken Sarkozy. Noble, Dantonesque speech-making will not help when he is up against the prosecutor and especially Thierry Herzog, Sarkozy's redoubtable lawyer (In French criminal trials, plaintiffs lawyers take part in the proceedings).
Sarkozy's riposte to Villepin came in today. Pierre Charon, one of the president's advisers, said the former Prime Minister appeared to think the law court was a Club Med resort. "You can be tall, handsome and arrogant and lose.... It's what happens inside the courtroom that counts."
Villepin is right to depict the affair as a duel between himself and Super Sarko. The president's determination to put his fomer colleague on trial has led to a new title for the case: "Kill Vill". Some in Sarkozy's own camp are worried that his pursuit of his former rival in the courts is not quite presidential.
The spectacle is good material for the comedians. On France-Inter today, Stéphane Guillon, the court jester of the state-run radio station, described the Clearstream trial as a fight for territory between two dogs -- an excitable little terrier (Sarkozy) and a languid Afghan hound. Watch below.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and author of the stillborn European Constitution, likes to be thought of as a bit of a charmer. He set out to enhance this image today with a novel which all but claims that he had a love affair with the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
[September 23 update: He says today that it is pure fiction -- see end note]
Giscard, 83, is having fun, of a dubious kind. His book, The Princess and the President, recounts the "violent passion" between a serving French president in the mid 1980s, and Patricia,"Princess of Cardiff" (capital of Wales, geddit?..), who is unhappily married to an unfaithful heir to the throne.
"Fiction or reality ?" asks today's Figaro, which has an exclusive on the book. "Only the former President has the key to this troubling story." The paper says the president gives very elaborate detail of the fictional couple's encounters in the palaces of France and Britain.
His descriptions of Princess Pat leave no doubt that she is Diana. "I kissed her hand and she gave me a questioning look, her slate-grey eyes widening as she tilted her head gently forward," the presidential narrator recounts. Like Diana, the unhappy Princess Pat throws her herself into charitable work while indulging in flings with other men.
In the book, President Jacques-Henri Lambertye meets Princess Pat at a G7 summit banquet at Buckingham Palace. He then holds her hand under the table on the train back from the 1984 D-Day landing anniversary in Normandy. That would have been three years after the royal wedding and Diana Spencer was 23. Giscard was 58 and bitter about losing the presidency to François Mitterrand three years earlier.
It has been known for some time that Giscard, who is known as l'Ex, was charmed by the young princess -- along with everyone else. In 1995, after spending the evening with her (picture above) at Versailles, he gushed over her eyes in a French magazine and called her Princess Charming. "I discovered she was also a cat, a feline. She moves without noise," he said. Giscard, who was and is married, had a reputation as a ladies' man when he was in the presidency. There was a report in the late 1970s that he crashed his car while driving home to the Elysée Palace in the early morning from un rendez-vous galant.
The cerebral and patrician ex-president likes to see himself as a literary figure. He was admitted to the Académie Francaise in 2003 though his only venture into fiction was an embarrassing and widely mocked 1994 romance called Le Passage. It sounds as though the new book is in similar breathless vein. Figaro, which is kind to Giscard, defends his right to scribble sentimental prose with lines such as "this sword of absolute love, whistling as it turns over our heads".
The Figaro plays Giscard's game, teasing the reader. "Discovering this incredible modern story, one can never for a moment forget who is the narrator," writes Etienne Montety, its literary critic. "One muses, amazed, about his stature in international public life."
On the matter of verisimilitude, Giscard might have been advised to proof-read his English. His narrator-president writes "I can still hear her saying in English... 'I wish that you love me'." That doesn't sound right.
Giscard is refusing to say whether this yarn has any truth or is just self-flattering fiction. There is no doubt that he wants readers to believe it. The title page carries the line: "Promise kept". The book ends. "'You asked me for permission for you to write your story,' she told me. 'I give you it, but you must make me a promise ...'."
Jean-Pierre Corcelette, a biographer of Giscard d'Estaing, told us this afternoon: "We know that VGE is a ladies' man...Anything is possible, but I think this is really the fantasmagoria of an old geezer."
Fact or fiction, either way, the operation sounds like another chapter in the posthumous Diana industry. The book may sell but it won't win any prizes unless there is an award for bad taste.
----------------
Wednesday update:
The storm of publicity seems to have taken Giscard by surprise. Today he has come clean and says the tale is fiction. "I knew her a little, in a relationship of confidence. She needed to communicate... I wanted to pay homage to her... Her inner feelings were disappointment and a need to be loved." He had promised Diana to write a book on "love stories between leaders of great countries," he said.
[Top picture, Giscard and the Princess at a charity event in Versailles in November 1994]
It's show-time for Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin. The occasion is the so-called Clearstream trial. Politicians land in court fairly often in France. On this occasion, the details are murky and complicated. People tune out when the TV starts explaining them. But the stakes tomorrow are high because the president is a player. We are in for some good theatre and don't forget that Watergate was initially just about a low-level break-in.
Villepin, President Chirac's last Prime Minister, is accused of plotting to destroy Sarkozy's chances in the 2007 presidential election by smearing him with suspicions of corruption. With the help of compliant prosecutors, Sarkozy has pushed the case to court. He wants to hang, draw and quarter the patrician, never-elected politician who tried to thwart his run for the presidency in 2007.
For Villepin, this tragi-comedy of revenge will probably end, as such cases do in France, with acquittal or a mild slap on the wrist. In the meantime, though, it offers a great glimpse of fear and loathing at the pinnacle of French power.
For a month, former spies, media bosses, an investigating judge and a cast from the ruling elite will parade in a spectacle played in the very court-room where Queen Marie-Antoinette was sent to the guillotine in 1793.
The plot, boiling down to attempted slander, is more Keystone Cops than Racine tragedy. It has been elevated to drama by the hatred between Super Sarko and the matinee idol of Chirac's Government who tried to stand in his path five years ago.
Villepin, 55, a former diplomat and Chirac protégé, is accused of "complicity in calumny, complicity in the use of forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust".
At the heart of the case is the charge that Villepin tried in 2004 to expose Sarkozy as a holder of an illicit account with Clearstream, a Luxembourg clearing-house bank. Sarkozy was Interior Minister, manoeuvering to seize control of Chirac's Gaullist movement and win the presidency in 2007. Villepin was Foreign Minister, before taking over as Interior Minister and then Prime Minister.
Sarkozy's name, in thinly disguised form, was among hundreds on the bank list, which turned out to be a forgery. The supposed money was believed to have been kicked back from millions of pounds of bribes over the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. Also on the bogus list were Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now head of the International Monetary Fund, and Laetitia Casta, the former super-model. Both are among 41 plaintiffs in the case.
Villepin denies wrongdoing. However his version differs from that of two other accused, Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former Vice-President of the EADS aerospace company, and Imad Lahoud, a computer expert. Gergorin reported 2004 meetings with Villepin that the former Prime Minister denies.
Changing his story for the fourth time, Lahoud said in a recent affidavit: "I knew that Jean-Louis Gergorin was in contact with Dominique de Villepin and that the conspiracy against Nicolas Sarkozy was planned with Dominique de Villepin's knowledge."
Without Sarkozy's desire for vengeance, it is unlikely that Clearstream would have become une affaire d'état. Back in 2004-2005, when he heard that that his name was on the list and that Villepin was in the know, Sarkozy made a show of indignation. He demanded prosecution and promised to "hang whoever did this on a butcher's hook". Sarkozy was vulnerable at the time. Cécilia, his wife, was tired of his infidelity and about to leave him for Richard Attias, whom she married last year. Gossip had it that she had been told of her husband's dalliances by informers sent by Chirac and Villepin.
Villepin argues that he was merely fulfilling his ministerial job when he asked for checks on the bank list that was brought to him in early 2004. He says that he dropped the matter when told that it was a forgery. Sarkozy was aware of the case far earlier than he let on, says Villepin.
Sarkozy's ire has intensified with recent leaks from Yves Bertrand, a former chief of police intelligence (Renseignements Généraux), who tracked Clearstream as well as the love lives of Cabinet Ministers and other tittle-tattle. Bertrand, who is appearing as a witness, says that the whole affair is driven by Sarkozy's lust for revenge.
The President has sent his lawyers along with those of the other 40 civil plaintiffs to do battle in court. At the start of the trial tomorrow, Villepin's lawyers will ask the judges to dismiss Sarkozy as a plaintiff because of conflict of interest. As President, Sarkozy is the nation's chief justice and immune from legal action. Sarkozy is sending Thierry Herzog, his ace criminal lawyer, to represent him (In French trials, plaintiff's lawyers act throughout the proceedings, examining witnesses along with the defence and prosecution).
Villepin's move is expected to fail, but he has scored a point. No president has ever taken legal action in office. Le Monde this weekend criticised Sarkozy, saying that he was using the might of the state against Villepin and calling on him to withdraw his complaint.
Villepin, who was positioned by Chirac to beat Sarkozy to the presidential nomination, is trying to turn the tables on the President, depicting himself as victim of an vendetta driven by obsession.
"Some day, he will have to explain his relentlessness [acharnement]," Villepin said this month. "Allowing oneself to be dominated by passion and hatred amounts to failure...I have faith in his ability to screw things up [faire des conneries]."
Don't be fooled by the stock image of Villepin, circulating in the English-language media ahead of this trial. He is portrayed as intellectual, literary, romantic, Chirac's hussar, and so on. He is best remembered abroad for his impassioned United Nations speech in early 2003 against the US Iraq invasion. But those who know him also describe him as an inveterate but amateurish plotter and devotee of backroom intrigue. They liken him to Joseph Fouché, Napoleon Bonaparte's chief of secret police. Bernadette Chirac, wife of his longtime boss, gave him the nickname Nero when he was serving as the then president's chief of staff in the 1990s.
Villepin, who has never been accused of modesty, has been selling himself in the media as a statesman in waiting. He has started a club of admirers with an eye to running for the presidency in 2012, although he has never presented himself for election to so much as a village council. He cuts a rather lonely figure but a friend of mine reports that she lunched at the table next to his at an Italian restaurant on the Left Bank yesterday and that he is in fine form.
Watch him sticking it to Sarkozy -- elegantly -- on his site
Ségolène Royal, the Socialist runner-up in the last Presidential election, gets flakier by the day. Followers still see her semi-mystical persona as the best hope for the self-destructing French opposition. Others see her as a fading diva. She did little to help herself this week with a revamped internet site.
Hoots of laughter greeted the launch on Tuesday of the new-look home of Désirs d'Avenir, her personal brand (screen grab above). Cheesy and old-fashioned, it looked like something invented by a cult. "Is Ségo in a relationship with Tom Cruise?" wondered one commentator. Another called it "digital suicide". "It's like a leap 10 years into the past," said Rue89.com. Spoofs like this appeared [thanks DODO].
