I have always thought that the French were astute politically, more interested and analytical about politics than us. This could happen in America with George Bush with his false populism and peity, but in France where discussing politics runs just behind le football as the national pastime? What happened here? The French pride themselves as being more knowlegeable and connected to history that the average American. It’s been only barely more than forty years since the European fascist dictators were defeated with horribly shameful and disasterous consequences for France, Germany and Italy (I inculde France with the Vichy government). C’est trop gros, as the French say.

Certainly one has to lay part of the blame at the feet of the French left with its lack of new ideas and perhaps not being sufficently in touch enough with the everyday concerns of the French voter despite fundamentally desiring to make the life of the average citizen better. I think the riots of 2005 frightened the French more than anyone realized, and Sarko deftly played on these fears. The irony for those who rioted, and thought they could create social change through violence, is that Sarko et al will do nothing to ease their plight, perhaps even tighten the screws, while royale would have at least tried.

Or is it the fault of TV? Are the French watching too much of “Star Academie?” Did Sarko understand the power of the modern media to brainwash the population a l’americaine?

So what are the French in for? Here is a a link I got from some French friends with interviews with professionals in their respective fields, academic and experts getting to the heart of what Sarko will try to achieve in sixteen different social/economic/governmental areas from medical care, to education to social services. He looks to be Maggie Thatcher on speed with a solid dose of old fashioned greed and the Hungarian Iron Cross thrown in: http://www.lautrecampagne/refuatations.php

In the end, I think that a more compassionate, humanistic, intelligent and forward looking center will arise in France perhaps on the left a la Tony Blair’s New Labor (apologies to those who don’t like anglo-French comaprisons) or Bayreux’s center right that is humanistic as well. So I think all’s well that ends well. I’m sorry that the French will have to go through such a painful learning curve. C’est dommage, c’est vraiment tres dommage. I also think the French will have to come to terms with the large Muslim population living in France, accept them into their society, even when so many are relegated to projects in the suburbs, and that the Muslims will have to find a way to be both Muslim and French.

But I will end on an optimistic note, and will take the risk of comapring the States and France: We are the first two democracies in the modern world, where human rights, the rule of law, and the freedoms and repsonsibilities of each citizen are at the heart of this great social experiment and evolution of mankind. And as long as freedom beats in the hearts of its citizens both great nations will survive and remain lights to the world.

Vive la France!
Vive la Liberte!

We do have more lenient rules for writing about public figures, however. Even so this may have crossed the line. We’ll be more careful in the future.

He should limit his comments to early music. The sort of childish tantrum of character assassination is beneath his dignity and if any of us postd comments like that on ROS about any of the other participants we’d be banned. That’s the last time I go to a Boston Camerata concert.

Maybe by turning off the TV they have more time to read a book and become educated?

No one, in France or the USA, holds a gun to anyone’s head and forces them to watch TV. And wealth is the RESULT of being educated, not the other way around. Education in France is free, or close to it, anyway, so income should be no barrier to education. And I’m sorry to keep harping on the Jews and Chinese in the US but both groups were very poor when they came to the US but they raised their children to respect scholarship, teachers, and education, and today both groups have higher levels of educational achievement than the average for the US.

Which makes their behavior even less excusable.

“Young people vote Royal, elder persons Sarkozy. It’s among electors between 18 and 24 that Royal made her best outcomes. According to the Sofres, more than a third of this age range gave her their ballots. It’s nine points more than her national average. In the same age range only 19% of the electors voted her UMP contender, 12 points less than his national 31%. UDF Bayrou is barely doing better while the Front National candidate followed with 8%. The more the age rank increase, the more the electors support Sarkozy: among French people above 65, 44% of the electors chose the right-wing candidate.”

This is not polls, this is results.

First of all, I do not agree with Guillet’s comments that it is the older generation that is voting for Sarkozy. I nearly fell off my chair. Everyone that I have spoken with, who is voting for Sarkozy, is in their 20’s and 30’s. Hmmmmmm?

I lived in Montparnasse (during the riots in 2005 and the London bombing.) Also, I arrived the date that France voted down on the EU in May 2005 (Chirac’s political defeat). I then returned shortly after the spring riots of 2006. The chance of riots, upon an election of Sarkozy, is possible. Les banlieus are in turmoil at an intense level…Sarkozy called them ’scum’.

Incredibly, I didn’t hear talk of LAICITE in this program. How can you do a program on the election without discussing LAICITE?! I agree with Evaskor that this lacked a discussion of issues due to wasted time with the position of Guillet, which was quite entrenched. Throughout my time in France, I attended many dinner parties that involved intense political conversations, mainly with people that were around during 1968, yet their children were there too. Their children, who are now in their 30’s are bending towards Sarkozy. Quite the opposite of what Guillet said. It has been clear to me that Sarkozy is going to win this election.

