BonjourParis

I am worried about the French.  I am worried because they are talking about Eliot Spitzer, talking endlessly.  It makes no sense at all.  We are told that he was sleeping with someone who was not his wife.  So?  Since when do the French care about that?  And, I wonder, how many people ever heard of Spitzer before he became tabloid cover art?  He is, or was, the governor of New York, not a position the French care about or even know about.  No doubt many businessmen had heard about him when he was putting the fear of jail into pirates on Wall Street, but that is a small part of the population.

 

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

Few heroes of French history are as obscure as Eugène-Réné Poubelle, yet not one—not Joan of Arc, not Napoléon, not Charles de Gaulle—has as many monuments named in his memory.  It is impossible to walk anywhere in Paris, or other French cities and towns for that matter, and not daily come across one of these shrines.  It is true that they are not treated well, are not revered, and buses do not come from miles around loaded with tourists panting to have their pictures taken in front of one of them.  As a matter of fact, people habitually throw nasty things in, or at, them.  But the monuments, if not truly the memory of M. Poubelle, endure.

 

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

Oh, Jérôme, Jérôme, what have you done?  Uproar everywhere.  Your masters at the Société Générale are beside themselves.  They are tearing their hair at the Bourse.  They are beating their breasts at the Élysée.  They are pulling their chins at the Fisc.  And in Brussels the Eurocrats are hatching regulations for ten times six times six levels of control on transactions in excess of two euros.  Oh, Jérôme, Jérôme, they say you are a very bad man—a rogue or worse.

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

The lyrics of a popular French song a few years ago had an unforgettable characterization by a boy talking about his hard-to-deal-with girlfriend.  He dubbed her  jamais contente, «never content.  Those words just as easily could be applied these days to their homeland, France.

 

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

He was a genuine Renaissance man; one of France’s greatest military heroes; a master builder; a humanist; an agronomist; a philosopher and even an economist who, three hundred years before it came to pass, proposed creation of a single European currency.

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

Most adult Americans are familiar with the famous phrase “ Lafayette, we are here,” attributed to U.S. General John J. Pershing when the first American troops landed in France in 1917 to fight alongside French forces during World War I.

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

Nicolas Sarkozy, of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, defeated Socialist Ségolène Royal, who had hoped to become France's first woman president. Sarkozy won by a decisive 53.06% of the vote to Royal's 46.9% in an election that saw a record turn-out of 84% .

 

Last Updated ( Thursday, 31 May 2007 )

France turned a major page in its history May 6, voting into office for the next five years a new and new generation president dedicated to radical change. But the presidential race was extremely tight nearly to the finish and left all concerned still battling for victory in national parliamentary elections scarcely a month away on June 10 and 17.

 

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )

After months of invective-filled, media-obsessed campaigning by 12 separate contenders, France, on April 22, finally narrowed down its presidential race to two finalists—Ségolène Royal on the left and Nicolas Sarkozy on the right of the political spectrum.

Last Updated ( Monday, 07 April 2008 )