Royal's team has scrambled to undo the damage, producing a makeshift replacement which you will find now on desirsdavenir.com . According to L'Express magazine, the amateurish site was put together by André Hadjez, Royal's new companion [below in picture]. A 40,000 euro bill for building it was sent to Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late Yves Saint-Laurent, who is Royal's main source of finance, said L'Express. People are wondering what has happened to Royal because she used the net so skilfully to beat her Socialist rivals in 2006 and win the nomination to take on Nicolas Sarkozy.
Royal is not going to leave the scene. She is certain that her destiny is to unseat Sarko in 2012 and she is manoeuvering flat out to undermine Martine Aubry, who won the party leadership last November. The latest episode is a book by two journalists claiming that Aubry won the leadership by fraud.
It must be a little galling for Royal to see that some polls now put her behind François Hollande, the uncharismatic last party leader who is the father of their four children. Coming soon: Paris Match is to appear in court for publishing this cover picture of Royal and Hadjez, who is in the property and board game business, on holiday together.
While the world has marked a year since the financial crash this week, President Sarkozy has adopted for France a line from the US declaration of independence. Progress in the pursuit of happiness is to be factored into the nation's economic performance. I mentioned this earlier in the week, but for anyone interested, here's a look -- written today for the paper -- at the way that Sarkozy is positioning France ahead of next week's G20 session in Pennsylvania.
The idea of quantifying the quality of life, proposed to Sarkozy by Joseph Stiglitz, the US Nobel economics laureate, has drawn some mockery; with its long holidays, short working hours and early retirement, France will surely emerge as the new superpower, said the comedians.
But Sarkozy’s index for sustainable contentment was a clever move. It fits with the desire in developed nations to shun overconsumption;it raids ideas from France’s popular green movement; it nods to the recent fashion for definingle bonheur [happy French couple in picture]. More widely, it enhances Sarkozy’s claim to the mantle of world statesman. On this front it was a follow-up to his creation last week of a carbon tax, a levy on the use of fossil-fuel.
“Super Sarko” has never been known to miss an opportunity and he is seizing a big one now. As the world begins to pull itself out of recession he believes that he is well placed to play visionary and power broker. This has meant abandoning the reformist, free-market doctrines that won him election in 2007 and recasting himself as apostle of the good old French model of state dirigisme. Reborn a year ago as foe of unbridled capitalism, Sarkozy has proclaimed the “death of the all-powerful market which is always right”.
Sarkozy is preparing his next turn on the stage, starting on Tuesday in New York and moving on to Pittsburgh on Thursday. This week, he threatened to walk out of the G20 if he does not get his way — a repeat of his brinkmanship at the last session, in London in April, which he claims won a breakthrough over tax havens. This time he wants to strongarm President Obama and Gordon Brown into agreeing on a fixed, legally enforced cap on bankers’ pay. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is already onboard.
France has a strong hand, Sarkozy believes, because it has suffered much less than Britain and the United States and its recession is ending faster than the others’ — though it wallows deep in debt.
In time-honoured French fashion, Sarkozy is happy to make himself a nuisance to les Anglo-Saxons as he preaches his doctrine of “remoralised capitalism”. He calculates that with elections facing Brown and Merkel, he is the pre-eminent European, at least for the moment. He is busy cultivating Latin America and the East. He may have rejoined Nato but France is back to playing its old Gaullist game of middleman between Russia and the US. On Iran and its nuclear programme he is talking tougher than almost anyone outside Israel.
The French President is attempting a little one-upmanship over Obama. He has made no secret of his frustration over the US leader’s failure to respond to his overtures of friendship. Privately, he sees Obama as overrated, indecisive and now politically weakened. He is said to have given him “9 out of 20” for his speech on healthcare the other day.
Sarkozy’s international crusade goes down well at home. While his approval ratings have edged back up towards 50 per cent he consistently scores over 70 per cent for defending French interests abroad. However, some old hands worry that he is putting up backs with his world evangelism.
Alain Duhamel, an old-school political commentator, said on RTL radio that Sarkozy’s France was playing an old part. On one hand it was serving as an "extremely sympathique" guide for the big economic powers. “It is also playing an extremely irritating role, that of professor of virtue, the lesson-giver who breaks the rules that it lays down for others.” France is half Le Cid and half Tartuffe, he added -- models of heroism and hypocrisy from the 17th century dramatists Corneille and Molière. .
Jacques Chirac, the last President, has become the latest victim of the anti-tobacco zeal that prevails these days in France. Chirac's publishers have just delayed for a month the release of the first volume of his memoirs because his staff objected to a cover portrait in which he is holding a lit cigarette.
A dangling clope was a trademark of the younger Chirac, as it was of most French stars of the last half century. The picture is a nice atmospheric shot from the 1980s of the pensive prime minister of the time. It would not have made much sense without the cigarette, though smokes have been purged in recent years from pictures of Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon,Jean-Paul Sartre,Albert Camus, Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, the late writer-politician, and Jacques Tati, the late film-maker.
"The release of the book has been put back because of the cover photograph," said Elizabeth Franck, spokeswoman for the NiL publishing house. "Photographs of the young Chirac smoking are quite common. Everyone has seen them (but) when Mr Chirac's staff saw the photo on the cover mock-up, they preferred to change it for a portrait of his face alone," Franck told us.
The bon vivant Chirac, 76, stopped appearing in public with cigarettes in 1988 and made cancer research one of the main priorities. His presidency ended with a smoking ban spreading in public places. Nicolas Sarkozy, his successor, is a private smoker. He enjoys one fat Cuban cigar a day in the Elysée Palace -- but never touches alcohol.
The Chirac decision has been attacked as another case of excessive obedience to the anti-smoking fervour which took hold in Chirac's years in the Elysée, from 1995-2007. "Political correctness has struck again", said Le Parisien.
The doctoring of pictures has become an issue in the cultural world, with critics accusing publishers, advertisers and museum directors of air-brushing history in the way that banished Soviet politicians were once erased from Kremlin portraits.
It's pretty clear that historic pictures are not covered by the 1991 anti-tobacco legislation, known as the Evin law. This prohibits "all propaganda or publicity, direct or indirect, in favour of tobacco and its products."
Géard Audureau, chief of the Non-smokers' Rights campaign organisation, called the Chirac cover-change silly. "This is an image of the young Chirac from a time when he smoked. It does not shock me to see a smoking president because it was the reality in that period," he told us. "It is an old-fashioned picture which does not promote tobacco."
Audureau compared the decision to other acts of censorship this year. They have involved Audrey Tautou, the actress, Delon and Tati, who invented and played the comic Monsieur Hulot. The Christian Dior perfume company was widely criticised in the spring for removing a cigarette from a 1960s portrait of Delon which it is using in a current campaign [Pictures below]. The Paris transport system (RATP) refused to carry film posters of Tautou starring as Coco Chanel because her character was smoking.
Readers here will remember that a full-scale row broke out when the RATP forced the state Cinémathèque to remove Monsieur Hulot's trade-mark pipe from posters advertising a festival of Tati's work. That act, in which the pipe was replaced by a child's windmill, prompted a petition by the League of Human Rights. "It is necessary to mobilise people in the face of spreading political correctness which does not hesitate to deform works of national heritage," it said.
The RATP backed down after Roselyne Bachelot, the Health Minister, added her voice to the outcry against the altered picture. "I am not in favour of taking Jacques Tati's pipe away from him," said Bachelot.
I wonder what will be the fate of the celebrated pipe and whisky bottles of Captain Haddock, the friend of Tintin, when Steven Spielberg produces his forthcoming Hollywood version of the cartoon boy reporter.
Here we go again. Another G20 summit and another threat by Nicolas Sarkozy to slam the door.
The last time, in April, Super Sarko huffed and puffed in the days leading up to the 20-nation economic summit in London. If he did not win consent to his demands, he would be out in a flash, he said. He stayed to the end and claimed that he won a breakthrough on tax havens.
This time, the venue is the gathering in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 24-25. Sarko will march out if the other nations fail to agree on curbs bankers' bonuses, the Elysée Palace said today.
Claude Guéant, Sarkozy's chief-of-staff, made clear that he is staging another bout of brinkmanship, this time in the role of scourge of high-paid bankers. His demands for a legal cap on financial sector remuneration have run into opposition, notably from Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, and President Obama's team.
“There must absolutely be an agreement to make things change and the president is absolutely determined on that score,” Guéant said on RTL radio. Asked if that meant a walk-out, he replied: "This possibility must be taken seriously." Sarkozy was also quoted in today's Figaro as saying:"If there is no concrete decision [at Pittsburgh], I will leave."
Sarkozy believes that his walk-out threats ahead of the April meeting in London won the agreement to black-list tax havens. His strong-arm tactics went down fairly well domestically, but were seen by fellow leaders as silly grandstanding.
After summoning French banking chiefs and lecturing them on the dangers of rewarding risk-taking, Sarkozy has won their consent to a system of limits and delayed payment of bonuses. He has the support of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for an absolute cap on bonuses and sanctions for companies that break it. Brown, the only leftist in the the trio of Europe's big power leaders, agreed to sign a joint European pre-G20 letter only after it was diluted to a commitment to "explore ways" of limiting bonuses.
The G20 Finance ministers backed away from the idea of a cap in their meeting to prepare the G20 earlier this month. The focus of the Pittsburgh session has shifted from bankers' pay to the need to impose higher capital requirements on banks, as Brown and Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, want.
Sarkozy knows that he has strong public support for his crusade against bankers and traders, species which have been relegated in France to a rung somewhere below serial killers and child molesters. One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the consensus holds that the financial world has done rather well out of the crisis and changed little. Sarkozy has been quoting Talleyrand's famous line on the aristocrats who came back to France after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte: 'They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.'
A national poll for Libération showed today that a majority of the country thinks that the main beneficiaries of Sarkozy's anti-recession policies are big corporations and banks. Only seven percent rated ordinary workers as benefiting. The Viavoice poll found that 58 percent had a negative view of Sarkozy's handling of la crise over the past year, with 40 percent positive. That's actually remarkably favourable for Sarko, given the general level of grumbling about him.
Sarkozy came up with a new wheeze today for getting the French out of their grim mood. He announced that he is adding happiness as a factor to the usual measure of economic performance. The idea, which is part of the new Green Sarko, is to shift emphasis away from gross domestic product (GDP) towards quality of life matters such as well-being and sustainability.
A couple of years ago, Sarkozy commissioned the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Armatya Sen to come up with proposals. They made them public today at the Sorbonne university. Sarkozy said there that GDP gives a false reading because people have for years (until recently) been told that the economy was growing yet they saw that their living standards were declining. "In the whole world, people think that they are being lied to, that the (GDP) figures are false, or worse, manipulated," he said. "Nothing is more destructive to democracy".
The President called for a revolution. New factors in national performance should include such things as "the services which are rendered inside the family", the quality of public services and access to leisure activities. He has a point, as we are always arguing here. Sarkozy wants to factor in the quality of life. If everyone did the same, France would likely top the world performance charts.