Also, there was no mention of the intense patriarchy that exists in France (given Segolene Royal). I don’t know…is this the big elephant in the room that no one wants to bring up?! Anyone who has lived there, especially women, must be aware of this. This was made clear to me my first day of academic studies when I was told how to behave in order to blend in while living in to Paris. To call a spade a spade, France is extremely patriarchal, more than the United States. The idea of France voting in a woman as president, no matter how much one would want to think it is possible, is hard to imagine at this point. Please.

BTW, Why do you say that France has fallen on hard times? From where I am in Paris, I’d say that it’s the US that has fallen on hard times.

The country of the rights of man, of the Enlightenment, of Voltaire and Zola and Cohn-Bendit, is also a place with a deep current of authoritarianism, and has put its fate more than once in the hands of a man on a white horse. Are they about to do the same thing on Sunday?

Today at noon I walked into the gallery of my art dealer friend. He is voting Sarkozy, and his secretary is a Royal supporter. He wants lower taxes and less government inteference, she wants more attention paid to the needs of the less-favored. A classic left-right split, except that circumstances this time around are somewhat exceptional: the French are seriously, seriously pissed off about their sclerotic government and its incapacity to deal with real social problems. Segolene talks about reconciliation and the healing of social fractures. Sarkozy talks about re-establishing order and “liquidating” the dangerous ideas of May 1968. In some sense the election is about competing visions of mankind, one optimistic and derived from the French Enlightenment, the other dark and derived from the pre-Enlightenment, Catholic sense of fallen man, and the authoritarian past.

Other more mundane things enter in to the mix as well: Segolène’s grating voice, her castrating, nattering moments during the debate, and her difficulty in articulating precise policies; Sarkozy’s well publicized temper tantrums atjournalists and at the only Muslim member of his cabinet, not to mention his wife’s appearance on the cover of Paris Match while on a New York weekend jaunt with her lover.

So if on Sunday the French elect a short, brutal, far right, desperately ambitioius, unattractive Hungarian-Jewish cuckolded mongrel to their highest elective office it will signal an extraordinary shift in the political landscape. Let’s hope the adage that x-ty million of them can’t be wrong will hold. In any case Sarkozy will provide a field day for editorial cartoonists. Assuming that the new strongman President allows the newspapers to remain open, and independent.

To conclude on a positive note; I believe democracy has won in any case thanks to the high mobilisation. I do hope as many and even more people will vote; results really do not matter so much aftewards.

Let’s wait and see (well, and vote in case you’re French and above 18).

On the last day of official campaigning, opinion polls showed Sarkozy enjoyed a commanding lead over Royal, who accused the former interior minister of lying and polarizing France.

“Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice,” Royal told RTL radio.

“It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won),” she said.
—————

who is scaring who???????

Indeed, and it’s not gonna change with another five years of right-wing policies…

And indeed, under Chirac France has declined but, at least, he is fair with mankind. Do you see the point? With Sarkozy we got a Chirac-like folk but lacking his humanism. How great!

“Then why do they watch it? I think American TV and commercial radio is idiotic, boring, and lurid so I don’t watch it. Surely the French are capable of making the same choice.”
Ok, but how many of your fellow citizens are beeing “brainwashed” by this crap? You’re just turning a blind eye to the real question which is, why those who do not watch TV are mainly well educated, and why people who are well educated come from richer families than those who aren’t. The good old refrain “you want it? you do it!” is ok if everybody has the same chance to succeed, to “do it”. I’m not a strong supporter of “social determinism” but does thinking that society has a profound impact on how we behave make a fool of me? The social-lift is broken in France, it is a hundred time harder to gain a seat in “classe prépa” (programs that prepare students to high-ranking MBA or best institute of technology) for children from poor suburbs than from children who are from richer parts of the cities. That’s also true for the US, but the idea of French republicanism is to make those inequalities less and less blatant.

“You seem to be saying that the French government knows better than its own citizens. What kind of democracy is that?”

There is another strong idea in France which stated that the rise of Culture musn’t be rooted to the market. And I was only recalling that if the government choose not to give subsidies to “non-profit-making” cultural institutions we’ll have no alternative to “idiotic TV and commercial radio”.

And a huge difference between the treatment of Chinese immigrants, African Americans,… in the US; immigrants (of all origins) are WELL treated and supported in France (free education, free health care, housing, ect… like for any French).

