The New Yorker finds a comedian to hate

 

Gift of God

Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala

Accusations of anti-semitism are now thrown around so carelessly that I confess my antennae quivered when The New Yorker arrived this week, the cover flap declaring a new anti-semitic phenomenon: “Hate comedy.”

The target of the piece by Tom Reiss, styled as a “letter from Paris,” is the French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala. Dieudonné is, without doubt, notorious as a comedian who has consistently ignored boundaries and been careless in his associations. But Reiss seems pretty careless, too.

Reiss declares Dieudonné to be a “committed and vocal anti-semite” and guilty of “sheer malevolence.” But the piece is itself pretty demagogic and the evidence presented is tendentious and malevolent.

The first question must be: just what does Reiss mean by anti-semitism? Racial anti-semitism? It is doubtful this charge can be made to stick. Anti-zionism? A refusal to excuse Israel’s behaviour by reference to past Jewish victimhood? This seems closer to what appears to concern Reiss.

Reiss considers the beginning of the Dieudonné affair the appearance by the comedian in December 2003 on the TV program On ne peut pas plaire à tout le monde which Reiss describes as a popular political chat show “in which celebrities discussed issues in a civil round-table atmosphere” (suggesting to me that Reiss has never watched it, as the show was typically a riotous affair).

Even by the standards of this often wild programme, the episode in question was a classic. Dieudonné performed a sketch in which he denounced the American-Zionist axis before raising his arm and proclaiming, “Isra-heil.” This is transgressive. Insulting. But anti-semitic? Dieudonné was in character, for heaven’s sake. You can watch this clip here on YouTube.

There is no doubt that Dieudonné loathes Zionism and that he does so on republican principles. He opposes what the French call communautarisme which elevates the rights and claims of minorites above the republican notion of equality. And he loathes the professional witch-hunters who equate any mockery of Zionism or Israel with anti-semitism.

Reiss does not consider this, nor the consequences. Instead, he implies that Dieudonné is either personally responsible for or has inspired “a wave of attacks” against Jews and their property.

Reiss approvingly quotes Sammy Ghozlan, head of the Bureau national de vigilance contre l’antisemitisme, who says Dieudonné “influenced” the killers of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish mobile phone salesman notoriously murdered in Paris last year. But there is not a shred of evidence adduced to support this. Dieudonné is unknown to have attacked anyone, or to have advocated violence – although he has himself been physically attacked by Jewish militants.

Reiss goes on to lengthily quote two more of the least convincing witnesses imaginable: Alan Finkielkraut, a notorious reactionary not averse to hurling racially-tinged insults himself, and the ridiculous Bernard-Henri Lévy, who seems to have entertained Reiss in his lavish apartment on the left bank.

Dieudonné unsettles. He is a confrontational comedian. One of his targets – among very many – is the siren of Jewish victimhood being used to suppress criticism of injustice perpetrated by Jews on others. Dieudonné is not an intellectual nor does he claim to be a profound thinker. He’s a brilliant comic who consistently and bravely attacks the powerful and pompous.

Reiss quotes him highly selectively. “Judaism is a scam. It’s one of the worst because it’s the first,’” Reiss quotes Dieudonné. This is what Dieudonné actually said:

« Le racisme a été inventé par Abraham. Le “peuple élu”, c’est le début du racisme. Les musulmans aujourd’hui renvoient la réponse du berger à la bergère. Juifs et musulmans pour moi, ça n’existe pas. Donc antisémite n’existe pas, parce que juif n’existe pas. Ce sont deux notions aussi stupides l’une que l’autre. Personne n’est juif ou alors tout le monde. Je ne comprends rien à cette histoire. Pour moi, les juifs, c’est une secte, une escroquerie. C’est une des plus graves parce que c’est la première. Certains musulmans prennent la même voie en ranimant des concepts comme la guerre sainte… ».

Maybe this isn’t deeply insightful, but it is rather more sophisticated than the scrap Reiss has fed us, isn’t it? Dieudonné is criticising not just Jewish exceptionalism, but also Muslim exceptionalism. It seems less specifically anti-semitic than anti-clerical (a fine French tradition).