The video below has just blown up in the face of Brice Hortefeux, the French Interior Minister and close friend of President Sarkozy. In it, Hortefeux is bantering with Amin, a young party activist of Algerian origin from Sarkozy's UMP party. Apparently talking about France's north African immigrant population, the minister cracks a joke: “When there’s one that’s all right. It’s when there are a lot of them that there are problems.” [more of the exchange below]
That was enough to trigger a full-scale outcry from the Socialist opposition, anti-racist groups, editorialists and so on. The exchange, which has turned into a YouTube hit, is the top national news item this morning. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Madonna, has just called for Hortefeux's resignation.
Hortefeux has come up with clumsy attempts to extract himself. He was, he claimed, not talking about Arabs, but talking about Auvergnats, people from the Auvergne, because both he Amin hail from the central France region.
The mini-scandal will blow over, but it it is damaging because it plays to the racist reputation that clings to Hortefeux from his days as Sarkozy's first minister for Immigration and National Identity. It also reinforces the ugly image that has clung to Sarkozy's administration despite his appointment of ministers from the immigrant banlieues. Before the new incident, Rachida Dati and other former Sarkozy appointees from the minorities had complained that Hortefeux was condescending towards them.
Since becoming Interior Minister, which includes the job of chief of police, in the summer, Hortefeux has been trying to shed his sulphurous image. To show he meant business, last month he sacked a prefect -- top state official -- for complaining that the chaotic security measures at Orly airport were "like being in Africa". The black personnel complained to the police. Today the dismissed prefect, Paul Girot de Langlade, was crowing on the radio. "I hope he joins me soon."
Amin is insisting that he did not feel insulted or "disrespected" by the minister's banter. Hortefeux says that he said nothing about anyone's north African origins. The fuss is being overplayed, but his explanation does not wash. The exchange in the video tells you about the old-fashioned attitude in sections of the the UMP -- formerly the Gaullist -- party towards the underclass descended from immigrants from the former colonies.
A woman introduces Hortefeux to Amin, saying "he eats pig and drinks beer".
Hortefeux jokes: "So he doesn't fit the stereotype at all." [Il ne correspond pas du tout au prototype, alors]
France has a long tradition of taxing its citizens in exotic ways but you might think that now would not be the best time for hitting them with a new wheeze. President Sarkozy has done that today with the announcement of a carbon tax -- a levy on oil, gas and coal used by households and business.
In full statesman-like mode, Sarkozy talked of an historic "fiscal revolution" as he appeared on television from a heat-pump plant [in picture] to present his scheme. Earlier this week, he said his carbon tax would turn out to be a milestone like General de Gaulle's decision to pull France out of Algeria and President Mitterrand's abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Both of those were initially unpopular. Two-thirds of the public do not want the carbon tax, according to polls. But with a rise in his approval ratings, Sarkozy is prepared to put up with some unhappiness. He sees this as a chance to blaze a green trail that others will follow -- starting at a big UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December.
The carbon idea has been operating successfully over the past decade in Finland, Sweden and Denmark and in parts of Canada. This is the first time that it is to be applied in a major economy.
The scheme has been stirring a furore in the political world for the past couple of weeks. Its unpopularity is upsetting sections of Sarkozy's own camp.
The point is to encourage people to use less fossil fuel. Electricity is exempt because most in France comes from renewable nuclear power. The main feature, Sarkozy insisted, is that the tax of 17 euros per tonne of carbon gas will create no overall new burden. Revenues will be put back into taxpayers' pockets through other tax cuts and "green cheques" to the lower-earning classes. This smacks of one of those over-complicated bureaucratic arrangements known, appropriately, as une usine à gaz -- a gasworks. The immediate impact -- from next year -- will be about four cents per litre on fuel and a five percent rise in household gas costs.
As usual, Sarkozy has been astute, wrongfooting the left and the green opposition by embracing one of their themes. He employed Michel Rocard, a former Socialist Prime Minister, to draw up plans for the tax. While the party has quibbled over the detail, Ségolène Royal, the dissident Socialist star, has used it as a weapon to accuse Sarkozy of robbing the poor. The Greens have been reduced to complaining that the President has climbed onto their bandwagon with a watered-down version of what they always wanted.
Sarkozy called on the United States and Asia to follow Europe's lead on climate change. He was too modest to say it, but of course he meant Presidnet Sarkozy's lead.
At the risk of being called a carbon hypocrite myself, it's worth noting that France's new green president is not frugal with his fossil fuel. He jets around the world in the presidential Airbuses more than any of his predecessors. He took two of them to fly for his one-day visit to Brazil last weekend. His brief public outings, such as today's jaunt to the east, require lavish deployment of police, often bused in from a distance. He has just expanded the limousine fleet at the Elysée Palace and when he drives himself it is in his gas-guzzling BMW 4x4 (SUV to Americans).
PS. The Times has done its bit for cutting the carbon in Paris. Yesterday, we moved out of the elegant building on the Place de l'Opéra which has been our home for decades -- with the exception of 1940-44. We are now in much less grand, but still pleasant, premises in the 17th arrondissement. And I promise to get away from Sarkozy in the next post.
President Sarkozy appears to have pulled off a true feat of salesmanship. On a one-day visit to Brazil, he has secured President Lula's agreement in principle to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets. If it comes off, the five billion euro deal is more than a business story. It is a political and strategic breakthrough for France and Sarkozy.
The Rafale has suffered something of a jinx since Dassault aviation began developing it in the 1980s. Though highly agile, technologically advanced and beautiful from the pilot's point of view, the plane has so far failed to win a single customer outside France. Potential clients have found it too expensive or succumbed to rivals' political pressure -- notably from the United States. The Rafale was launched when France decided to go it alone and stay out of the Eurofighter project of Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.
It entered service with the air force and navy from 2000 and a squadron is on duty in Afghanistan.
The failure to sell was a big frustration. The French tax-payer forked out most of the 30 billion euros it took to build the beast and supply it to the forces. Before Sarkozy, President Chirac flew thousands of miles to press France's traditional customers such as Morocco and India to buy the successor to Dassault's legendary Mirage -- which did well abroad. Talks advanced but the orders never came. Chirac's interest was personal as well as patriotic. His father was employed in the 1940s by Marcel Bloch, who changed his name to Dassault and founded the great plane-making firm. It is still family run. I recently sat beside Olivier Dassault, Marcel's grandson, as he landed one of the family Falcons on a visit the Rafale factory near Bordeaux. Serge, his father and current chief, was in the back. He told me that Dassault had not lost money despite the export failure because the state had financed the project.
Last week, Paris even sent two Rafales (the word means 'gust' in English) to take part in Muammar Gaddafi's anniversary festivities in Libya. The Colonel has been toying with the idea of buying a few of the planes, which so far have cost about 138 million euros a piece.
Sarkozy has applied his usual determination to pulling off a first order for the hitherto unwanted plane. In Brazil, the Rafale was in competition with the Saab Gripen NG and Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet. The deal is part of Lula's plans for turning Brazil into "one of the great powers of the 21st century." Sarkozy's clincher was agreement to share all the Rafale technology with Brazil and let the Brazilians assemble many themselves. US bars on exporting military technology meant that neither Boeing nor Saab (which uses US systems) could do this.
"The relationship between Brazil and France is not one of supplier and client, but of partners," Sarkozy said in Brazil. "We want to act together because we share the same values and a same vision on the big international goals."
Brazil is already buying five French submarines - including one that will be modified to run on nuclear power - and 50 military transport helicopters, for a value of around 10 billion dollars. As part of the Rafale deal, Sarkozy agreed to buy 10 KC-390 transport aircraft to be built by Brazil's Embraer.
No contract has been signed yet and there are reports that the Brazilian Air Force feels that it has been strong-armed in a contest that is not officially to be decided until October. Optimistic French officials hope that the final Rafale contract will be announced on October 23. That is the 103rd anniversary of the pioneering flight by Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aviator, in the Bois de Boulogne in west Paris. The American Wright brothers took off three years earlier, but, as we have seen here before, Santos-Dumont was officially recorded as making the first powered flight because the Aero Club de France was on hand to certify it.
 President Sarkozy has been caught again compensating for his modest stature. Last June, you may remember, he was snapped standing on a stool to match the height of President Obama during the D-Day ceremonies in Normandy (picture below). This time, we hear that a busload of short people was driven in to stand behind the President when he visited a factory.
Sarkozy's appearance at the Faurecia firm near the Normandy town of Caligny last Thursday was a photo-opportunity for the national television news (picture above). It was designed to show a dynamic Sarkozy, back from the summer break, making a speech to eager workers at the automotive parts plant.
A Belgian television crew decided to show how the Elysée Palace stage-manages these events. It filmed volunteers being driven in from other Faurecia plants as extras to stand around the president. They were picked because they were not taller than Sarkozy's five feet five inches, said Jean-Philippe Schaller, the RTBF tv reporter. Watch on the video below as he asks one of the white-coated volunteers if height was a factor in their casting. "Yes," she says. He persists: "You had to be no taller than the president ?" The employee replies: "Voilà" (That's it).
The Elysée has taken 24 hours to react to the RTBF report -- after it was picked up by the French media. They dismissed the story as "totally preposterous and grotesque" -- but did not actually deny it. The Faurecia company also denied ensuring a low-level crowd, but one of the firm's trade union leaders contradicted this, saying the report is accurate. "We are certain, from sure and reliable sources, that this demand did not come out of the head of a manager at Faurecia and that it absolutely was a request from the Elysée," said Jose De Sa Moreira of the CFDT, one of France's main unions. "Only short people could appear beside the President," he said.
"The request, or order, was given to the top management of Faurecia. As union leaders we just ensured that the people approached were not coerced and that they were not chosen on the grounds of colour or age..." he added.
It's possible that this story is the product of mischief from local anti-Sarkozy forces. One worker said the whole company had been talking about the height restriction in the run-up to the presidential visit. So it could have been a rumour that started it all. But the tale is plausible for anyone who has watched the elaborate way that Sarkozy's appearances are organised.
The French presidency is not much different from the American one or the British Prime Minister's office when it comes to stage-managing appearances. Nothing is left to chance. A prefect -- the local governor -- was sacked a few months ago after police failed to keep demonstrators out of earshot during a Sarkozy visit to a provincial factory. But picking a short crowd does seem to be taking things a little far.
Sarkozy's sensitivity over his petite taille is normal enough. But he sets himself up for mockery with attempts to compensate for it. His stack-heeled loafers are a running joke with cartoonists and comedians.
Height seems to be a criterion for membership of Sarkozy's government. There are few tall men. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, and Jean-Louis Borloo, who the super-minister for the environment and transport, are pint-sized. François Fillon, the Prime Minister, is of modest height.
Carla Bruni, who stands nearly five inches taller than her husband, grumbled this summer that people paid too much attention to the fact that she always wore completely flat soles in his presence. "I understand that the media prefer to talk about my pumps more than my global foundation or the fight against illiteracy," she said.
