I have a lot of rachmones for the French. They are really past their influential peak--culturally, politically, what have you--and the 21st century is going to be very rough on them.
Still, merci pour Chanel No. 19 et YSL Touche Eclat. I would be a pretty beat-up-looking and -smelling li'l juive Americaine without 'em.
@BookishLookish: Somehow Nicholas Sarkozy, a president who once called a heckler a "poor cunt," has more clout in global affairs right now than literally any other Western leader. I have no idea how it happened, but they are like the most powerful country in the world until January 20th. Rather than being a country in decline, I think they're the new U.K.
I love the French, but I can't held but suspect that their uncharacteristically irrational collective hard-on for Barack Obama must have its roots in their admiration of jazz music, or maybe they've been eating too many Royales with Cheeze and now their view of race is now as superficial as ours.
@gawkimo: Are you suggesting that the French attitude towards race was somehow previously sophisticated? They've been doing this Obama thing since the days of Josephine Baker. "Ah, those exotic negroes! So charming!" I mean, sure, it's better than lynching, but not, I think, more sophisticated.
@Kid_Twist: Oh, precisely. When they elect a brownish person of Algerian descent then they can pat us on the head all they want.
But this may not be about race, it may be that they'd given up on us ever electing anyone with any sense after Bush. Wouldn't Sarah Palin have looked like the next step in that "progression" if you were watching from overseas? Can't blame 'em, I guess. Still annoys me.
@ShanghaiLil: Hmmm, I guess you do have a point there. By "uncharacteristically," I mean I haven't heard the characteristic dissenting intellectuals in France who would take a contrary stance from the status quo (like, for instance, how Obama is going to turn out to be just another Hawkish Clintonite NeoLiberal despite his black father, yaddah yaddah). But come to think of it, I think you're right: the French aren't color blind; they're blinded by color. Ooooooold Maaaaaaan Riveeeeeer! Keeeeeeeeps Ooooooon . . . OK I'll quit.
@crotchety: No, I'm pretty sure it's about race. I mean, yeah, they hate Bush and all, but this love-in for Obama is totally about the fact that he's the son of a single white mo. . . er, I mean that he's black. Do you really think they'd have a collective boner for Joe Biden? Who doesn't, right?
We told people that junk was triple-A all the time! That's why Americans own most of the nice parts of France now and the French are stuck glumly eating froglegs in the accursed countryside.
01/02/09
Still, merci pour Chanel No. 19 et YSL Touche Eclat. I would be a pretty beat-up-looking and -smelling li'l juive Americaine without 'em.
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But this may not be about race, it may be that they'd given up on us ever electing anyone with any sense after Bush. Wouldn't Sarah Palin have looked like the next step in that "progression" if you were watching from overseas? Can't blame 'em, I guess. Still annoys me.
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Wow, the first post of 09 was a real winner.
01/02/09
I'll get this whole commeting thing down one of these days.