WOID XVII-2. American journalist gets her grilled-cheese sandwich: France is saved

Monday, May 7, 2007 4:06 pm

1)
The purpose of a man is to love a woman and the purpose of the French economy is to provide a grilled-cheese sandwich. That's been the understanding among those who've supported Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential elections. Even before that, Jane Kramer argued in the New Yorker that the problem with France was inefficiency and lack of go-get-it, as when Room Service wouldn't send up a grilled cheese sandwich at her Paris hotel.

2)
In his victory speech Sarkozy repeated once more that French people were going to learn to work hard. According to one poll the only age-group that actually gave him a majority of votes was French people over 65. Since only 2% of French people over 65 hold a job it's pretty clear who's going to work for whom. What with the rich Americans and the rich old French I just hope there's enough cheese to go around.

3)
In his victory speech Sarko called for "Work," and "Authority" and "Morality," terms straight out of Vichy France. Just as Pétain was installed by the Germans to rule France, so, too, Sarko's been installed by global business and the upper middle classes to run the country in absentia.

4)
Or again: like a French colonial administrator he proposes to reward or punish the natives according to their degree of Frenchness: the collaborators (black, Muslim or Gaul) will be rewarded to the extent they accept and strive towards "being French."

5)
Making blacks, Muslims or Gauls into "real Frenchmen" was a stated goal of French colonization: fifty-five years ago the schoolchildren in the French Empire, be they Asian, African or White, began their first lesson with the line: "Our ancestors the Gauls had blonde hair and blue eyes." To return to that privileged state of ancestorhood was the purpose of the French educational system.: lotsa luck. Now it's the purpose of the political system as a whole: turning people who live in France into somebody else's definition of French people. Start handing out the berets.

6)
Of course, all French cities in the colonies had their native quarters and their French quarters, their colonist privileges and their native lack of privilege. The same has become progressively true of all French cities in France, where certain areas are dangerous for those who don't belong. If you're dark-skinned or look lower-class it's not safe to go to the better neighborhoods, the ones where American journalists go to order grilled-cheese sandwiches.

7)
Sarkozy has spoken of ending the uprising of May, 1968, for once and for all. But in 1968 already there were groups of rich white kids roaming the streets and beating up on workers and students. I still remember a young man in the Metro with his date, showing off his revolver. He reminded me of the young Frenchmen in Algeria, ten years earlier, who roamed about "pour se farcir un melon," to kill an Arab with impunity.

8)
He reminds me of the young people who congregated this Sunday at the Place de la Concorde, next to the American Embassy, to celebrate Sarkozy's victory. Those who opposed it were at the Bastille, the other side of town. There were riots at the Bastille, champagne on the Place de la Concorde. I looked at the kids on the Place de la Concorde with their smug, exultant smiles, and the Bastille seemed the safer place to be.

- Hoipolloi Cassidy