Sarkozy is not the only one to stage-manage appearances. Last month, Luc Chatel, the Education Minister and government spokesman, was caught in the act when he visited a supermarket at Villeneuve-le-Roi, southeast of Paris.
The aisles, normally quiet on an August afternoon, were suddenly full of well-dressed middle-class shoppers who showered praise on a government price freeze on school supplies. It turned out that the women were all from the UMP, Sarkozy's party, and had been driven in for the occasion.
[Below, Belgian tv report on Sarkozy's short crowd]
President Sarkozy's team is alarmed by a familiar French mess in Gabon, the former west African colony. Crowds have rioted against Ali Bongo, the newly elected president, and attacked a French consulate and oil facilities.
Paris faces the old scenario: President Bongo telephones Sarkozy to send troops to rescue him from a popular revolt while French paratroops evacuate the 10,000 French nationals. The scene was last played out in February 2008 when the paratroops saved President Déby of Chad from insurgents and escorted expatriates out of his country.
It was not supposed to be like this. When he took office in May 2007, Sarkozy promised a clean break with "FrançAfrique", the old system in which Paris propped up African leaders, no matter how corrupt, provided they served French interests. Sarkozy has switched strategic focus to the Gulf, cut troop levels to 900 in the Ivory Coast and he plans to close one of two garrisons in Senegal or Gabon. France, he says, has ended the "complicity of a bygone era" and it will no longer play the gendarme of Africa. In 2007, he caused offence with a speech in Senegal in which he said Africans had "not sufficiently entered history." He also exonerated the colonial powers from some of their legacy. They were "not responsible for the bloody wars that the Africans have waged among themselves, for the genocide, the dictators, the fanaticism and corruption," he said.
But the trouble in loyal and lucrative Gabon shows how hard it is for France to break with ways that long have ensured rich returns. The rioters who attacked the consulate in Gabon's Port Gentil were angry over over the presidential victory of Ali Ben Bongo, son of Omar Bongo, who ruled from 1967 to his death last June [pictured with Sarkozy above]. "France imposed its new Bongo," says Bruno Moubamba, a defeated candidate.
Bongo senior was the epitome of the old system. He kept dozens of mansions and fat bank accounts in France, according to investigators. He allegedly helped funded the campaigns of President Chirac. In the 1980s and 1990s, he corrupted the bosses of the Elf-Aquitaine oil giant and the son of the late President Mitterrand, who were all sentenced by Paris courts. "Gabon without France is like a car with no driver," Bongo senior used to say. "France without Gabon is like a car with no fuel."
Bernard Kouchner, Sarkozy's Foreign Minister and human rights symbol, was embarrassed earlier this year when it was disclosed that before taking office in 2007, Bongo had paid him hundreds of thousands of euros for consultancy.
Despite Sarkozy's promises of change, it is business of usual for much of 'France-Afrique'. Total oil and other French firms need all the help they can get as they struggl to keep their share of trade in the face of Chinese and American competition. Paris laid on the honours at Bongo's funeral in June. Sarkozy attended along with Chirac, Kouchner and a platoon of present and former ministers. Sarkozy was booed by crowds after proclaiming that Bongo was France's "great and loyal friend".
With performances like that, it is not surprising that France finds itself once again as a player in the thick of upheaval in one of its old African possessions. This evening's Le Monde reaches this conclusion: "France worked to obtain the (Gabonese) election result that was proclaimed on Thursday... A chance to put into action President Sarkozy's promised new relationship with Africa has been missed. The Gabonese regime, which symbolises the caricature of "Françafrique" will thus live on."
France is talking about the sleeper hit of the summer movie season. Neuilly Sa Mere is a fish-out-of water comedy about a kid from the rough ethnic banlieue who goes to live with a rich family in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Nicolas Sarkozy's very opulent home town on the western edge of Paris.
The low-budget film was released in the mid-August doldrums. The critics damned it with faint praise but it leapt to second box office place by the end of its first week (after Up). Almost a million people have seen it and it's on the way to becoming a smash, with its catch-lines doing the rounds among young fans. The title of the film is a play on 'Nique-ta-Mère!' (F___ your mother!) a ghetto insult that is the name of a notorious rap group that is more politely known as NTM.
I saw the film with my teenage son and found it a bit facile with its caricatures of stuck-up bourgeois Neuilly and warm-hearted Arab and black kids of the rough estates. It also draws heavily on La Vie est Une Longue Fleuve Tranquille,a 1989 classic on a similar theme. But it is redeemed by a very funny running gag, thought up by Djamel Bensalah, its writer-producer.
This turns on the character of an insufferable teenage version of Nicolas Sarkozy, complete with platform heels, slick slogans, and permanent Ray Bans. Audiences cannot get enough of Charles de Chazelle, the appalling clone of the young Sarko, played by 15-year-old Jérémy Denisty, a Belgian actor.
Samy, the hero, played by Samy Seghir, 14, has to share a room with Charles, who idolises Sarkozy and is aiming for presidency as Sarko did from his own teenage years. Sarkozy posters cover the walls along with portraits of Rachida Dati, the disgraced former cabinet star, and of Jean, the 22-year-old son of the President who is being groomed to take over Sarkoland, as Neuilly and the Hauts-de-Seine département are known. The bully at Samy's posh new Catholic school is played by a lookalike of the long blonde-haired Jean Sarkozy. Carla Bruni's music fills the Chazelle house. Samy wears an NYPD t-shirt when he jogs, just like Sarko.
[Top picture, the Chazelles, with Charles on right. Below: Denisty/Charles with Seghir/Samy]
Audiences hoot as Charles spouts Sarkozy lines, dismissing the Arab and black youths of the "cités" (estates) as "racaille" (thugs) who should be "Karcherisé" -- cleaned out. "My room, you love it or leave it," Charles tells Samy. The allusion to Sarkozy's patriotic campaign quip about France has become the catch)phrase of the film. Charles runs for a school election on promises of "la rupture" (a clean break) and the school's motto is "Work more to succeed more", a version of the Sarkozy motto "Work more to earn more". When Charles loses the school election, he moans: "Je suis loser, comme Balladur". The aristocratic Edouard Balladur lost the 1995 presidential election to Jacques Chirac, leading to seven years in the wilderness for Sarkozy, his chief supporter.
In another funny touch, Michel Galabru, a veteran movie star, plays Charles Pasqua, the Gaullist baron who was Sarkozy's mentor. Sitting in le Racing Club, the exclusive country club in the Bois de Boulogne, he advises young Charles on how to become a killer politician just like Sarko.
The only cinema in Neuilly declined to show the film at first. Jean-Christophe Fromantin, the Mayor, said he had feared a crude caricature of his town, a national byword for both the ancien and nouveau riche. This week they put the film on and Fromantin enjoyed it. "It's rather sympathique. It's very much a caricature but the traits of the characters he been taken to such an extreme that it's quite funny," he said. "The actors are good but they do not embody the reality of the banlieues nor that of Neuilly." Not all his citizens agree. Some older Neuilly film-goers said the comedy ridiculed the town and made the drug-dealing ghetto denizens to be nice guys.
Critics have revised their views. It became a sleeper hit because it touches the pulse of young France, shows the immigrant kids in a sympathetic light and makes clever fun of "Super Sarko" and his universe, they say. "The film has an alchemy that has hit the mark," said le Parisien.
Bensalah, an up-and-coming film maker aged 33, said that he had drawn on his own experience in his depiction of France's two opposite worlds. His eyes had been opened when he was a 10-year-old ball-boy at Roland Garros, the French open tennis championship, played on the edge of Neuilly. "In the same day, I went from the most rotten Parisian cites to this incredible place with girls and boys with double-barreled first names -- when my friends were all called Mamadou," he said.
Sarkozy, who is usually sensitive to mockery of his person, says that he plans to see the film. Pierre, his eldest son who is a Neuilly-based pop music producer and is imitated in the film, saw it an apparently liked it.
We have often visited this French paradox: The French live better than almost anyone else yet they express the gloomiest views of the state of their country and their future. A good illustration has come up this week.
New figures show that France's baby boom is roaring on, with nearly 800,000 born in 2008 for a mainland population of 63 million. This keeps France at the top of the European league for fertility, which could reach an all-time record of 2.07 children per woman, according to the government. That is about the US level and well above the European average of 1.5. In contrast, neighbouring Germany, Italy and Spain are suffering from a demographic slump. The UK is doing better than average, but suffers from an abnormally high level of teenage mothers.
There is a broad consensus over the factors behind France's happy situation. Since the mid-20th century, governments have consistently promoted child-rearing and large families with generous tax benefits and allowances and excellent day and nursery schools. Working mothers are the norm and they benefit from the country's relatively flexible and short working hours.
Another ingredient is the near universal acceptance of child-birth out of wedlock. Fifty-two percent of births were to unmarried women last year. The health service is also helping older women produce children. A record 21 percent of all first births were to women over 35, compared with 16 percent a decade earlier. With France's taboo over matters ethnic, there is no clear picture of the role of immigrants in the boom. The big immigrant population is obviously a factor -- as it is in the USA -- but Germany has many too yet it suffers a baby-shortage.
Nadine Morano, President Sarkozy's minister for the Family, was quick to draw a lesson from what some headlines are calling a French miracle. The high fertility rate is "an encouraging message that the French are sending us which proves their ability to project themselves positively into the future," said Morano.
Alain Duhamel, a veteran political commentator, said today the soaring birth rate seemed to be a "spectacular paradox" given the grim mood of the country. But he made the old private-public distinction. When the French score in polls as west Europe's biggest pessimists, they are talking about public life, Duhamel said on RTL radio. "There is a big gap between what people says about society in general and what they experience on the personal and private level. You always see that the French are quite happy with their own lives and are very critical towards society." But that doesn't explain everything, Duhamel said. He pointed out that the French mid-century baby boom began in 1943, a year before the liberation and two before the end of World War Two, a time when people were certainly not happy at the "personal and private level".
There is nothing that Nicolas Sarkozy likes more than putting his own lyrical twist on recent French history. He was at it again today as he marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation. After the financial crisis, the world must now be reborn as it was after the fall of German Paris, said the President. The heroic liberation of Paris set an example for France and the world to follow as a new economic order is created.
That's heady stuff. Sarkozy delivered it at a ceremony at the Prefecture of Police before going off to tell the bosses of the main French banks that he would not tolerate a return to big annual bonuses. I'll put the full quote below, but first a little background.
The liberation of Paris was hugely important in France's redemption from wartime defeat and collaboration. While the allied forces were aiming to bypass the heavily garrisoned capital in their eastward pursuit of the Germans, resistance fighters in the city rose up against the occupiers. The city's police joined the insurrection. Charles de Gaulle persuaded General Eisenhower, the allied commander, to divert General Philippe Leclerc's Second Armoured Division to Paris, backed up by the 4th US infantry division. Leclerc's men fought their way into the capital to a rapturous welcome [top picture]. Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander, disobeyed Hitler's orders to destroy Paris and surrendered to Leclerc at the Hotel Meurice. Thus France was able to take pride in liberating its capital.
