PARDON MY FRENCH

PARDON MY FRENCH

For the past couple of days I have been sitting on a piece I wrote about the break-up of French president Nicholas Sarkozy’s marriage to the impetuous beauty, Cécilia. I wanted to make sure I understood the circumstances of the affair before I expressed an opinion.I needn’t have worried.  Things are pretty well unfolding as I predicted.

Cécilia’s divorce petition coincides with the first ominous rumblings of public discontent with Sarkozy’s take-no-prisoners approach to governing, a public transport strike to protest an attempt by Sarkozy to add two and one-half years to the time that a transit worker must work, from 37 1/2 to 40, to be eligible for a full pension.  Some people might applaud this measure as fiscal responsibility, but others, such as the workers whose acquired benefits are at play, might be forgiven for believing that he is trying to turn back the clock to the bad old days of wage slavery.  Despite the usual propaganda about the featherbedding French workforce, working conditions in that country are not optimal, and French workers manifest excellent productivity under frequently harsh conditions and intense competitive pressure.  Whatever gains they have made in social progress have come at the cost of rigorous struggle, and they are not likely to give them back without a fight.  If taking back benefits had been a viable option to control union activity it would have been adopted long ago, but it’s not, any more than it would work to try to coerce Cécilia Sarkozy to behave contrary to her instincts.

The reaction of the American press to the Sarkozy breakup has been hysterically funny. They have been fawning over Sarkozy since the moment he got elected with the same imbecilic affection that Bush showered on Putin when he looked in his eyes and saw his soul, Oh My God! They can’t believe that a wife would walk out on such a great guy. The New York Sun, which I call The Daily Backward, after running through every French cliché to be found in The Elements of Style (“Gallic shrug”, “vaunted sophistication in matters of the heart” blah blah blah), went on to compare Cécilia Sarkozy, first lady of France and former wife of television personality Jacques Martin, a woman who herself would not be out of character miming the Ida Rubenstein role in Fokine’s ballet “Cléopâtre” at the Opéra Garnier, with – are you ready for this! – Larry Craig’s dumpy wife, who stands by her man even as he gets caught soliciting weenie in a public toilet.

Then, by way of demonstrating that we also have worldly leaders, The Sun invokes Giuliani, who wears ladies’ dresses and panties, who moved in with gay guys (his own “Cage aux Folles”?) after his wife walked out on him to appear in The Vagina Monologues, whose current wife used to work as a medical assistant for a company that did vivisection on live dogs as part of its sales presentations (why Michael Vick’s attorneys never got around to mentioning that, I’ll never know.  As usual, incompetent legal representation) whose only foreign policy initiative to date, which he is still bragging about, was when he had Yassar Arafat evicted from his box at the Metropolitan Opera.Oh year, that’s class!

Incidentally, in the same edition of The Sun (or is it the moon?“Is that the sun or is that the moon?”“I don’t know.I don’t live in this neighborhood.”), that paper’s Middle East expert, Youssef Ibraham, né Joe Schmuckley of Levittown, LI, advocates attacking Saudi Arabia and annexing its oil-rich Eastern Province as a solution for stabilizing the world oil market.Bravo! As the election draws near the list of potential victims continues to grow in size.

As for The New York Sun, who put these retards in charge of running a newspaper? I thought The Post was staffed with knuckleheads, but at least they have a sense of humor, as befits a comic book. Whereas The Post only costs a quarter, the pineapples at The Sun are betting that people will be willing to pay a dollar to read news items reprinted whole from the wire services; plodding, moralistic right-wing opinion pieces composed by certifiable lunatics; and cultural criticism by freshly-hatched journalism majors.

The only reason I read this idiocy is that I happen to live in a good zip code, where The Sun, in its slathering adoration of rich people, leaves the garbage in doorways for free so it can boost its circulation in hopes of attracting advertisers, which it doesn’t get anyway. People just use it as a doormat. Frankly, I’m better off writing my own news.

Come to www.200motels.net, the last bastion of CLASS in a nasty world!

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Posted on 10/18/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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