Dieudonné disturbs because he refuses to exempt anyone from his contempt. Malevolent? Certainly. So was Lenny Bruce. Angry? A lot of people are angry with Israel, which continues to confound its critics by behaving ever more dreadfully than can be imagined. There are dozens of videos by Dieudonné on YouTube. It’s pretty clear watching half a dozen at random that he has contempt for more or less everything sacred. Branding him an anti-semite, on the evidence presented by Tom Reiss, is not just pretty vacuous. It aligns The New Yorker with the camp of Zionist zealots who are trying to shut down anyone who dares criticise them.

Hortense de Monplaisir offers a twisted verdict on the English and the French

Why can’t the English be more like the French? Image of Mme Bernard-Henri Lévi chosen by The Sunday Times to illustrate this enigma.

One must admit the brilliance of Sarah Long’s “translation” of Hortense de Monplaisir’s snooty verdict on The English in Le Dossier: How to Survive the English, published by John Murray at £12.99. Sarah Long is a novelist and “met” Hortense at a wine tasting.

In amongst the many genial passages – the book was filleted in yesterday’s Sunday Times - she describes Hortense like this:

Hortense de Monplaisir is from a very old French family who did not need to buy their particule. After studying at Sciences Po, one of the grandes écoles, or top universities, she married a grosse légume in banking and has made a career embellishing his grey world with her vivacious conversation and colourful table displays.

Thanks to her expatriation, her children are bilingual and au fait with binge drinking culture, while preferring to sip Orangina and dance le rock taught by a maître danseur from Paris. She and her husband live in London, but have homes in Paris’s Left Bank and in the Luberon, as well as one-tenth of the family manoir in Brittany.

An incisive observer of the English, she remains French through and through. Her interests include le scrapbooking, painting on porcelain and organising holidays in Verbier, St Barts and the Ile de Ré.

She has an exceptional IQ and is a member of French Mensa.

I think this would be a rival for the best book about France this year except that Graham Robb has already crossed the finishing line. And with the complication that it is not a book about France, precisely. Many of the 115 people commenting on the Sunday Times web site seem to think this is a book about England written by a French woman. And that it is most offensive, to boot. When of course it is also simultaneously the exact opposite – a book about the French, written by a rosbif. Plus also a book about the English by someone pretending to be French. Un engrenage! This is a very good joke. Made even better in the comment sphere, as the “author” is condemned for chauvinism!

Hortense might very well see Sarah Long to a manoir of her own. Ms Long has produced a witty, wicked and twisted parody that is very funny. If nothing else, it is the “translation” of the year.

Zoé’s Ark; Sarko’s drowning

Zoé’s Ark drops the Elysée in the deepest of African fiascos. French nationals are being held in Chad where they are threatened with 20 years in jail for allegedly kidnapping children from Darfur.

Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, has played a blinder with the rhetoric. He says the French may even have planned to kill the children and harvest their organs. Sixteen Europeans including nine French citizens are now being held in the affair. And this, as a seemingly deranged Sarko is on his way to Washington for what was to have been a triumphant reunion with his friend George Bush.

By any standards Déby, a French-educated kleptocrat, election-rigger and warlord whose controversial son was recently mysteriously killed in Paris, has pulled off a magnificent coup de théâtre, not so much striking a blow against the snooty French, but grabbing Sarkozy by the nuts and squeezing.

In addition to the pretty French nursemaids and their helpers he holds three journalists and seven Spanish air crew. And a Boeing 757. So kerching! It’s pay day for Déby. Sarko, meanwhile, looks deranged and not at all the man in charge of even his own emotions after storming out of an interview with 60 Minutes, after he was asked about, er, Her.

He unwisely staged his tantrum in the presence of Lesley Stahl, one of the grandest dames of American TV news. Asking about Cecilia may have been impertinent but it was certainly predictable. So why was Sarko not prepared? He had already called his press secretary an “imbecile” for having wasted his time by scheduling the interview on a busy day. Such self-revelation is not the calm, collected, controlled behaviour of a statesman. Not even if Sarko is right and it is true that the American media are utterly debased in their obsession with sex and celebrity over substance.

As if this was not bad enough, now Sarko is being made to look like a goat by an African thug who is never off French television without poisonous declamations in immaculate French. So much for the brotherhood of Francophonie.

One can imagine Sarko’s mood on the Presidential Airbus on his way to Andrews AFB. Whether this is just an affair of an inept NGO, as Sarko might wish us to believe he believes, it has turned into an affair of hostage-taking. The French public will not tolerate their girls being thrown into a malarial African prison. Sarkozy knows it. Chad knows it.

