Whatever one might say about Sarah Palin, this photograph is disturbing on many, many levels… And, for the people who pay attention to these things, it’s a blunder too. Because, you know, seeing Sarah Palin perched on a sofa chattering away with Henry Kissinger emphasises rather than reduces the validity of concerns about her experience and knowledge. Daft. [Plundered shamelessly from Mike Crowley]
I remain perplexed. People are still talking about David Milliband as Gordon Brown’s successor. I just don’t see it. Miliband’s the sort of kid who was always picked last in a game of playground football. Even if he’s better than some of the other kids, you still wouldn’t want him on your side. He’s that irritating. Anyway, what’s Gordon saying to him here? [Via Danny Finkelstein]
Visiting friends or family with small children? Stuck for a present (toy drums and trumpets are not, I believe, generally considered thoughtful)? Well, my default gift is a collection of Jean de Brunhoff’s wonderful Babar books. You cannot, in my view, and that of most tiny children, go wrong with Babar. So, amidst all the sturm und drang on Wall St and the hurly-burly of the American presidential campaign, it was a relief to be able to turn to Adam Gopnik’s lovely essay on Babar in this week’s edition of the New Yorker. It’s a fine, perceptive piece, not just on Babar, but on French culture, colonialism, the bourgeoisie and
More baby news: Rachida Dati, the 42 year old French Justice Minister, is, like Bristol Palin, pregnant. As Art Goldhammer says, however, they do things differently in France. Dati says she has no intention of revealing the father’s identity and offers this marvellous comment: “I have a very complicated private life, and that’s where I draw the line with the press. I won’t have anything to say on that subject.” Meanwhile, the Times’ Charles Bremner has a pop at French hypocrisy vis a vis privacy and the coverage of the Sarkozy administration: The complete silence on the identify of Dati’s partner looks more like old-fashioned deference to the governing class.
Art Goldhammer looks at the Democratic convention in Denver and lets loose his imagination… I got to thinking about what would have happened had a comparable scene been staged in France. Just try to imagine Carla Bruni rattling on about her first meeting with Sarkozy at a posh Parisian dinner party. And the family vetting? Would she have brought “Nick” home to meet her sister Valeria, an actress rather than a basketball coach like Michelle’s brother, and would Valeria have offered an opinion on Nick’s prowess as a persuasive public speaker? And how about the kids? Might Jean Sarkozy have motored on stage aboard his scooter, patted Carla on the
Since yesterday was Bastille Day, this seems as sensible a moment as any to ask: whatever happened to France? How did a once-great nation fall so low? And, are there any grounds for hoping that France may recover from this shameful, pitiful, nadir? I speak, of course, of cycling. No Frenchman has won the Tour de France since Bernard Hinault took his fifth yellow jersey way back in 1986. Worse still, apart from Laurent Fignon (winner in 84 and 85 himself), no Frenchman has since come even close to hauling on the Maillot Jaune in Paris. It gets worse: Fignon won the Giro d’Italia in 1989 and Laurent Jalabert took
This one’s for my French friends and readers. Here’s Yves Montand singing Les Feuilles Mortes. Wonderful stuff.
Via Cato, comes this report from The Times: They turn out in their hundreds in Stetsons and boots as hits such as the Crazy Foot Mambo and the Cowboy Strut echo around their village halls. They are drawn by a love of American culture – although definitely not American politics – and a passion for line dancing… Now country and western has become so big in France that the country’s bureaucrats have decided to bring the craze under state control. The French administration has moved to create an official country dancing diploma as part of a drive to regulate the fad. Authorised instructors who have been on publicly funded training
Are Paris Saint-Germain the worst football team in Europe? This obviously depends upon how one measures or defines “worst”. PSG, despite another appalling season, would (thankfully) still be expected to defeat, say, Shamrock Rovers. But in a pound-for-pound sense is there a more pathetic club in europe? I’s not just that they only narrowly avoided relegation this season, it’s that they continue to squander resources. Even when they were owned by Canal Plus, PSG under-performed. Indeed, since the club was formed in 1970 they’ve only won the French championship twice (in 1986 and 1994), despite being one of the richest clubs in France and the only major club in Paris.