Sarkozy warmed to one of his regular themes -- that France must stop lacerating itself over its wartime record. It was not sufficiently remembered that under the Vichy puppet regime, there had been police officers in the resistance, at huge risk and cost, he said.
"The liberation of Paris was truly the victory of the national will, guided by the political conviction that a united, determined France had in herself the resources to force the course of destiny," said Sarkozy. Modern France was in debt to this feat, he went on.
"At a moment in which the world, and Europe and France along with it, must again rise to considerable challenges -- to re-found world governance, to renew in depth an economic and financial system that has been disqualified by an unprecedented crisis -- we have no other choice but to show ourselves worthy of the heritage that is represented by the Liberation of Paris." [French text below]"
This is a good example of how, to use the French expression, Sarkozy "recuperates" history, grabbing symbols to cast himself as a man of destiny. Henri Guaino, the special adviser and speech-writer who puts the poetry into Sarkozy's ideas, certainly had in mind de Gaulle's historic speech on the day of the German surrender. "Paris insulted ! Paris broken ! Paris martyrised! But Paris liberated. Liberated by herself."
Sarkozy was setting the scene for next month's G20 summit in Pittsburg where he will again cast himself as the uncompromising advocate of a new world moral order, as he did in London last April. The trouble is that de Gaulle's mantle is rather too big for him.
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Read the speech here. The following is the key quote:
Au moment où le monde, et avec lui l’Europe et la France, doivent à nouveau relever des défis considérables, pour refonder la gouvernance mondiale, pour rénover en profondeur un système économique et financier disqualifié par une crise sans précédent, pour jeter les bases d’un développement respectueux des équilibres écologiques vitaux pour la planète.
Eh bien, nous n’avons pas d’autres choix que de nous montrer dignes de cet héritage que représente la Libération de Paris. Une nouvelle fois, la préparation de l’avenir ne peut plus se satisfaire des principes et des règles de l’ordre ancien. Chaque nation, chaque gouvernement est aujourd’hui face à ses responsabilités. La France est plus que jamais déterminée à assumer les siennes pour favoriser l’avènement en lien avec ses partenaires de ce monde nouveau que la France appelle de ses vœux.
Nicolas Sarkozy had extra reason to enjoy his splash in the Mediterranean with Carla Bruni today. He must have been savouring la divine surprise announced by Christine Lagarde his Finance Minister. Against most expectations, France pulled out of recession in the second quarter, producing 0.3 percent growth as consumers and industry stirred back to life after a year on the floor.
The news was music to a President who believes he is cruising towards a second term, weathering the storms of his own and the world's making. Even le malaise de juillet, Sarkozy's collapse after a jogging session, has rebounded in his favour. Sympathy for the stricken "hyper-president" kicked up his ratings, with one poll (CSA) showing a 12-point rise in approval.
This suggests that, in his third year, France is getting used to Super Sarko, a President whose brash, frenetic style and boundless self-promotion was unlike anything since the two Napoleonic emperors of the 19th century.
Sarkozy stirs deep antipathy in wide stretches of the population. He is demonised by much of the left, trade unions, and the educational establishment, who can barely say his name without a sneer. As they do every year, experts are predicting une rentrée chaude -- another round in France's eternal civil war when the summer truce ends next month. Unemployment is rising to a painful level but strikes and protests seem unlikely because Sarkozy has defeated the public sector unions and the rest are too frightened for their jobs.
Super Sarko's pushy style still draws groans in many quarters but he is also winning grudging admiration. People who wrote him off after the tempest of his first months are coming round to admiring his forceful methods. Thanks in part to Bruni, he has softened his image as a harsh pro-market crusader with little feeling for the common citizen. His stimulus package -- mainly invested in industry and infrastructure -- is bearing fruit, though the experts expect growth to drop back again. He appears to have been right that French consumers did not need tax cuts like the British.
In one field, according to the polls, France strongly approves of Sarkozy: his defence of the country's interests abroad. His hyper-active performance in Europe and in the G20 summits on the global economy have honed his image as a world leader. He has also made himself a nuisance to the US President in time-honoured French fashion.
Sarkozy is already positioning himself for re-election in the spring of 2012. There is even a silly rumour that he is planning a 2011 baby with Bruni to boost the campaign. Barring scandal or economic collapse, he seems likely to win. The forecast is premature, but it can be made because he faces no real opposition and he wields direct or indirect power over much of the media.
The Socialists, who ruled for much of the 1980s and 90s, have sunk into a coma. Despite Sarkozy's poor ratings, the polls show that the majority do not believe that the leftwing party would do a better job at running the country. According to Bernard Henri-Lévy, the grandee penseur, the party is already dead. Manuel Valls, one of its young Turks, wants to change its name. The party's most plausible présidentiable is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a baron whom Sarkozy deftly exiled to Washington as head of the International Monetary Fund. Sarkozy's recruitment of leftwing luminaries to his government may turn out to have been the coup de grace for the Socialists.
I heard the other day that Sarkozy had been told about TINA, a term coined by Margaret Thatcher in her Iron Lady days of the 1980s. It stood for "There Is No Alternative". It is certainly how Sarkozy views his position as the new political season approaches.
[Pictures: The first couple at play last week on Cap Nègre, Bruni's family villa near Toulon]
France is deep in recession and national debt stands at 21,000 euros per citizen, so it was good to hear that President Sarkozy has cut his spending on flowers by 17 percent. Before you cheer, his palace (where he does not live) still managed to spend 706 euros every day last year freshening up his floral arrangements.
Light was shed on the high-spending ways of the Elysée Palace a few days ago when Philippe Séguin, the chief state auditor, returned the first ever public account of the spending of a French ruler. Sarkozy asked for the inspection as part of the "transparency" that he advocates in public life. That was quite a shift from the tradition until 2007 under which money was no object for the monarch and his entourage.
Séguin gave Sarkozy credit for the effort. The President has even repaid 14,000 euros of personal expenses that were mistakenly paid by the tax-payer. There is no chance that we will learn what was bought because that remains secret. Séguin said that Sarkozy, whose presidential establishment costs more than 112 million euros a year, could nevertheless do better. The palace still wastes tons of tax-payer's money.
The flowers are among many items that should be trimmed, said Séguin, who heads the Court of Accounts. The palace pays a fortune on food and drink, buying from faithful suppliers rather than seeking competitive bids. The palace, which employs 950 staff, even paid 3,000 euros last year in penalties for failing to pay electricity bills on time. Then there are the million or two spent annually on keeping up presidential chateaux like Rambouillet, Marly-le-Roi and Souzy-le-Briche -- that the Sarkozys never use.
The auditors also put their finger on another oddity -- the hidden cost of Sarkozy's much-reported cost-cutting gesture of taking scheduled airlines on private trips. He took Air France to New York last weekend, for example, for Carla Bruni's appearance at the Mandela concert. When Sarkozy does this, the state pays for his entourage of about 10 to travel with him in first or business class. Then on top of that a presidential jet flies empty to the destination to stand by in case the President needs to return in emergency.
The auditors say Sarkozy should save public money by taking his holidays on the state planes. He has just spend millions expanding the fleet to include two of the latest three-engined Dassault Falcon business jets and -- his new pride and joy -- an A330 Airbus. 
As soon as he saw George W. Bush's big blue Air Force One, a Boeing 747 jumbo, Sarkozy decided that his elderly A-319 Airbus airliner did not match his standing. Air Sarko, as it's called, is actually an 11-year-old former airliner [pictured left in its earlier life], but it is now being fitted out in total secrecy in Toulouse. There are rumours of onboard swimming pools, gyms, a studio for Carla, cinemas and so on, but I gather that the flying Elysée will just be equipped with ordinary conference rooms, presidential apartments, bathrooms, a hospital and so on. At 20,000 euros per flying hour, the cost will be double that of the plane that it is replacing (at least it will have new pitot tubes). There is an additional snag with Air Sarko. The plane, which in normal form can carry 250 passengers, is too heavy for the runway at Villacoublay, the Air Force base which is home to the government fleet. It will have to live at Orly or Roissy (CDG) airports.
Lavish transport is by no means a presidential preserve. As we've mentioned here before, a chauffeured limousine is a standard perk right across the ruling class, from ministers and high functionaries to provincial mayors and county bosses. There is a nice little exposé out today on the waste that goes into keeping up the fleet of big Peugeots, Citroens and Renaults.
Auto Plus, a motoring weekly, did a bit of spying. It found, for example, that the National Assembly -- or rather the tax payer -- keeps a fleet of 65 big top-of-the-line cars with drivers at the disposal of its members 24 hours a day. They sit idle for much of the time. It also found that ministry drivers wash their masters' cars daily at commercial sites -- even if they are not dirty -- because they earn free gifts with loyalty points.
Earlier this month when Sarkozy appointed his friend Brice Hortefeux Interior Minister, the new man ordered two new luxury Citroen C6s for himself at a cost of 100,000 euros. He did not care to be driven around in the existing pair of identical Citroen C6s that were used by his predecessor, Michèle Alliot-Marie. It's only too easy to go on citing examples. As we've often noted, such tales of excess cause few waves in France. A certain train de vie -- style of life -- is deemed normal for those in power.
 It's time again for the summer beach in central Paris. They laughed back in 2002 when Bertrand Delanoe unveiled his scheme for an urban riviera in the City of Light. The first Socialist mayor of Paris was said to be trying a camp stunt with his vision for a fiesta on the Seine. The mockery soon stopped. Paris Plage was an immediate hit, drawing residents and tourists to the retro delights of the sand, potted palms, parasols and deck-chairs that replaced the Right Bank expressway for a month.
Seven years on, the scheme is an annual fixture, imitated by cities worldwide. On the continent, Delanoe's beach was copied in Brussels, Berlin, Budapest, Zurich and Rome among other places and towns in America and Japan have followed suit. The latest version is being opened this week, to the amusement of the British media, in the land-locked English city of Nottingham. Earlier this year, the Melbourne council rejected a scheme to plant a plage on the Yarra river. It did not make much sense there, since the city is right on the real beaches of the Southern Ocean.
The sand barges and palm-carrying trucks are hard at work this weekend preparing the 2009 edition of an event that will attract some four million visitors by the time it closes on August 20. This year's poster captures the old-fashioned feeling of the project (demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year, but I'm not sure what's the tower is doing there). City tax-payers fork out about a million pounds while sponsors pick up the rest of the cost of a month-long play space that runs from the Louvre to the Port de la Gare at the foot of the National Library. There is a swimming pool and a water-sports centre has been added at the Bassin de la Villette on the canal system in northern Paris. As well as enjoying dancing, sports, gym classes, massage and tai chi, visitors will be able to stretch their minds with literary groups and concerts.
The theme this year is, fashionably, green. Visitors will be counselled "in a playful way" on the theme of sustainable development. Delanoe is counting on even more Parisians turning up than usual because the recession has cut into holiday budgets. Only about 15 percent of the plage visitors are tourists, which underlines the emptiness of the cliché about Parisians all leaving town in August.