The children be damned; they are actually practically the least important consideration of all. Were the children from Darfur? How will anyone ever know? Were Zoés people offering these children a worse life? Most people in that part of Africa can only dream of going to France. Perhaps the paperwork was dodgy. I would prefer to cast my own sympathy with the NGO. They knew what they were doing was dangerous. But they may have underestimated the political cynicism of the regime in Chad, not to forget the political cynicism in Paris.

You do not need to be a Lacanian analyst to understand the political toxicity of this for Sarko. This is an affair ripe with symbolism.

What is Sarko going to have to pay to get the French team home? What does Chad want? Guns? Jets? Helicopter gunships? Prime real estate in Neuilly? Cash – obviously.

The swaggering performance of the Africans is an ironic tribute to Sarko’s own default posture but with the whip firmly in the hand of the Africans. This is a media nightmare for the French government. Chad has complete control of the media on their end, they will control the images, hence the French media, and can create any facts they want. This is a very big problem for Sarko, demanding a coolness that one must increasingly doubt he possesses.

Sarko needs to get a grip.

London seen from Paris

I am grateful to la petite anglaise for drawing to my attention this poster from the Paris Metro. Love-starved Parisians are being encouraged to flock to London to enjoy the aphrodisiac effects of a Great British Fry-up.

…on cria haro sur le baudet

Gustave Doré : Les Animaux malades de la peste

I have been rude elsewhere to Charles Timoney who has written a reasonable book about French that is amusing even if spotty. “Pardon my French” is good at interpreting various phrases but not always so good at getting to the bottom of them. He annoyed me with his entry on the word ‘haro’ which suggests to me that researches were shallow. (Does he have a copy of Le Petit Robert?) The celebrated usage is that of Jean de La Fontaine.

The word is also used by Baudelaire: Il est bon de hausser la voix et de crier haro sur la bêtise contemporaine. This is in Curiosités esthetiques, Salon de 1859.

So do not rely on Charles Timoney in this instance. However my researches led me back to the fable which was first introduced to me, of course, by my French mistress.

This is all as it happens amazingly topical on our island cursed as it is with animal plagues, and so I reproduce it gleefully below. An English translation is available here – also one in Italian!

This really is a remarkable fable and I would like to believe it is still taught to all French school children. It conveys the important lesson that life is very sad. The punishment of the innocent baudet, whose only crime was to have eaten grass, speaks of the exquisite cruelty of justice. Once again I reach for Gustave Doré (above), one of many who have illustrated this story but who really does pathos better than anyone.

Les Animaux malades de la Peste
Jean De La Fontaine (1621-1695)

Un mal qui répand la terreur,
Mal que le ciel en sa fureur
Inventa pour punir les crimes de la terre,
La peste (puisqu’il faut l’appeler par son nom),
Capable d’enrichir en un jour l’Achéron,
Faisait aux animaux la guerre.
Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tous étaient frappés:
On n’en voyait point d’occupés
A chercher le soutien d’une mourante vie;
Nul mets n’excitait leur envie,
Ni loups ni renards n’épiaient
La douce et l’innocente proie;
Les tourterelles se fuyaient:
Plus d’amour, partant plus de joie.
Le lion tint conseil, et dit: «Mes chers amis,
Je crois que le Ciel a permis
Pour nos péchés cette infortune;
Que le plus coupable de nous
Se sacrifie aux traits du céleste courroux;
Peut-être il obtiendra la guérison commune.
L’histoire nous apprend qu’en de tels accidents
On fait de pareils dévouements
Ne nous flattons donc point, voyons sans indulgence
L’état de notre conscience
Pour moi, satisfaisant mes appétits gloutons,
J’ai dévoré force moutons.
Que m’avaient-ils fait? Nulle offense;
Même il m’est arrivé quelquefois de manger
Le berger.
Je me dévouerai donc, s’il le faut: mais je pense
Qu’il est bon que chacun s’accuse ainsi que moi:
Car on doit souhaiter, selon toute justice,
Que le plus coupable périsse.
- Sire, dit le renard, vous êtes trop bon roi;
Vos scrupules font voir trop de délicatesse.
Eh bien! manger moutons, canaille, sotte espèce.
Est-ce un péché? Non, non. Vous leur fîtes, Seigneur,
En les croquant, beaucoup d’honneur;
Et quant au berger, l’on peut dire
Qu’il était digne de tous maux,
Etant de ces gens-là qui sur les animaux
Se font un chimérique empire.»
Ainsi dit le renard; et flatteurs d’applaudir.
On n’osa trop approfondir
Du tigre, ni de l’ours, ni des autres puissances
Les moins pardonnables offenses:
Tous les gens querelleurs, jusqu’aux simples mâtins,
Au dire de chacun, étaient de petits saints.
L’âne vint à son tour, et dit: «J’ai souvenance
Qu’en un pré de moines passant,
La faim, l’occasion, l’herbe tendre, et, je pense,
Quelque diable aussi me poussant,
Je tondis de ce pré la largeur de ma langue.
Je n’en avais nul droit, puisqu’il faut parler
A ces mots on cria haro sur le baudet.
Un loup, quelque peu clerc, prouva par sa harangue
Qu’il fallait dévouer ce maudit animal,
Ce pelé, ce galeux, d’où venait tout le mal.
Sa peccadille fut jugée un cas pendable.
Manger l’herbe d’autrui! quel crime abominable!
Rien que la mort n’était capable
D’expier son forfait: on le lui fit bien voir.
Selon que vous serez puissant ou misérable,
Les jugements de cour vous rendront blanc ou noir.

