Civil Unrest in France
Let me preface this by saying that whatever Nicolas Sarkozy thinks he is doing, he needs to stop. Bad.
Mr Sarkozy has held various positions in French politics and is currently the leader of the ruling party and Interior minister. He is also jockeying HARD to be the main candidate on the right for the next presidential election (Chirac has hit his term limits), and part of his campaign before the campaign is to show France what a strong and powerful minister of the interior he is. Y’all, it is blatant how bad this man wants to be president. The problem is that I can’t figure out why, because I really don’t see him doing anything but making people mad.
The problem? The man is completely out of touch with reality. He used to be mayor of Neuilly sur Seine, for crying out loud. Neuilly sur Seine is the richest incorporated area in France. Ridiculous amounts of money. This is the type of “public” he is used to “serving.” And before y’all go off and talk about how I am some Muslim apologist who makes excuses for people, Nice Husband is from what I would consider a solidly middle class Parisian suburb. I haven’t even seen “the ghetto” and I still know that Sarkozy doesn’t get it. Yeah, there are some people in Nice Husband’s suburb that don’t have money, but there are a lot of people who do. This suburb is even carried by the right and has a very high per capita income, so my “experience with the locals” still involves a place that is, by definition, not hardcore. Yet I am still offended by recent events and I still think Sarkozy would find a way to make people mad there. If I can get it and I am some spoiled white girl from America, why can't he get it?
So one day over some steak tartare and some Veuve Clicqot he must have gotten the bright idea to “visit one ‘suburb’ per week. By ‘suburb’, he means ‘ghetto.’ On the surface, it sounded like a good idea. I personally have no problems with French ‘suburbs.’ The problem I have with Sarkozy is the hypocrisy of it all. He talks about cleaning up, getting rid of the juvenile delinquents, and making everything all happy and French again, or something. What does he do? He brings in the cops. He brings in the riot police. He couldn’t figure out why two months ago when he showed up at another suburb, people were yelling at him and telling him what a moron he is, and instead of taking time to sit back and wonder why people were rejecting him when he thought he was doing a good thing, he decided to up the ante and go for the all out provocation. Rather than listening to the people he is trying to “help”, he is using them, and their cities, as a platform to show “the rest of France” how “powerful” he is (*sarcastic air quotes waving madly*).
What the people in the “suburbs” need is a real dialogue. They don’t need cops, they need jobs. They have enough cops, trust me. Those who live in the cities high up on Sarkozy’s visit list need to be treated like REAL FRENCH PEOPLE and they don’t need some outsider coming in with some sort of John Wayne strategy he came up with in his head while sitting in a mansion somewhere. He has it so wrong, I cannot find the words to even begin to describe how bad he is screwing up. It has to do, I think, with his core beliefs and the fundamentals of his world-view. I do not think there is place in his world-view to understand anything incompatible with his reality, and his reality seems to be the upper echelons of French society and his interminable search for political power. It’s not so much that he doesn’t get it, it’s that he doesn’t know he doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t want to know, and if he did know, he wouldn’t want to get it.
Two words for Nicolas Sarkozy: Stupid and Fascist. Woo hoo freedom of speech.
Mr Sarkozy has held various positions in French politics and is currently the leader of the ruling party and Interior minister. He is also jockeying HARD to be the main candidate on the right for the next presidential election (Chirac has hit his term limits), and part of his campaign before the campaign is to show France what a strong and powerful minister of the interior he is. Y’all, it is blatant how bad this man wants to be president. The problem is that I can’t figure out why, because I really don’t see him doing anything but making people mad.
The problem? The man is completely out of touch with reality. He used to be mayor of Neuilly sur Seine, for crying out loud. Neuilly sur Seine is the richest incorporated area in France. Ridiculous amounts of money. This is the type of “public” he is used to “serving.” And before y’all go off and talk about how I am some Muslim apologist who makes excuses for people, Nice Husband is from what I would consider a solidly middle class Parisian suburb. I haven’t even seen “the ghetto” and I still know that Sarkozy doesn’t get it. Yeah, there are some people in Nice Husband’s suburb that don’t have money, but there are a lot of people who do. This suburb is even carried by the right and has a very high per capita income, so my “experience with the locals” still involves a place that is, by definition, not hardcore. Yet I am still offended by recent events and I still think Sarkozy would find a way to make people mad there. If I can get it and I am some spoiled white girl from America, why can't he get it?
So one day over some steak tartare and some Veuve Clicqot he must have gotten the bright idea to “visit one ‘suburb’ per week. By ‘suburb’, he means ‘ghetto.’ On the surface, it sounded like a good idea. I personally have no problems with French ‘suburbs.’ The problem I have with Sarkozy is the hypocrisy of it all. He talks about cleaning up, getting rid of the juvenile delinquents, and making everything all happy and French again, or something. What does he do? He brings in the cops. He brings in the riot police. He couldn’t figure out why two months ago when he showed up at another suburb, people were yelling at him and telling him what a moron he is, and instead of taking time to sit back and wonder why people were rejecting him when he thought he was doing a good thing, he decided to up the ante and go for the all out provocation. Rather than listening to the people he is trying to “help”, he is using them, and their cities, as a platform to show “the rest of France” how “powerful” he is (*sarcastic air quotes waving madly*).
What the people in the “suburbs” need is a real dialogue. They don’t need cops, they need jobs. They have enough cops, trust me. Those who live in the cities high up on Sarkozy’s visit list need to be treated like REAL FRENCH PEOPLE and they don’t need some outsider coming in with some sort of John Wayne strategy he came up with in his head while sitting in a mansion somewhere. He has it so wrong, I cannot find the words to even begin to describe how bad he is screwing up. It has to do, I think, with his core beliefs and the fundamentals of his world-view. I do not think there is place in his world-view to understand anything incompatible with his reality, and his reality seems to be the upper echelons of French society and his interminable search for political power. It’s not so much that he doesn’t get it, it’s that he doesn’t know he doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t want to know, and if he did know, he wouldn’t want to get it.
Two words for Nicolas Sarkozy: Stupid and Fascist. Woo hoo freedom of speech.
posted by The DP at
10:17 PM
