Posted on 09/30/2008 9:40:21 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
PARIS — The French have always found American elections amusing, in a horror movie sort of way. They grumpily regard the American president as in some unfortunate sense also their own, but they see the campaign through their own cultural lens.
They value sophistication above almost anything, and so they regard their own hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his messy romantic life and model-singer wife, as “Sarko the American.”
But this year has been difficult for the French. Mr. Sarkozy has generally supported American foreign policy and has praised the United States’ openness and entrepreneurial verve. And the sudden emergence of Senator Barack Obama — black, and seen as elegant and engaged with the larger world — has sent many French into a swoon.
But the combination of two recent surprises — Gov. Sarah Palin and America’s terrifying financial meltdown — has brought older, nearly instinctual anti-American responses back to the surface.
These two surprises, one after the other, have refreshed clichés retailed under President Bush, confirming the deeply held belief of the French that the United States remains the frontier, led by impenetrably smug and incurious upstarts who have little history, experience or wisdom.
Even worse, from the French perspective, Americans are reckless optimists, incurably blind to the tragedy of life, to the weary convolutions of history and thus to the need for lengthy August vacations and financial regulations.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
re: “wild frontier”
.... and we still don’t like frogs’ legs, tripe, OR les escargots!!!!
Mr. McCain is admired for his bravery, but his “maverick” qualities are less understood, partly because he is seen as so conservative on social and religious issues. His experience in foreign affairs is appreciated here, even though some recall his remark during the prewar Iraq debate, when he described the French this way: “They remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn’t have the face for it.”
Score one for McCain with that one.
Some news for the French, though. Obama is the descendant of slave owners on his mother’s side.
And they need to give up on the Republicans don’t understand the world line. McCain’s a Navy brat who spent over 20 years in the Navy himself. I’m sure he was better traveled than Obama by the age of 48, even leaving out his years in Congress.
Ahh..the French...
Bless’em but I doubt they shall ever “get it”.
Unfortunately parts of this article are very funny.
I prefer Sarko as compared to “real” French people.
I thought about putting it in the Humor topic.
Amusing!
And the author’s describing his own milieu too, though he doesn’t know it of course.
Gazing at France, Americans still see surrender monkeys.
Now that's not true at all. France is east of here, like China. If we need to be more precise than that we can always ask the Wehrmacht.
OK, if they can take cheap shots I can take cheap shots. Funny article... ;-)
All my time in Europe (mostly Germany) I came up against this assumption. What they entirely failed to realize, and often failed to recognize as true even after I told them, was that we are them.
We are that part of them that had the ambition to pack what we could carry, leave our homes in Bavaria and Sachsen-Anhalt and Alsace-Lorraine and Calabria and Norway and a myriad others, to make a new life in the New World, before and after its incorporation as a nation.
We are the second sons of the ruling houses who, disinherited by primogeniture and/or bankruptcy, left the palaces, manors and stately homes to seek our fortunes in honest labor.
We are the political and religious dissidents, and not a few rascals and cads, who were transported against our will to the American Colonies before the British discovered Australia.
Their history is ours, tempered by the perspective of distance....
Their experience is ours, modified, enlarged, and improved by our own....
Their wisdom is ours, corrected by practical application to fresh circumstance....
They would do well to follow our example; this would become obvious if they would drop their pride long enough to witness how, in three hundred years (give or take), we have surpassed what they accomplished in three thousand.
Well, it seems to me that the folks that gave the world the Reign of Terror, the original White Terror, and the Commune of Paris probably don't have a lot to talk about when it comes to "experience" or "wisdom" when it comes to matters of history.
And if the soi-disant "sophisticated" French are so excited about Senator "Coke-head" Obama's candidacy, they are certainly welcome to him. Please vote --- or just directly acclaim --- him into whatever French public office that French "sophisticated" tastes care to.
We Americans will expectantly await the results of such a "community organizer" taking direct action during his tenure in France.
Forgive our gaucheness, but normal Americans prefer a real American president and a real American vice president.
I dearly love the French, but cynical existentialism has not done them any good. National ennui is not a positive value.
So, the French like Obama.
That’s one more reason he shouldn’t be Prez.
Yeah, right -- which is why we came to their rescue.
Twice.
Well said. You sound like me.
Actually, quite a fun and insightful article from the NY Times. They must have found it on the editor's doorstep, like an orphan child.
LOL
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