The ‘haro’ of Baudelaire (much more forgettable) is here in full otherwise the pertinent bit is more of a complaint about market failure in the sale rooms:

Non, je ne suis pas injuste à ce point; mais il est bon de hausser la voix et de crier haro sur la bêtise contemporaine, quand, à la même époque où un ravissant tableau de Delacroix trouvait difficilement acheteur à mille francs, les figures imperceptibles de Meissonier se faisaient payer dix fois et vingt fois plus. Mais ces beaux temps sont passés; nous sommes tombés plus bas, et M. Meissonier, qui, malgré tous ses mérites, eut le malheur d’introduire et de populariser le goût du petit, est un véritable géant auprès des faiseurs de babioles actuels.

Pick of the crop

Graham Robb has written the season’s best book about France. It shreds the French mythology comprehensively, demonstrating that what we think of as the eternal France is nothing of the kind. More or less everything about France has been invented and much of it rather recently. France has been going through an identity crisis that began even before the turn of the century since exacerbated by the new mood post 9-11 and the disturbances in the banlieue of major French cities. The French had believed that their Republican model would integrate everyone and sneered at the multiculuralism practised in Britain, for example. But it has turned out that appeals to laïcité in France and celebrations of difference in Britain have both turned out to be not exactly comprehensively fit for purpose. One reason is that in neither Britain or France is it entirely clear what it means to be British, or French. Or English. Or Catalan. Robb reminds us that identity has much more local origins than this – certainly in France. This is not always a flattering portrait of the people who came to be the French. The women did much of the work. The agrarian tradition celebrated today is as mythical as the rest. Agronomists dispatched from Paris in the 19th century despaired at the peasantry’s refusal to cultivate the land, holding to their pastures and the animals who kept them warm. Only the invention of the internal combustion engine and the tractor persuaded French men to till the land – when they had machines to drive around in. Modern France may be an invented trope but it is real enough. Is Republicanism with its various contradictions ultimately a strong enough idea to unite all the fractious clans within? So far, it has not proved fully capable of the job. France is a nation united, perhaps, only by its hatred of tax collectors and officials. Meanwhile, if you want to wallow in a really profound France, read this book.

The Discovery of France. Graham Robb.

Trains: transport for the rich, paid for by the poor

Le train fait mal

Born in France during the 1980s with the Paris-Lyon line the iconic TGV has inspired many new lines and not just in France. But the real figures of the costs and benefits of these lines have never been published because they show that in France, with its highly-developed TGV network, the high-speed trains manage to cover a not so very impressive 4 per cent of passenger/kilometres travelled. Just as bad, the high-profile TGV lines help cover up the real story which is that the rest of the network is falling apart.

As Nicolas Sakozy knows, SNCF is a financial train wreck. An infernal machine. Suburban networks are décrépit and starved for investment. And not just in France. The religion of trains causes misery everywhere. Costly, cranky, often filthy and unreliable and crime ridden, unglamorous suburban services move consumers in conditions that would be illegal for sheep. The economics of trains are not just bad: they are terrible.

