“Together, Anything Is Possible!” (Add: No Eyes, No Mouth, Horns, Tail, Twirling Mustache)

Sarkozy is the progressive here; his agenda is to nudge France out of her rear-view mirror cultural focus and numbing, Democratic Socialist structures…
Socialism is so stifling to, e.g. entrepreneurship, individualsim, class & social mobility; you would have to live IN it for awhile to realize just how deHumanizing even “benign” Socialism really is.
Royal is the conservative here; her agenda is to maintain the Socialist State, legal limits on how long you can work, etc. Note that women will vote against Royal, almost 2:1
Sarkozy talks gutter and acts forcefully in the face of civil discord, certainly true. you would have to live in the EU for awhile to recognize him as a “moderate,” but reality here is that none of these Nations have yet to achieve “integratation,” and Jews & Muslims are despised ~ in many places, negative attitudes & stereotypes are displayed not so discreetly!
ironic as it may seem, Sarkozy is the dis-enfranchised peoples’ best hope for change, IMHO.

imagine the implications of defacing even a political poster, of a woman’s face. otoh, pour un homme, c’est normal.

imagine the implications of defacing even a political poster, of a woman’s face.
L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp, of course! bravo! and instantly we see his defacement is, what ~ a moustache! something masculine to degrade the feminine, a phallus implicit.
in The States, your stereotypes of male degradation would be la feminine, oui? (in the politics of anxious masculinity = homosexuality; or “woman = weakness” implicit) or, something such as Michael herein prejudices: Christian symbols of anti-Christ = Rabbi Jesus not = devil.
iow, what is so interesting about today’s photo is not so much that a man’s image is defaced, but that the woman’s image is not. pourquoi? yes, perhaps it is her very (feminine self) image; NYT, MoDo: “She consciously casts herself as Marianne, the symbol of France ~ playing “La Marseillaise” at rallies…” iow, to deface her, for a Frenchman, would be self-loathing!

I’m sitting in Toulouse, France; It’s after midnight here, and helicopters are circling outside. The election results were declared at 8:00, and by 9:30PM, a crowd had gathered on the Capitole. Early on, the crowd was scaling the front of the Capitole, ripping down flags and then setting them on fire, surging around the city. The riot police were waiting on the square beyond the Capitole plaza and one confrontation occurred there. The crowds were setting fires in garbage cans and dragging metal barricades to blockade the streets. Another confrontation occurred at the Pont Neuf. The police used tear gas more than once to disperse the crowd. One stray group set a fire in a garbage can in the street beneath my apartment.
It seems to be getting worse as the night goes on–a squadron of police just marched by my apartment followed by nine police transport vans. The helicopters have gotten closer. My husband, who spent several hours following the action, commented that there seemed to be a small core group of provocateurs at the center of the action and a large group of bystanders, along for the excitement.
The hostility against Sarkozy-the defacing of his posters-is fascinating. It reveals more about the worldview and values of the left than Sarkozy. They are literally trying to obliterate his message. And yet, what is Sarkozy proposing that is so terrible bad awful? He is insisting that the French have to work longer hours to remain globally competitive, obey the law, that immigrants must adopt French culture and that France must absorb its immigrants. And in response, people riot.
Three major issues are being conflated here. One has to do with economic change. The second has to do with what is required to maintain an orderly society. The third is the complex relationship between an immigrant population and a host nation. As M. Gonzo above observed, Sarkozy is the progressive here, the one proposing novel approaches.
Whatever that last police action was about, the mood has changed. Now the energy is more like an all-night party. Someone is playing American blues, very very loud, and people are dancing in the street.

I was interested in the way Royal dressed. Except for the debate, where she wore a blue suit (or something like that), she doesn’t wear the “power suit” of female American politicians and corporate leaders. (Even is it’s been modified and softened over the years, it’s still a suit.) Royal was always wearing something else, usually white. How different is France? Does she not need to wear something that projects more strength?