The idea of Paris Plage is of course more attractive than the reality. City sunbathing has its limits. The tone remains urban grit rather than coastal charm. Finding a deck-chair or a hammock often means scrambling through crowds in the heat. There is the usual amount of big city thieving, but thanks to armed police, polo-shirted security guards and France's moderate drinking habits, Mayor Delanoe manages to keep up the civilised atmosphere.
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.
![Jeanne d'arc3[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e2011571095a17970c-400wi)
Is Joan of Arc about to meet her fate once again in English hands?
The French Navy is appalled, Le Monde reports, that its best-loved ship, the Jeanne-d'Arc, may be sent to England to be broken up at a Tyneside dockyard. It was bad enough that Le Clemenceau, an aircraft carrier, went recently to the English breakers. It would be unthinkable for that to befall the Jeanne d'Arc, a helicopter-carrier which has been a training vessel since 1963. All cadet officers since then have served a tour in her 600-member crew.
The legendary 13,000 tonne ship, attached to the national naval training college at the Breton port of Brest, is to leave service after a final cruise later this year. "The sailors already see their beloved Jeanne burnt, martyrised, dismembered, at second time by the English," writes le Monde. "They find this sad, painful, even unimaginable." The name of Joan of Arc, burnt at the stake by the English in 1431, of course stands for all that was most perfidious about les Anglais.
Rivalry between Europe's two historic naval adversaries continues to this day. They have not been officially at war for two centuries, but France has bitter memories of the July 1940 battle of Mers-el-Kébir, when a Royal Navy task force attacked and destroyed much of the French fleet off Algeria, killing 1,297. The newly-defeated French had assured Britain that they would not let the fleet fall into German hands, but Winston Churchill did not believe them.
Vice-Admiral Hubert Jouot, who is in charge of dismantling France's asbestos-stuffed old warships, explained diplomatically: "All the same, the English are Europeans. We have the same values. But from time to time, a certain national pride manifests itself, like in sports...". Admiral Pierre-François Forissier, chief of staff of the navy, added: "Jeanne d'Arc is the heart of the French nation."
The navy would prefer to see the Jeanne ceremonially sunk on the high seas, but anti-pollution treaties prevent this. The English yards offer by far the cheapest package for the safe dismantling of ships
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.
The schools have closed, France is heading for the summer holidays and Lance Armstrong is back on the Tour. That summed up the news today * at the start of the 96th edition of the Tour de France. The three-week, 2000-mile ordeal is of course not just the world's greatest cycle race. Under the headline "A La Vie, A l'Amour," L'Equipe, the sports daily, waxed poetic yesterday, calling the Tour a "unifying force... that possesses us and bewitches us beyond the flaws of humankind."
For France, those human failings are at the heart of the matter with Lance Armstrong. The Texan wonder-cyclist, who won the tour an astonishing seven times in a row, has returned from retirement and is aiming for an eighth victory in the tour that opens in Monaco today. Armstrong's comeback in his 38th year stirred dismay back in the winter. He may be worshiped as a hero at home in the States, but in France he was the object of suspicion. "Good riddance" was the feeling when he left in 2005.
Unlike dozens of others in a dope-plagued sport, Armstrong had never been caught using any performance-enhancing drugs. As he explained: "For France, my story was just too good to be true." He had survived a grave bout with cancer in the mid-1990s to become the biggest champion of all time, breaking the previous record of five wins, shared by the legends Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil.
Armstrong was an American at the time that France had fallen out with George Bush. He alienated the Tour crowd with what was deemed to be an arrogant, hard professionalism. He kept to himself and surrounded himself with bodyguards. In public, he refused to play the plucky regular guy, the traditional cycling hero. He barely spoke French despite five years in residence. Crowds even booed him as he led the pack through the mountain passes.
But this year, things have changed. It's not le grand amour, but Armstrong is enjoying new respect and it's not just because France has forgiven the United States. Armstrong is recognised as a star who brought glamour to a sport that is little known in much of the world. For the young cyclists, Lance is the boss but they have a chance of beating him. Andy Schleck, a Luxembourg Tour racer, said today: "It's good for cycling to have un Monsieur like him. He inspires a lot of people. Hat's off!."
Armstrong is enjoying gentler treatment from the media. Michel Drucker, France's favourite TV host, treated him to a gushing interview last Sunday. People are not scoffing at his argument that he has returned to promote his cancer foundation Livestrong. Armstrong, who broke a collarbone earlier this year, is now benefiting from the old Tour phenomenon of sympathy for the underdog. He is not even squad boss of Astana, the Kazakhstan-owned team for which he is pedalling. First place is held by Alberto Contador, the Spaniard who won in 2007. The first week will see a battle between the two for the real leadership. Armstrong says he will ride loyal back-up to Contador if he does not make the Yellow Jersey early on. The Texan cyclist is, by the way, one of the most active celebrity Twitterers. He has well over one million followers on http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong
In the meantime, the tour is holding on to its magic despite the decade of seemingly endless doping scandals. Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour, says that the all-out testing is making cycling the cleanest sport. No other sport employs such stringent methods to track new ways of cheating, he says.
And to wrap it up, Nicolas Sarkozy has got into the act. The President, who is an amateur cyclist and an Armstrong fan, told the Cabinet this week that it is time to stop knocking the Tour. "It is the victim of dopage, and not the perpetrator," he said. "You must support this great popular event as well as its management," he told Rama Yade, his new Sports Minister. [*Since writing this, a train crash has joined today's headlines]
Imagine the scandal that would ensue in some countries if prosecutors announced that they were pursuing the following trail: the head of state is suspected of possible involvement in a corrupt arms deal that led to the death of 11 of his citizens in a bomb attack attributed to Al Qaida.
That may sound like a movie plot or something from the third world but it's happening in France. It's the outline of a case that has begun to lap around President Sarkozy. With the exception of a couple of leftwing publications, the media are treading very carefully over this so-called Karachi affair. Sarkozy has dismissed it as pure fantasy. But he may not be able to escape further explanation, since vengeance is in the air -- in the person of his sworn enemy Dominique de Villepin, the former Prime Minister and right-hand-man of President Jacques Chirac.
The story involves a jump back to the 1990s but it's worth the effort. The trigger event is a 2002 suicide bomb attack on a bus full of French shipyard workers in Karachi. Fourteen people were killed, 11 of them French citizens working on submarines which France had sold to the Pakistani navy [bomb scene in top picture]. Two alleged Al Qaida operatives were sentenced to death in Pakistan for the attacks, but their convictions were recently quashed on appeal.
The French side of the investigation plugged away slowly until two new juges d'instruction were appointed a few months ago. Two weeks ago, they told survivors of the attack and families of the dead that the Al Qaida trail was now excluded. They said they had strong reason to believe that the bombing was staged by senior figures in the Pakistani military as retaliation against the French government.
Why ? Paris had incurred the wrath of the unnamed Pakistanis because in 1995, President Chirac had cut off payment of millions of euros of "commissions" -- bribes or fees -- to middle-men in the 825 million euro submarine contract. Chirac may have taken his decision because part of the illicit commissions were being kicked back to France to finance Edouard Balladur, the Prime Minister of the time, said the judges. Balladur was Chirac's party subordinate who turned coat and ran against his boss for the presidency in 1995.
And who was the head of Balladur's campaign that year? Nicolas Sarkozy. He was also, as Budget Minister of the time, the man who signed the paperwork to have the submarine commissions sent to a Luxembourg-based shell company. [Picture left: Balladur with his former chief lieutenant, N Sarkozy]
That's strong stuff. There are denials all round. But the judges in the Karachi case are not just theorizing. Documents support their suspicion. They discovered that in 2002 an internal investigation by the DCN, the state ship-building firm, concluded flatly that the bus attack was retaliation over non-payment of the full submarine commissions. The 2002 report, written by a former agent of the DGSE, the French Intelligence Service, said suitcases of cash from the commission were being delivered to Balladur's campaign in Paris, according to le Nouvel Observateur magazine
In 2007, Jean-Claude Marin, the Paris Prosecutor, wrote a memorandum mentioning a suspected link between the Karachi attack and the financing of the Balladur campaign, according to documents obtained last week by Reuters news agency.
Last week, Charles Millon, who was Chirac's defence minister after he won the presidency in 1995, confirmed that the incoming administration had halted payment of the submarine commissions because part of them were thought to be paid back into France. De Villepin, who was serving as Chirac's chief of staff in 1995, said on Friday that Chirac had "refused payment of all commissions which could have been used to send kickbacks to France". He said that he had not been alerted "specifically" to the submarine contract.
Villepin must be relishing his chance to get back at Sarkozy after the humiliation that the President has inflicted on his frère-ennemi by having him pursued over the so-called Clearstream affair. In the Clearstream case, Villepin is to stand trial in a few months on charges of trying to smear Sarkozy with claims four years ago that Sarkozy had stashed a large sum of money in a secret bank account in.... Luxembourg.
Balladur, who earned Chirac's enmity for betraying him by running against him in 1994, said yesterday that everything about the submarine deal and his election finances were above board and he is happy to answer the judges' questions. But he added that he did not follow the detail of the submarine contract. It's worth noting that the 50 million or so euros of foreign commissions on the submarine deal were legal -- and tax-deductible by the shipbuilders -- in France at the time. Such payments became illegal only after France signed up to an OECD anti-corruption pact in 2000. It was always illegal for French nationals to receive kickbacks from such commissions.
This case is unlikely to fade because the survivors and families, who are mainly from the Normandy port of Cherbourg, have banded together and are demanding a full investigation. And parliament is getting involved. Bernard Cazeneuve, the Socialist member for Cherbourg and mayor of the city, said "we are discovering manipulation on all sides in an extremely unhealthy context." Sarkozy's blanket dismissal was not enough, he said. "It is the duty of Parliament to demand that full light is shed on the case." Michèle Alliot-Marie, the new Justice Minister, has just promised that the enquiry will be given priority.
Do not expect anything dramatic. L'affaire Karachi has not yet become une affaire d'état. In France, there is a long history of politico-financial skulduggery that simmers on for years and never reaches the courts. For example, a thick cloud of financial scandal dogged Chirac for his 12 years in the presidency but nothing came of it.
It is also worth recalling that Sarkozy is about to abolish the institution of independent investigating judges -- of the kind who are pursuing the Karachi case. Under his reform, the President is to put all investigation into the hands of the prosecution service -- a body which is completely under the orders of the government.
![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]
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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Thanks for these historical explanations.
Posted by: Francois D | 23 Nov 2009 19:47:10
DO-ER-MI, many years ago – this confession is for your eyes only – I was asked at a job interview what I was reading. Yes, you’ve guessed! But then I was too young and dim (and pretentious) to anticipate that announcing one gets one’s jollies curling up with Marcel is something of a conversation-stopper. And I didn’t understand much, mind you... I don’t really read novels now that Michael Dibdin’s gone, though Ian McEwan’s good. Tried to read A S Byatt’s ‘The Children’s Book’ and got stuck at page 142.