They are also a secular religion nobody is allowed to question. Squillions are spent moving functionaries with first class tickets on the TGV or local equivalent, no matter that it costs four times more than a low-cost airline, even with the monstrous special taxes imposed by the government. These subsidise Concorde-like subsidies to the train operators (a motley, terrible bunch, frankly) who employ train drivers paid more than school teachers.

Other than fortunate travellers whose organisations are willing to subsidise this extravagance, the transport unions and the subsidised operators (the train systems everywhere are among the last great command economies), it is hard to see who else benefits, when it would obviously be so much more efficient to tear up the tracks and turn the railways into roads and put the people into, er, buses.

It is quite clear that in any transport corridor, you can move more people on buses than in widely spaced trains. Plus, buses can drop people off much closer to their destination (and pick them up closer to where they live). And best of all, they can be built with integrated cycleways as in Cambridgeshire, which is opening its dedicated busway-cycleway network in 2008 on abandoned railway tracks.

Notice the adjacent cycle lane – is this not cool?

Railways do not pass elementary tests. If one bus breaks down, 40,000 people behind it are not kept waiting. Yet a single defective train set can bring chaos to an entire rush hour.

Buses are greener than trains because they are massively more efficient users of transport corridors. Look at london from the air at rush hour and roads are jammed and buses stuck, while most of the railway right of way is unoccupied, most of the time. More people move in buses through a single bus lane under the Hudson into Manhattan each weekday than arrive by train in a similar period at Waterloo station. Yet the religion of steel wheels continues stronger than ever, even as the evidence mounts that trains are usually a disaster when applied to any transportation problem, resulting in unsafe and uncomfortable overcrowding at times of peak demand, high fares, high potential for escalation of problems, underutilised human and capital resources at off-peak times, not to forget high regultory costs, bribes to operators, plus inflexible and costly union contracts. All of which vanish the moment you move people into, er, buses.

As the mania for trains and high-speed trains has seized Europe, this quasi-religious belief in 19th century transportation technology has cost billions in sudidies to such deprived people as Sir Richard Branson, even as fares have inflated at five times the rate of inflation. If the idea is to have environmentally sound transportation solutions, then trains are part of the problem, not the solution.

See this link for more on converting railways to busways in Cambridgeshire.

Paul Withrington says buses are a quarter the cost of trains.

More stuff the train people don’t want you to know is here.

The Beeching axe didn’t cut deep enough! If the transport corridors occupied by railways were freed up for buses, there is no conceivable demand that could not be accommodated at lower cost, with greater comfort and reliability, returning a profit to the country not a loss.

Bus geeks talk about future buses that look like this (below).

Future “superbus” – read about it here.

****

Saving the heritage of old steam engines is quite another matter and when the railways are finally scrapped, it will be worth saving several sections so that the train geeks can play with old train sets. This blog strongly supports the effort to rescue 3.628, a French built Paris-Calais locomotive rusting in Britain, that surely deserving a grander destiny.

Tour de Paris: our neighbours have had a brilliant idea

In 1964, the Provo anarchists of Amsterdam launched a celebrated White Bicycle scheme in which cycles became communal property – a groovy anarcho-syndicalist transport alternative. Sadly, the bikes were quickly stolen, or fell apart and the idea was not durable. There have been other efforts along similar lines but we are still waiting for bike-sharing to make a major urban impact, even as the logic of sharing cycles has grown ever more powerful.

More than 40 years later, it is still proving tricky to pull off this sort of scheme without a hitch. Just days after the launch of the ambitious Vélib’ project in Paris, it is admitted that there have been some problems. Tant pis. Vélib’ – a neologism created from the idea of Vélo Liberté (cycle freedom) – still looks like the coolest thing our neighbours have done since they put up the Tour de Fer.

Two weeks into the scheme there have been plenty of twitches but the Vélib’ (pronounced ‘vay-leeb’) seems on the way to becoming a triumphant success and the first large-scale transformation of the humble 19th century cycle into a 21st century transportation system. These are not just bikes but smart, networked cycles that are practically (if not quite) free to the user, and organised on a scale that offers a real chance to get thousands of cars off the streets.

It is hard to write about this without violating the primary rule of journalism to be cynical and disparaging, especially when writing about anything Made in France.

