VIVE SARKOZY!

Vive La France et vive Nicholas Sarkozy! Of course, if Ségolene Royal had won, I would be shouting Vive Royal!

But Sarkozy is the more comic personality – a zappy, animated motormouth rushing off in all directions at once like the buffoon hero of a stage play by Molière or Beaumarchais. He reminds me of Beaumarchais’ character Figaro, a resourceful Everyman who short-circuits rigid class barriers by virtue of his wit and resourcefulness and muscles his way to the top. Every time Jacques Chirac tried to stuff him in a can, Sarkozy popped out again like a jack-in-the-box.

And he has courage. Once he walked into a classroom that had been taken over by a mad bomber wearing a suicide belt and negotiated with the nut, emerging with a crying child in his arms. Contrast that with little Bushie peeking out of the window of Air Force One as it flew over devastated New Orleans or reading "My Pet Goat" to the classroom as people jumped to their doom from the World Trade towers!

When he was the young mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine he presided over a marriage and fell in love with the bride. He pursued her, won her over and got her to leave her husband for him. She later ran away to New York with another man, but Sarkozy again chased her and got her to come back to him.

I’m not going to jump up and down that he got elected, like the New York newspapers, who seem to think that he is going to anglicize the French political culture. They can forget that pipedream – there is nobody more French than Sarkozy. French political culture is due for a big overhaul after the glacial years of Jacques Chirac, but anybody who believes that Sarkozy is going to crawl into the decrepit political bed George Bush occupies is underestimating Sarkozy’s ambition.

Standing 5’5,” Sarkozy definitely has his own Napoleon complex. He made it a point of honor to screw his erstwhile political mentor, Chirac, and he most certainly has the same goal for American neo-conservatives, whom me must surely see as a bunch of hick retards.

I see him as a kind of French version of Silvio Berlusconi, without the Italian leader’s instinct for megalomanic thievery. I definitely see him as the fast-talking hero of an hysterical French comedy movie, like the great comedian Louis de Funès or the adventure hero and stuntman Jean-Paul Belmondo, whom he vaguely resembles.

He’s sure to outrage everybody, from the French left to the American right. But in the end he will leave an indelible imprint on French culture and world civilization, and I’m happy to be along for the ride.

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Posted on 5/8/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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