Progressive is not the only label that implies change — it is only the most subjectively positive of them. There are also regressive, reactionary, reformer, radical, and counter-*.

Oh, ummabdulla, Royal lost because she’s too pretty. (;>)

Sarkozy is not “progressive”. Sarkozy is a classic right wing figure – people vote for him because they don’t like immigrants, they’re scared of crime, and think people are ’sponging’ (or similar) off their taxes. He may be promising change, but what he is promising will bring the big problems the UK has – the creeping extension of working hours until they damage the nation’s social fabric, the destruction of meaningful job security, direct access for corporate vested interests to government policy, and authoritarian social control (CCTV cameras etc.)
MonsieurGonzo said: “Socialism is so stifling to, e.g. entrepreneurship, individualsim, class & social mobility; you would have to live IN it for awhile to realize just how deHumanizing even “benign” Socialism really is.”
This could not possibly be backed up by any evidence.
France is not a communist state, and never has been. There are far, far more small businesses per head in France than in the UK – a simple glance at your average French high street could show you that.
As for individualism, to look at one area – French media is not dominated to the same extent (as in the US or UK) by corporations, and is radically less monotonous and formulaic, and more individualistic as a result.
Plus, numerous studies have shown that neoliberal economics *decreases* class mobility, not increases it. The UK certainly has less class mobility than France – and as for the USA…
The French economic system’s only fundamental problem – like all semi-socialist democracies – is that it is undercut economically by competition from the surrounding (less socialist) countries. If French employers are having to pay longer maternity leave, higher redundancy payments, then they are at a disadvantage compared to UK or US companies.
“reality here is that none of these Nations have yet to achieve “integratation,” and Jews & Muslims are despised”
Sarkozy – just like virtually all right wing politicians in Europe – is pandering to these tendencies in order to get votes, at least against Muslims, not seeking to solve the problem.
Blaming ’socialism’ for the lack of ethnic integration is absurd. It has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with prejudice in the job market.

=> The French Brain Drain
“What’s striking about the new French exodus… is the description these new émigrés give of the France they are leaving behind: a country where it’s difficult and sometimes miserable to be ambitious, where landing a stimulating job often depends on connections rather than talent, where bureaucracy is daunting and discrimination sometimes overt — a France, in other words, that is set in its ways and frustratingly unresponsive to the hopes, plans and dreams of its young.”
“ Socialism doesn’t suck ~ it blows.”

Leave it to the elites to figure out what’s best for the disenfranchised.

Sarko isn’t a “liberal” who is proposing “something different”. I have to disagree with the Gonzos here. True, I lived in Germany and not France, but also in Germany right wing is not “liberal” or “progressive” by any definition, however convoluted. What Sarko will do is to make France more like America, but only in terms of social problems. People voted for him because they are racist, and don’t like seeing the faces of their former colonial victims on the street. Sarko’s election is a defeat for moderate/modern France.
As for the “stifling socialism” angle, jungle citizen captured it; here let me add something else. In Germany 85% of new small business start-ups will survive past the five year point. In the “pro-business” USA the number is almost flipped; less than 15% of new start-ups are still in business five years later.
The U.S. model is pro big business and nothing else.
As for M. Gertrude–guess what, you can say every single one of those things about the present day United States as well. Look at the flood of literature about young American college graduates who “fail to launch” (read: they can’t find a stimulating job and find it frustrating to be ambitious when they’re flipping burgers). It’s really no big mystery–there’s no social mobility, and our society is becoming increasingly nepotistic and unfair. This problem is not unique to France, which by the way, isn’t exactly communist in case you haven’t noticed.
Giving these kids a more flimsy social net isn’t going to help them, but it will enrich some old guys.