But the idea really is wonderful and there are scores or hundreds of cities which should imitate it at once, or as soon as they have worked out the kinks, which I predict will not be long. The Vélib’ stations are themselves extremely cool pieces of urban furniture that send all the right messages about the environment, sharing, sustainability, health. It is not surprising that the French outdoor advertising group JCDecaux is the private sector partner in the project. For Bertrand Delonoë, socialist mayor of Paris, and a potential rival (one day) to Sarko (perhaps), Vélib’ is a massive achievement.

Monsieur le maire

The Vélib’ web site reports “several technical incidents, inevitable in a period of running in the system, are currently being dealt with. Roughly 5% of the attachment points have experienced information system problems not permitting the registration of rental terms of less than 30 minutes, hence generating an inappropriate invoice. While these problems are being resolved, the city of Paris has decided in these well-defined cases not to bill the users concerned. Those who have had this problem whose accounts have already been debited will be reimbursed.”

This sounds pretty benign. I reckon they’ll have this working perfectly, and soon.

The bikes themselves are comfortable, sturdy, practical, unisex and unisize.

The bike – with a basket and bell and things that make it look good: mudguards, lights and reflectors. There are 20,000 to start with; more to come. Riders will need their own helmets.

The machine is retrieved and dropped off using a smart card at a Véilb’ docking station, or borne (“post”).

The annual subscription is a measly 29 euros and all journeys up to 30 minutes are free. Longer hiring attracts escalating charges. This is a policy deliberately designed to keep the bikes recycling between users.

The borne – with 750 of them being built, riders will never be more than 300m from one

Paris is the biggest project of its kind but not the first. A functioning but smaller scale system is up and running in Lyon, France’s second city (below), with a website here.

Vélo’v : le Grand Lyon innovates

But there is a bigger problem facing Vélib’ and all further attempts to integrate cycles into urban transport systems. It is that the roads are too often lethal for cyclists and thousands of kilometers of urban routes must be completely re-engineered with the security of the cyclists paramount, even if this creates inconveniences for motor vehicles. This involves more than painting a few white lines on the street.

No city I am aware of has begun seriously to consider how to do this, nor are the funds seemingly readily available. Isn’t this what congestion charging should pay for?

The point is not just to make cycle sharing convenient, but attractive to those, like me, who are nervous about sharing road space with Chelsea tractors.

London Freewheel is what motor-free cities might look like. Backed by Transport for London, Freewheel is inspiring but is only a one-day effort on September 23, 2007. I expect London mayor Ken Livingstone is having a close look at what his chum Bertrand is doing in Paris. If ever there was an idea that we need in London, this is it.

The Tour de Bronx in New York is another great idea in a city where the cycle is making a strong come back.

There’s no doubt that the bike is an important way forward for cities. Vélib’ seems like the most intelligent approach so far to making shared bicycles into a practical, economically sustaining proposition. I am not the first to say, “Vive Vélib‘!”

Click logo for the complete low-down on Vélib’ – in French. A WordPress blogger discusses his own Véliberation here (French). Another thoughtful piece in French here. And here.

Christine Lagarde to France: think less, work more

“Il faut cesser de penser et se retrousser les manches.”

Christine Lagarde, the former Baker & MacKenzie lawyer, has been parachuted in by Sarko as France’s new finance minister. The formidable Madam Lagarde is already nick-named “the American” for her pains. She is in charge of steering Sarko’s omnibus finance bill through the national assembly. This is a bill in favour of work, employment and buying power – the so-called “Tepa” project – Travail, Emploi, Pouvoir d’Achat.

Lagarde described the 35 hour week as a symbol of the right to be lazy, “the ultimate expression of this historic tendency to consider work as a form of servitude.” Le Canard Enchaîné summed this up under the headline: “Christine Lagarde sees the idle everywhere!”

Declared Christine: “Choisissez un travail que vous aimez, et vous n’aurez pas à travailler un seul jour.” This is somewhat out of touch with reality, judges le Canard, noting that she was drawing a 600,000 euro pay check before moving to the public service. The Canard suggests that a fulfilling career as an international lawyer and minister may not be for everyone. This may or may not be fair. You obviously do not need to have read much philosophy to have such a job, it seems.

And I tend to think she is right to suggest that work can have a certain dignity, and that the French too often overlook this, conditioned by 19th century literature to regard money as filthy, labour as contemptible and money making unrepublican. It is true that you would have this impression, if force fed Germinal for your Bac by some bitter and twisted teacher/functionary.