As an addition to this post on wartime France, Clive Davis directs one to this Max Hastings op-ed from a couple of years ago that makes similar points: Hearing a recent conversation about collaboration, I made myself unpopular by suggesting that, if Britain had succumbed to Nazi rule, our own people would have behaved pretty much as the French did. Anthony Eden is seldom quoted with respect these days. Yet the former foreign secretary made an impressive contribution to Marcel Ophüls’ great film on wartime France, Le Chagrin et la Pitié. He said, in impeccable French: “It would be impertinent for any country that has never suffered occupation to pass
Marty Peretz links to this Daily Mail account of an exhibition of photographs taken in wartime Paris which is, for obvious reasons, a matter of some debate in France. And yes, the photographs are shocking. Just not in the way in which either Peretz or the Mail seem to think they are. The Mail headline, subtle as ever, is “Oh what a lovely war! The dazzling photos of innocent Parisian fun that make the French so ashamed” while Marty titles his post, “What the Nazi Occupation of France was Really Like”. Here, for instance, is a photograph of three mademoiselles relaxing in the Luxembourg, circa 1942. How, the Mail wants
Here’s The Economist reporting developments in France: THE Gaullist backlash against Nicolas Sarkozy’s new Atlanticism has begun in earnest, and its new poster boy is Dominique de Villepin… Not only did he denounce the French president’s decision, which was warmly greeted by George Bush at last week’s NATO summit in Bucharest, to send an extra French battalion (some 700 troops) to Afghanistan. He went on to chastise Sarkozy for planning to reintegrate France into NATO’s military command structure. “Not only is the return of France to NATO not in our country’s interests, but I also think it’s dangerous,” he said: “We will lose space to manoeuvre, space to be independent”
Daniel Drezner praises Elaine Sciolino, who is leaving Paris after five years as the New York Times’ correspondent, as a “fine reporter/observer”. Not so fast, cautions Arthur Goldhammer: Her swan song reminds us why she will not be missed. For our national newspaper’s chief correspondent, France means above all sexy underwear, friendly butchers, nasty haberdashers, handkissing, and other quaintnesses. La grande Nation is a dotty old aunt best captured in droll anecdotes. Now, to be sure, Madame Sciolino’s farewell despatch is meant to be whimsical, even jolly. Alas, it’s simply cliched, banal and, appallingly, stuffed with name-dropping. More to the point, it’s also supposed to demonstrate how peculiarly funny and
One of the most kenspeckled British political anecdotes of the last half century recounts the occasion when it was said of Herbert Morrison that he was “his own worst enemy”, his great rival Ernie Bevin was quick to interject: “Not while I’m alive, he ain’t!”. So when, courtesy of Art Goldhammer, I read that Pierre Lellouche, a conservative member of the UMP from Paris, had condemned the French right in these terms: “La droite française, malgré la magie sarkozyenne à l’UMP, serait-elle redevenue, Sarkozy parti à l’Elysée, la plus bête et la plus lâche du monde”, se demande le député de Paris. my immediate thought was, no, that ain’t possible.
Since the British press have been having all sorts of fun over the “snub”* Gordon Brown thanks to a canceled meeting with John McCain it’s worth noting that press sillyness is not confined to the anglosphere by any means. Art Goldhammer has the details: Le Figaro has a perfidious piece on Ségolène Royal’s visit to the US. It leads with the insinuation that she was somehow snubbed by Barack Obama because she attended his rally without obtaining a picture of herself with the candidate. I said yesterday that I would not share my private impressions of Mme Royal, but in this case I will make an exception, because I had
An entry for Pseud’s Corner. Adam Gopnik on Sarko’s romance with Carla Bruni: It is possible to imagine that Sarkozy is not simply a man governed by his impulses and appetites but one trying to use a situation to make a strategic point. In the past, all French politicians were involved in an organized hypocrisy, where mistresses were known, and hidden with a wink. Just as Tony Blair used the cold body of Princess Diana to underline the need for a departure from the national habit of perpetual emotional postponement, Sarko conceivably is using the very warm body of Bruni to make the point that the French need to escape
Interesting article by Elaine Sciolino in today’s New York Times on the brouhaha over the proposed expansion of Champagne’s AOC, increasing the number of communes legally permitted to grow grapes to be made into champagne. The reason? Increased demand for the bubbles around the world. As I say, it’s a good piece. But I would wager that the guts of the real story lurk in these two paragraphs (emphasis added): For the most part, the 40 proposed communes fill in holes in existing Champagne areas, much of it near the Champagne centers of Reims and Épernay, rather than extending the perimeter. For reasons that have yet to be explained, Germaine
Nicolas Sarkozy: still doing well for himself: Charles Bremner explains: They don’t call him Speedy Sarko for nothing. It’s exactly two months since President Sarkozy very reluctantly confirmed that Cécilia, his wife, had left and divorced him. Today, he has presented France with a new girlfriend, Carla Bruni, who turns 39 this week. Sarko being Sarko, he chose as the venue the Christmas parade at Disneyland Paris. Bruni, a singer-songwriter and former model — who resembles Cécilia — is a household name in France and her native Italy… Known as a tempestuous and intellectual beauty, she is celebrated for a busy romantic life. Newspapers today discreetly mentioned her reputation as
So, unsurprisingly, Time Magazine’s cover story (international edition) on The Death of French Culture is making waves on the eastern side of the Atlantic (once upon a time, Time might have devoted space to French culture in its US edition: that it wouldn’t dream of doing so now tells us as much about the United States as it does about France). Given that all countries enjoy introspection – what’s the subject of any attempt at writing the fabled Great American Novel, if not America herself? – it’s not shocking that Le Figaro should devote three pages to responding to Don Morrison’s silly, exaggerated article. Silly and exaggerrated and irritating, I
The always-excellent Arthur Goldhammer on Nicolas Sarkozy’s latest appearance: Sarkozy had another one of his marathon chats with les tribunes du peuple, or what passes for such in the media age: telejournalists. It was an odd performance. The Élysée doesn’t really suit its current incumbent. Its rococo excess makes a strange contrast with his blunt language. He cannot bring himself to sit up straight, despite chairs that would seem to require it. He slouches and squirms, and one keeps expecting to hear the voice of an admonishing parent: “Sit up straight, Nicolas!” His tie was not knotted comme il faut, leaving him looking slightly bedraggled, despite the dazzling white shirt