I would like to know if all those above who think Sarkozy is the best thing since sliced baguette, did you all read the article referenced by The Bag and what are your comments about it? Is Alessandrini just making it all up?
Also, M.Gertrude, everything you quote may indeed be true, as it is in the US, but I’d be willing to bet that Sarkozy will only make it worse, just as the W has in this country. When Sarkozy says the same things that the W says, why do people in France think he won’t do to France what the W did to the US? If it quacks like a duck………….

Cactus, for a slightly different flavor try The Smirking Chimp on Sarkozy
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7012

gee, tina… i gotta admit, it’s difficult for me to take seriously the comparison of France malaise, exodus of her educated, etc ~ w/USA’s corporate state, unashamed war economy, indentured servant class of 12+ million illegal immigrants = illegal jobs, and the relentless outsourcing of America’s middle / working class well-being.
not to mention the illusion that Sarkozy is some kinda neo-fascist (?) considering that his Hungarian father fled the Red Occupation Army, and his mother was Jewish.
i think it was difficult for many French men, and most French women ~ to vote for Sarkozy; Royal was, if nothing else, a seductive advocate of social stasis… personally, i think Merkel is much more the admirable woman.

Sarko’s parents have nothing to do with his fascistic tendencies. He attracted the vote that went in the past to Le Pen, for God’s sake.
Jewishness does not confer a genetic immunity to the neocon mindset, you know. Who gives a flip what ethnicity his mother was? And what’s his father got to do with it?

Monsieur Gonzo/Gertrude – I think you’ve really missed it on this one.
Mr. Sarkozy is your classic psychological projectionist – he comes from immigrant families yet calls the youth that reside in immigrant banlieues “scum.” These types make great demogogues – since their personal profiles match up so nicely with their written-in-stone political imperatives. His wrapping of destructive social policies in such semantically simplistic (yet highly evasive) terms such as “Law & Order” (a healthy euphemism for shock and awe perhaps?) are so obviously an imitation of American neoconservatives that I am shocked even Ptate has bought into the Sarkozy orgasmathon.
Perhaps this excerpt (from counterpunch) can reveal more about dear ole Nicky:
In their exchange [in Philosophie magazine], Onfray, currently France’s most fashionable young philosopher, expressed the prevailing French left-wing view that “we are fashioned not by our genes, but by our environment, by the family and socio-historic conditions in which we evolve”.
Sarkozy replied: “I don’t agree with you. I would tend, for my part, to think that a pedophile is born a pedophile; and moreover, it is a problem that we do not know how to treat that pathology. There are 1,200 to 1,300 young people who commit suicide in France each year, and it is not because their parents didn’t take proper care of them! But because they had a genetic frailty [] Circumstances are not responsible for everything, the share of the innate is immense.”
Now, in purely scientific terms, this polarization between innate and environmental determinism is mere loose talk. Both factors come into play, in proportions that are far from being understood. Of the two men, Onfray was the more extreme in his certainty. But it is Sarkozy who has responsibility in the real world. His opinion that pedophilia is genetically determined was especially shocking because of the way it fits his methods of combatting crime. If the “bad guys” are born that way, and circumstances don’t matter, there is no point in trying to improve social conditions to prevent crime. The only thing to do is to catch the bad guys. And if there is to be prevention, it could take the form of “genetic profiling” of potential criminals to catch them before they do anything.
Sarkozy has in the past suggested legislation to diagnose “behavioral disorders” in children as young as three. This raises fears that he would turn France into a police state, with files on the “genetically flawed”.
Such an approach to crime is consistent with a policy of cutting social spending and giving all power to financial capital in an unrestrained “free market” economy. Such an economy widens the gap between rich and poor, breaking down the social fabric while inciting desire for consumer goods. That is the economic policy advocated by Sarkozy.

Lightkeeper: Great post. I don’t know if you listen to Thom Hartmann, but he says that the right wing/conservatives/neocons believe that people are inherently bad and that government must keep them in line, whereas progressives/leftwingers believe that people are inherently good. Or words to that effect.

I’m fully agree with Tina.