DOMINIQUE II, yes indeed: Justine, Balthazar...
Posted by: Rick | 23 Nov 2009 19:19:05
RICK "Sad but true, brains and cash tend to go together." Trouble is old boy, you couldn't be more wrong. I happen to know the City and its denizens reasonably well and the bright and brainy are actually few and far between. There are plenty of sly, crafty, unscrupulous and amoral quick buck merchants - they'll be the ones to slink off to pastures less well-regulated, so good riddance. There are also plenty of decent, honest people in the City - but sadly not many of them blessed with much in the way of inmagination or intellect; the adequacy bar is really not set terribly high. And as for your scorn for European finance - just exactly who is it that is coming OUT of recession rather than miring itself deeper in? And who's Finance Minister was voted as the best by the FT's panel of economic experts? (Clue - the first name's Christine...). Your attitude reeks of the now utterly discredited neoliberalism that has proved to be such an outstanding success on Wall Street. One day soon you're going to have to face up to the fact that the so-called 'AngloSaxon' red-in-tooth-and-claw economic model has failed miserably and that well-regulated Euro-capitalism works rather better.
As I said, watch the financial fur fly...
Posted by: rockinred | 23 Nov 2009 19:14:27
Azloon,
Bet trouble spots you a mile away. :-)))
Spots and a retainer trouble him at the moment.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 23 Nov 2009 17:07:51
A small footnote. L'Etranger was the first book I read in French.
CB
Not quite my first, though among them - what struck me was Camus' capacity to write in the first person, as Meursault, and relate things in such a way that the reader understands immediately the signals that such-a-character isn't to be trusted, whilst remaining completely unconscious of the signs himself.
The detachment of the character is complete. The skill of the writer laid as bare as can be.
And I love the clin d'oeil in "La Peste" where someone brings news of Meursault's execution into plague-beseiged Oran.
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 16:50:19
For an unknown reason, well, beyond me anyway, all the letters "o" and "O" on my screen have got themselves highlighted in yellow - hope everyone isn't getting a yellow card! :)
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 16:24:02
Sportsmanship aside and just about everything else - did I see that Doméneque or Domenèque or whichever variant, got more than 800.000 €uros for France's qualification?
And that each player got more than 40.000 €uros? Or was that €400.000?
Lots of undeserved zeros anyway.
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 16:22:01
DO-RE-MI "You should be re-reading books periodically because time or wisdom (hopefully) make you understand what the writer was on about"
of course. An outstanding candidate for that treatment is Durrel's Alexandria Quarter - a perfectly crafted labyrinth you can explore again and again without ever coming back upon your steps or getting to the exit.
Posted by: Dominique II | 23 Nov 2009 16:20:51
Geoff Hurst - he of the memorable legs.
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 16:17:50
English cheated in 66... what do you mean?
FC quoting French frog
1966 was the last time England won the World Cup - I think there was some question about whether the last goal should have been allowed - give me half an hour and I'll remember the scorer's name (I remember his legs well enough - lovely), but after all, I mean, fair doos an'all that, it was only 43 years ago!
;D
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 15:30:25
we read it and get our collective knickers in a twist
johnny foreigner
bloggers' favourite sport - world championships coming up :)
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 15:26:00
we have only recently emerged from caves and taken to the wearing of shoes.
LEX
lol - walking upright then are we?? :)
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 15:08:16
I doubt he's read any Camus.
He is struggling so to gain some intellectual respectability that it might (or might not) help if he changed his name to Nicolas Sysiphe. Et bientôt La Chûte ! :)
Posted by: dot king | 23 Nov 2009 15:02:25
It is important to remember that the point of view of The Simpsons is that of the American working and lower middle classes. They are poorly educated and unsophisticated and their foibles and perceptions are the subject of jokes.
'Cheese-eating surrender-monkeys' is funny for the same reason that the 'sensual dance' is funny: they are both absurd.
Continental Europeans must forgive those of us who live beyond the Channel; we have only recently emerged from caves and taken to the wearing of shoes. Our cultures are not advanced and we have yet to understand that the collection of rubbish and such will be much better accomplished with the addition of the arts and philosophy.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 23 Nov 2009 13:51:38
Rick
Oh faut pas pousser ou aller trop loin. Ca va le traumatiser ce petit.
I read Proust at 18 under major duress. I thought what a whinge bag, now of course it’s a bit different. It took me 3 go, and 5 years to get through Crime and Punishment. Yet I read Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity in a week.
You should be re-reading books periodically because time or wisdom (hopefully) make you understand what the writer was on about.
Plus I no longer feel guilty for not being able to soldier on reading books that are on the list of “books you should read”.
I tried The Road by Cormac McCarthy on the journey to work but I gave up after a while as slashing my wrists was becoming tempting, something that didn’t happen reading The Year of Magical Thinking. And The Battle for Normandy is taunting me with post-it notes by the side of my bed.
So far, Alex Brummer “The Crunch: How Greed and Incompetence Sparked the Credit Crisis” has been the easiest book to read on the crisis, and my favorite. The book by the NY times guy was used as a sleeping pill.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 23 Nov 2009 13:46:46
As I (a Brit resident in Brussels for 11 years) understand it, when Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was offered the throne of the newly-independent Belgium in 1830 (he was living in London as the widower of Princess Charlotte, heir to the throne of the UK) he refused the title "King of Belgium" but said he would accept the title "King of the Belgians" ("Roi des Belges") if a constitutional monarchy was set up with a supreme Parliament rather than an absolute monarchy. That is what happened. King Albert II was chosen by the Belgian federal parliament (which can choose any member of the royal family as monarch) when his brother King Baudouin died in 1993. He was not crowned (indeed he never wears a crown), instead he swore an oath to uphold the constitution (not very dissimilar to the US Presidential oath) before the parliament. The title reflects that he is King of the people and not of the country, i.e. he rules by popular consent not by divine right. To reinforce this, the Belgian royal family "donated" all their land and palaces to the Belgian state in 1907 in return for a civil list allowance. The family's wealth is nearly all in liquid assets, like the Dutch royal family.
I guess the titles of other countries like France, Ireland and Poland were set in law at independence. I always grin when I see the "Ambassade de France" and then "Her Britannic Majesty's Embassy" here in Brussels!
Posted by: Chris | 23 Nov 2009 13:37:23
@Rick,
It will be interesting when the Madoff story is finally dissected and narrated. He did indeed prey on his fellow Jews for the most part. It is common for criminals to prey on their own, since their behaviors are better known. Interestingly enough, most of Madoff's victims were of the first generation after the Holocaust and they had made their own fortunes. Having made their own money, one would think that they would have know better. It is said that their children are more likely to subscribe to currently accepted forms of risk management.
As for institutional investors, I imagine that it is the same old story of 'ten thousand dollar men making million dollar decisions' as the saying goes.
I would guess that greed, vanity and hubris were the blinders that most of Madoff's victims had in common. Again, an age old story, found not only in money, but also in tales of love and power gone wrong.
I parted company with Michael Moore when he made a big deal of G. W. Bush not immediately leaving the school in Florida when he first learned of the 9/11 attacks. My 70 & 80 year old parents loved his film about health care -- which I have not seen -- and now Azloon has seen capitalism. I may have to see them both, if for no other reason than to understand why that generation finds his films appealing.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 23 Nov 2009 13:22:21
I've heard Sarko, after slogging through the first few pages of "A La Recherche," asked Carla, she of "Le Temps Perdu," to sneak him a copy of the comic book version:
http://www.readingproust.com/prcomix.htm
Posted by: azloon | 23 Nov 2009 12:52:32
Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story was released here several months ago.
It was better than I expected. He pretty much stays within areas he's observed, human stories he's sniffed out, avoids clumsy sweeping indictments he's inclined toward (despite sarcastic title).
There's a hilarious final scene where he wraps crime scene tape around the New York Stock Exchange, and proceeds, barking through a bullhorn, to urge occupants to come out to face federal charges (and jails which he says 'aren't so bad.)
Posted by: azloon | 23 Nov 2009 12:24:44
Has he read Proust, DO-RE-MI???
Posted by: Rick | 23 Nov 2009 11:06:03
To François D
I have no explanation as to why Albert II is "King of the Belgians", rather than "King of Belgium".
Does anybody know why there is a "République Française", rather than a "République de France" ? Yet we do have a "République de Pologne" (not Polonaise), a "République d'Irlande" (not Irlandaise) ... and other examples abound.
Have a nice day.
Posted by: afd | 23 Nov 2009 10:17:40
Has Sarkosi read Camus?
I can imagine the text read au Pantheon, written by someone who has, with Sarko putting son “ man of the people” grain de sel, with his body betraying his distaste for what Camus stands for.
It’s the equivalent of bankers wearing Che Guevara t-shirt on their days off.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 23 Nov 2009 10:16:27
L'Etranger read by the author. Excellent French radio recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF7X_fHE
Posted by: christopher muir | 23 Nov 2009 10:08:01
for the first time in many years I spent some weeks in london this summer
I was amazed at the number of young french people I encountered , and spoke to quite a few asking what they were doing there
to paraphrase their responses
....france has become a country of old people , run for old people BY old people ..[guilty as charged ] , and this especially applies to paris
what especially surprised me was the number who said they came for the weekends and stayed with their chums , sleeping on the floor mostly it seems ! I was delighted to hear that , as well shopping and bopping , the vast range of museums etc were an attraction
criticisms ? yes ...where are the french restaurants which we can afford ? ...looks like the french are as bad as other nationalities for wanting familiar food when they travel !
personally , one of my great delights in visiting the uk is to be able to eat typical english cuisine ...chinese/ indian/thai/greek/ italian etc
Posted by: colin grayson | 23 Nov 2009 09:53:06
Rick,
Better than Michael Moore : the Yes Men.
http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/
They fooled the World Media, including BBC World, about compensation to the victims of Bhopal catastrophy in India. Activism with a laugh.
Posted by: Romain | 23 Nov 2009 09:33:07
Jean Quatremer says Sarko vetoed Junker with a vengeance. It's a pity because Junker was the best qualified for the position.
Previous organised leaks were suggesting someone from a tax paradise (Luxembourg) could not preside E.U., a dubious joke.
Posted by: Romain | 23 Nov 2009 09:25:04
Yes, Paris is a city of 'bonnets de nuit' in the sense that most public venues do close down early. But then as far back as I can remember (and that would be going back to the 70s), clubbing, pub-crawling and heavy drinking never really were an important part of the city's culture. For most Parisians, the best sort of evening always was a long drawn-out dinner either in a comfortable restaurant or, better, in a friend's house, with lots of conversation lasting long into the night. Not very exciting for the non-foody, non-French-speaking tourist lacking in local introductions, perhaps, but then that's why places like Amsterdam and London exist... And what with high-speed trains, they are so near, one can have it all ; just not in the same place at the same time.