One is however distressed by Madam Lagarde’s expression of regret that France is a nation that thinks too much. It is all very well demanding that France “must stop thinking, stop dithering and simply roll up its sleeves.” But stop thinking? In the 24/7 globalised economy? I wait to be convinced.

Is this evidence of an American military-industrial conspiracy? Le Canard suspects as much. After all, Madam Lagarde, hailed by Sarko as the best ever French finance minister, is a known Atlanticist and a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. So perhaps she is undermining Badiou and Lacan as part of a covert CIA program to replace all French penseurs with American ones?

Again, I am not sure. Doubtless she has been conditioned by Anglo-Saxon attitudes, but could this alone account for Madam Lagarde’s disrespect for French thought? It is hard to know how we would even think, without the French. Is she utterly unaware of this? Isn’t this one of France’s strategic national assets, alongside nuclear power stations and the Rafael fighter jet?

This was an appalling speech. One does not need to be a populist to do better. But why one would make a speech arguing about the desirability of thought seems difficult to explain. Not a populist, maybe. Or not human.

The Canard is right to note that as finance ministers go, she beats all records.

Text of speech here.

Charles de Gaulle’s way

As Sarko was formally taking over the helm of the 5^th republic, I was in the shadow of Charles de Gaulle. His memorial Foundation and Institute is housed in a sound but unpretentious hotel particulaire in the 6^th arrondissement, around the corner from the Musée d’Orsay and across the river from where Sarko is being handed the launch codes for the force de frappe. It flies not a regular tricolour but the tricolour with the cross of Lorraine – the flag of the Free French. This is the only place I have seen this flag in Paris.

After his retirement, this is where the general would see his many visitors, humble and grand, each for 30 minutes at a time. Hidden to the visitor was a clock by which the general timed himself to rise after 25 minutes, to ensure that his guest would leave on time.

De Gaulle has an image as a haughty man and his study is a sparsely furnished and utilitarian room. It is dominated by maps – he was very fond of maps – and a large model tank. De Gaulle’s theories on tank warfare were ignored by the French general staff, although intently studied by the Germans. De Gaulle’s office is a spooky and awesome place that is definitely inhabited by the spirit of the general. As if the terrifying lanky figure might stride in at any moment and demand to know your business. This impression of presence is cultivated by the small but devoted staff who attend to his memory.

The foundation’s valuable library includes what can only be the world’s best collection of published materials but is only part of the de Gaulle treasure in Paris. The de Gaulle collections spill into the National Archives and the specialised archives of the foreign and defence ministries. I am helping Patricia E. Bauer, an American journalist who is looking for evidence that de Gaulle may have had knowledge of the Nazi Action T-4 from 1938-41, in which Hitler’s eugenicists systematically killed up to 250,000 people with physical and intellectual disabilities.

If he knew, did his knowledge and outrage play any part in the almost singular ferocity with which he rejected the settlement of Vichy? The question is presented because Gaulle had a personal stake in this. His daughter Anne had been born profoundly affected with Down’s syndrome, or trisomy 21, as it is now more accurately described.

Those who knew the general say that not only was he a man who stood tall and embodied the very essence of France (his amazing speech to France on June 18, 1940 can be read in English and French here) but he was also a saintly father, keeping her as close to him as he could, reading and singing to her when she was alive and holding her in his arms when she died. De Gaulle and his wife Yvonne were devoted Catholics and having lived in Germany understood only too clearly what the Nazis were about. so it may not have been necessary for the general to have known about Hitler’s specific atrocities, for him to have known his destiny.

The resolution and fortitude with which the de Gaulle’s faced the responsibilities of their daughter and the resolution and fortitude with which he faced Hitler may have come from more generalised moral and ethical imperatives. One simply wonders whether Anne may have been an influence, and in her own way, to have helped change the face of history.

It is not surprising that the French themselves still consider de Gaulle the greatest of their presidents. After the war, the de Gaulle family created a foundation to look after other young handicapped women and it still exists near Versailles where grandchildren and cousins of the de Gaulle family still discreetly involve themselves, comforting the afflicted. The foundation bears Anne’s name, so she is not forgotten, although there are fewer and fewer people born with Trisomy 21 and other disabilities in France. Because of ubiquitous pre-natal screening, almost all are destroyed before they are born, in a process called IVG – interruption volontaire de grossesse. This is very much the same story in Britain and the United States. It is morally paradoxical, at least.

*****

Patricia Bauer writes well about this here.