Still, one could have said the same thing about Chinese Americans after 1870 – when the first Chinese laborers were brought over to work on the railroads – and for the next 80 or 90 years. When I was in grade school I had a Chinese-American teacher – Miss Wong – she was the first ethnic Chinese person I had ever met. It was probably 10 years before I saw another one. Up until a few decades ago Chinese and Jews in the US were restricted, limited, and shunned by law or social custom or an elaborate system of quotas in the educational system. Rude jokes and caricaturesof them abounded. American treatment of them was at least as bad as the French treatment of their North African immigrants.

Yeap, that can only be true – 35 hours work leaves a lot of free time to enjoy bistrots; not counting on the ‘Rmistes’ who have all the time in the world to enjoy life…. (k I am pushing it!).

Just a remark; life in Paris with were most influent people live – as well a very large expats communauty (not immigrants, but expats with very decent standard of living) could bring this image of relaxed joie de vivre.
Some nuances: having lived and worked in Paris and other parts of France, reality of a everyday French worker life is far from enjoying time in bistrot. It is also a struggle to commute (not even talking when public transports are on strikes), increasing economic tighness, and the rest.

On a note regarding immigrants and life in the suburbs; do you see many of these youngs enjoying life in Parisian cafes?

I agree with this! In the US we tend to think of “leftist” and “conservative” as opposites. But in France today the unions are the most conservative force if, by “conservative” we mean stuck in the past – resisting change.

So the French choice is between a candidate who is unlikely to propose any bold changes (Royal) and one who is unlikely to achieve any bold changes (Sarkozy). The result will be the same but the philosophical distinction will occupy years of conversation among wine-sipping black-wearing intellectuals in the cafes around Paris. (and before someone complains that this is just an American stereotype – I recently returned from Paris and its all true!) (granted: I spent the week hanging out with poets)

And yet France continued its paralysis and decline under Chirac. So maybe whatever you’re calling “humanism” is no what’s called-for in France.

I think that what France needs is change. Royal seems to be clinging to all the old values of state-paternalism that resulted in the current problem.

Then why do they watch it? I think American TV and commercial radio is idiotic, boring, and lurid so I don’t watch it. Surely the French are capable of making the same choice.

Without help from the government to promote Culture that’s gonna be hard-time for those who want to escape the unrefined popular culture…

You seem to be saying that the French government knows better than its own citizens. What kind of democracy is that?

Yes, but you’re still not addressing my central point.

Consider Jews and Chinese in the United States. Both immigrant groups faced massive discrimination and restrictions, both officially and in everyday interactions with other Americans. Both groups were, until recently, isolated in their own communities. Both groups had customs, practices, languages, that were alien to other Americans, and both groups were routinely portrayed as threats to the prevailing WASP culture.

Yet both groups thrived – their culture became a source of strength to them, their values of education and scholarship served them well, and their family values for the most part kept them from becoming a source of trouble outside their comminities. (there were some ethnic gangs but the scale of that activity was tiny). This pattern has been reflected all over the world in ethnic Chinese and Jewish enclaves and communities. (BTW, both groups strongly resent the “model minority” portrait I’m painting here but the facts speak for themselves).

So I still say that there are many different possible responses to being an isolated, discriminated-against ethnic minority and the one that is chosen reflects the culture in question.

The other participants were, sorry to say, useless; especially Guillet. Taking a political stand is fine, but inventing numbers (by the way, where on this universe do you get these numbers!!!), and manipulating facts is all but informative especially in an open source media context. Or maybe that is the problem?? But of course, as Mr. Guillet said it 100 times during the show, all the traditional media are controlled and manipulated but the dangerous evil right wing candidate!

It is obvious this program and the ideas expressed in the blog are highly biased – not that it matters. But the question is how valuable is to express negative and unconstructive attacks against a candidate (and in a way against the million of French who vote for him?) to explain what’s going on in France? Isn’t what US audiance would like to learn? Or this particular US audiance is just interested in being conforted in their position of Anti-Bush = France is better (nice romantic joie de vivre in a Paris bistrot!!)???

Could not it have been more intellingent for Mr.Guillet to present the propositions of the candidat of his choice, and how they can translate in political actions? Maybe that is the problem; what is the socialists’ program?

I would however agree on one point, it will be very difficult, almost impossible for Mrs. Sarkozy to implement any of his propositions (especially regarding labor ..); the unions and left parties are going to enjoy preparing days and days of strikes, like in the good old time (68??).

To answer the question that beats Mr. Guillet on why french people favor Sarkozy; it may simply due to the fact that they are fed up with pseudo social ideology and being suckers of that system. Maybe if Mr. Guillet was less obsessed by decrying the anglo saxon media, he could look at the reality of everyday life in France, especially in Province and find few answers.