Posted by: Michael Erwin | 23 Nov 2009 09:07:57
DOMINIQUE II, may I clarify what you appear to have ‘fished’ out of context? By ‘"Sad but true, brains and cash tend to go together", I did not have in mind the wealthy yet gullible. By ‘cash’, I meant high pay, in conjunction with quick wits. Not fading bimbos’ divorce settlements looking for a home.
It’s more than likely that Madoff’s selling ploy revolved around the whispered ‘hot tip’ (prognostic dit ‘infaillible’): ‘Not many people know this...’ I’m not certain but think Bernie preyed on co-religionists; this would reinforce the effectiveness of the ‘insider’ approach.
No, I wouldn’t fall for the 30% promise, but then I’m neither poor nor rich enough to be vulnerable. No apologist for financiers, my objection is to facile, uninformed criticism of sophisticated processes. I’m sure you agree, DOMINIQUE, that platitudes and moralising fill no tummies.
Did I hear that Mr Michael Moore is about to unleash upon us a corruscating filmic denunciation: ‘Capitalism: A love Story’?
Posted by: Rick | 23 Nov 2009 09:06:17
Small hours. Could not sleep.
Gazed out of Paris hotel window. Saw small car going wrong way around roundabout...
Collided with the only other car within miles.
Very sad.
Posted by: Leigh Vernier | 23 Nov 2009 07:48:45
Again, thank you for this article and for personnal last confession. For me it's "La Peste" the plague that marked my youth .
How not to be suspicious about Sarkozy intentions when you know how Camus was one of the cause of youth movements of 68 ( Je me révolte donc nous sommes"/ "I rebel, therefore we are"), while Sarkozy has always been opposed. It will draw from his slave pen a good speech that will sound wrong. I understand the son position. And I am sure that Camus prefer a grave in the shade of oliver trees.
Posted by: Francois D | 23 Nov 2009 00:13:12
"Sad but true, brains and cash tend to go together" RICK, the Madoffs of this world tend to disagree, and the fools they part from their money are not the great unwashed but the very same people (and institutions) who spend many millions trying to foist on us the myth of their economical acumen.
Would YOU believe a spiel about a guatanteed 30% return on investment? Many rich idiots did, and probably still do.
There are intelligent wealthy people to be sure, but your words, as quoted, are singularly misleading.
Posted by: Dominique II | 22 Nov 2009 21:59:45
I have watched the Simpsons for a while now and there was one aspect of that episode that I did not particularly care for. The show's plot involves Carla Bruni having an affair with Homer Simpson's boss/friend Carl, which Homer threatens to use against Carl as blackmail. If I'm not mistaken, Sarkozy's romantic history isn't lily white to say the least.
Posted by: Yvonne | 22 Nov 2009 21:10:45
As you say " France and Germany, the two big powers, have no interest in pooling more sovereignty." That's clear to you and clear to me; why can the British conservatives not get their collective head round it?
Posted by: stephen Bull | 22 Nov 2009 21:02:10
"Est-ce que l'absurde vulgaire
Peut tout déshonorer sur terre
Au gré d'un cuistre ou d'un maçon ?"
(Alfred de Musset, sur trois marches de marbre rose)
Posted by: Romain | 22 Nov 2009 19:22:48
ROCKINRED, it’s so much easier to condemn than to comprehend. Sad but true, brains and cash tend to go together. Vandalising the City isn’t likely to attract the finance industry to Frankfurt or Paris: these fellows will go somewhere lightly regulated and far, far away. Don’t kid yourself that such places have been ‘wished away’ by fine G20 words. Meanwhile, Robespierre that you are, you risk condemning tens, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Londoners (including recent arrivals who send monthly remittances to places like Zimbabwe!) to unemployment. Cheers, mate. This is the way Vladimir Ilyich ran things.
And ask your French bank manager in France about all the toxic debt that the continental banks are sitting on and saying very little about...
Posted by: Rick | 22 Nov 2009 19:06:02
Well at least it wasn't the ghastly Blair... can we now write him off as a a has-been and forget him? And if M. van Rompuy looks more like a middle rank civil servant than a self-aggrandizing peacock, so much the better.
However, these two appointments may turn out to be a sideshow...the money men in the City of London are working themselves up into a blue fit because it looks as if a French politico may end up in charge of European financial regulation. Which if it happens will mean that the City will be made to come to heel at least to a greater extent than UK regulators have managed. Banks will have to behave better, hedge funds will be forced to be less secretive, free rein will no longer be the order of the day. The City of course accuses France of wanting to make Paris a more important financial centre; well they would say that, wouldn't they? And if true, so what? Anything that is so obviously frightening to the fat cats of the Square Mile has got to be a good thing... look out for action and financial fur flying...
Posted by: rockinred | 22 Nov 2009 17:54:35
LEX,
"I wonder when Sarko comes up with these great ideas of his"
:))
My idea is that his spin doctor(s) are rather active at the Elysée - may be they should take a 6-month leave! They seem to be really intellectually exhausted or the competition between themselves to be noticed first by the boss is really fierce :).
Ceci dit, if one of Mitterrand's spin doctors would have come up with the same idea, our intelligentsia on permanent national duty would no doubt have found it genial! :).
More seriously: one could have expected from the Elysée people in charge to have checked first the opinion of Camus' children prior to launch their already backfiring stunt.
CLEMENCE DE ROCH,
I agree with your opinion about our "chattering classes". Mais dans le cas présent, les spin doctors élyséens leur ont donné du grain à moudre :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 22 Nov 2009 17:50:31
Jonathan Hayes.
I watch Family Guy. And I have yet to see any anti-French "jokes" on that show.
It is much more edgier than the Simpsons currently, that's for sure.
And Johnny Foreigner not every stereotype is harmless.
When Lenny of the Simpsons says "I'm shaking like a French soldier", it doesn't make me laugh. Almost 2 million French soldiers died in combat last century.
What might be hilarious to some people might not be hilarious to other people
The reason I'm angry, sometimes, at the Simpsons is because I'm actually a huge fan of the show. Have been for 18 years. I own the first twelve seasons on DVD. It makes me sad because I don't think they need to stoop that low. The writers who coined the term 'cheese-eating surrender monkey' in fact said they regretted ever writing that joke as it was being used by 'fascists' (their words). You can listen to their explanation on the DVD commentary for the episode 'Round Springfield'.
Posted by: WERNESSON | 22 Nov 2009 17:45:07
These lines from the penultimate paragraph of ‘La Peste’ [1947] (The Plague) make it quite clear where Camus stood on the matter of (even Republican!) honours. Doctor Rieux does not take part in the official thanksgiving ceremonies, though he can see them in the distance:
‘Du port obscure montèrent les premières fusées des réjouissances officielles . . . Rieux décida alors de rédiger le récit qui s’achève ici, pour ne pas être de ceux qui se taisent, pour témoigner en faveur de ces pestiférés, pour laisser du moins un souvenir de l’injustice et de la violence qui leur avaient été faites, et pour dire simplement ce qu’on apprend au milieu des fléaux, qu’il y a dans les hommes plus de choses à admirer que de choses à mépriser.’
Genuine humanists are too humble or too big for the Panthéon.
Posted by: Rick | 22 Nov 2009 17:25:27
Wernesson, you should have a look at their long-running anti-American jabs!
I'm not going to say THE SIMPSONS are "cuttting edge comedy", but they've provided consistently smart - and often hilarious - commentary for 20+ years.
For what it's worth, I'm English, and the writers on the show are much worse about the English than the French! I suggest you avoid watching FAMILY GUY, another animated series: unlike THE SIMPSONS, FAMILY GUY pulls no punches.
Posted by: Jonathan Hayes | 22 Nov 2009 17:08:15
The Simpsons often has digs at the Brits too, particularly about teeth (amusing because to our eyes the US dental obsession churns out 1000s of girder-gobs and mesh-mushes every year, as we called braces at school. God how the poor sods got some stick!)
Doesn't stop it being funny as we don't mind a bit of harmless stereotyping. After all, the most telling stereotypes in the Simpsons is a self-referential social commentary of US society as a whole, which like with Family Guy proves a lie to the myth that Americans can't do satire.
Posted by: Johnny Foreigner | 22 Nov 2009 16:45:56
Great writers and scientists have been welcomed in to the Pantheon regularly. It's not shocking at all that Camus should be; one should ask rather whether the French chattering classes, furious to have no viable opposition party to represent them, are not sinking into kneejerk "Bushization" - demonising - of Sarkozy to make up for it.
Posted by: Clemence de Roch | 22 Nov 2009 16:25:59
Sarkozy really does not understand that his country is wise to the way he tries to manipulate everything. Now he's trying to grab the glory of Camus for himself. He has no shame.
Posted by: Joan Arles | 22 Nov 2009 16:25:35
The vulgarity of the man knows no bounds. There's nothing subtle about this latest incredibly blatant popularity stunt. It seems Guaino has never heard of the expression "la ficelle est un peu grosse" and his boss thinks it refers to his wife's underwear.
Posted by: John O'D | 22 Nov 2009 16:10:21
[The Simpsons invented the taunt Cheese-eating surrender monkey. ]
If the Simpsons first coined the above ethnic slur, it was popularized in politics by NRO writers like French hater Jonah Goldberg.
The Simpsons, unfortunately, have a long history of anti-French jabs mainly revolving around the French are dirty, cowards and rude. Cutting edge comedy.
Posted by: WERNESSON | 22 Nov 2009 16:09:48
Guy Môquet then Camus. This use of the dear departed is well known in other parts of the world as zombie enslavement. Many movies document this evil practice. Well, you know how they end...
This said, Camus does belong in France's fondest memory, whether translated into Pantheonisation or not. After all, he always was right before and against the rest: your quintessential French!
When Jean Moulin entered the holy Republican burial ground, he was greeted by none other but André Malraux, whose welcoming speech ("Entre ici, Jean Moulin, et ton cortège d'ombres") still moves and awes. Albert Camus introduced by Guaino... "ça le fait pas".
Posted by: Dominique II | 22 Nov 2009 14:21:34
I wonder when Sarko comes up with these great ideas of his. In the shower, while he's drifting off to sleep at night, during his jog....?
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 22 Nov 2009 14:10:34
It's probably also the first episode that won't be shown on French TV. Carlita has a smoking cigarette in her hand which is likely to be in conflict with that crazy Loi Evian.
Posted by: Frogsmoker | 22 Nov 2009 13:36:36
FRANCOIS D - agreed.
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 22 Nov 2009 12:10:04
"I doubt any other country would be expressing shame as generally as France is about the hand ball. The anti-French hysteria about the game tends to support those French here who believe that France takes unwarranted and undeserved shit about almost everything they are involved in. Here they are, on their knees apologizing for their victory, and people still want to vilify them."
AZLOON
"PIERRE, (...) I agree with you"
RICK
Thanks to you.
Posted by: Pierre | 22 Nov 2009 11:06:53