So which decade is Melania Trump living in?

 According to an article in the French edition of Le Huffington Post, many are reminded of 1980s soap operas when they see the First Lady's new official portrait, but according to Germany's Der Spiegel, it's the 1990s (and PhotoShop) that are evoked by this bland glamour shot.

So, which is it?

Click Here for the Der Spiegel article.

Click here for the Le Huffington Post article.

I thought it was the 1970s.

2002 in France should be our benchmark for this 2016 US election

The French field of sixteen in 2002.
By Vpe - Own work, Public Domain

Supporters and opponents of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid would find a lot that looks familiar in the Programme de Jean-Marie Le Pen during the National Front (FN) leader's quest for France's presidency in 2002. Section four of the program was dedicated to reversing the flow of immigrants into France and immediately expelling all immigrants "en situation irrégulière," section seven was devoted to a new protectionism, and section thirteen was all about "la loi et l'ordre," a couple of words that came to our language from French with the Norman invasion and have become the Nixonian mantra for Donald Trump this year. The comparisons between Trump and the FN Le Pens, both Jean-Marie in 2002 and his daughter Marine now, are not far-fetched.




Going into the first round of voting on April 21, 2002, it was widely anticipated that the top two vote getters among the 16 parties participating would be the RPR's Jacques Chirac, the incumbent President (seen as "Super Menteur," or Super Liar, at 1'55" in the video above), and the Socialist Lionel Jospin, the incumbent Prime Minister. Nine national polls conducted in April had Chirac and Jospin within 1 or 2 percentage points of each other with Le Pen trailing them by 4 to 6 points in third.  It was therefore a major shock to everyone in the nation (and much of the world) when Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the final round of voting by coming in second (see 3'35" above). A stress on crime committed by foreigners immediately before the election had a lot to do with Le Pen's surge (just as some in the Trump campaign must be looking for a Trumpstag fire of their own in late October of this year).

As some Republicans in 2016 are fond of pointing out, France was then presented with "a binary choice" for the second round of voting on May 5. The parties of the Left which had eaten into Jospin's votes had no problem telling their supporters to vote for the Center-Right establishment candidate in the second round. On May Day there were competing public demonstrations, with 20,000 showing up for the FN's celebration of Joan of Arc and about a million showing up for the Labor Day marches with tricolors mixing with the red flags. The voting four days later wasn't any closer. Le Pen's total between the first and second rounds rose from 4.8 million to 5.5 million votes, but Chirac's rose from 5.6 million to 25.5 million. Chirac won the presidency with 82.2% of the vote.

That's the benchmark our centrist candidate Hillary Clinton needs to be shooting for on November 8, 2016. There's no room for the luxury of voting Green or writing in Bernie Sanders. We need to look toward France 2002 for our model of rejecting xenophobia and the cult of personality in USA 2016.

Brussels :"Pulvérisés sur l’autel de la violence éternelle "

In regard to today's terrorist attacks in Brussels, I don't have any pronouncements as important as the prescriptions for more torture from Donald Trump or Muslim-neighborhood harassment from Ted Cruz, but I can't get this song from 2002 out of my mind, so I'll share this.

"Manhattan-Kaboul" was specifically about one anonymous victim of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan and another young victim of the violent US response against Afghanistan, but today's events are an extension of the continuous cycle of violence that Renaud and Axelle Red sing about here. The fact that Renaud is a Parisian and Axelle Red is Belgian only adds to the fact that this seems the essential song for the day (at least for me, but I've been an Axelle Red fan for for a long time).

"J'ai dit que je préfère les fleurs"

I think one can watch and appreciate this follow-up to last week's best viral video even if one does not speak a word of French:

ça va mieux

If nothing else, watch at the 2'30" mark...

Un week-end avec les Parisiens - Le Petit Journal du 16/11

AND NOW THE FULL SHOW AVAILABLE WITH SUBTITLES!!
Simply click the CC button for English subtitles.

Paris Attacks November 2015 - Le Petit Journal... by CANALPLUS

"Peace For Paris" by Jean Jullien via @Banksy

Peace for Paris pic.twitter.com/Lh1PQ91ncY

— banksy (@thereaIbanksy) November 13, 2015

Though I originally saw it from Banksy, it seems its creator is actually Jean Jullien.

Could this be the stupidest thing Rush Limbaugh ever said?

I know it's a high bar, but when I was skimming a recent rant of Rush's entitled, "Liam Neeson: Perfect Liberal," I ran across this description of the site of the Charlie Hebdo attack:

"The attack happened in France where the cops are unarmed, where the magazine people are unarmed.  The cops are unarmed. The cops show up on bicycles..."

This is as ridiculous as describing the man who said it as "soft-spoken" and "thin" and "thoughtful" and, God forbid, "liberal."  Has he been to France? When I traveled there in the 1970s, it was the first time I had ever seen police with assault weapons. It was also the first time I saw a very visible, heavily armed, and motorized National Police force in every city and town I visited. How can we believe anything else that Rush has to say about Liam Neeson and gun control in this think piece when he gets simple facts so howlingly and completely wrong.

I can understand if Rush never wanted to visit France, but can he visit Google? Can he do a simple image search for "French Police"?

Just because it's Wednesday and I'm bored.

Bill O'Reilly n'est pas Charlie (and neither is anyone else at Fox News claming a sudden infection with Francophilia)

Bill O'Reilly dot com may be out of stock for this popular item from the days of "Freedom Fries" and the "Axis of Weasel," but his Boycott France bumperstickers are still on display there a week after the Charlie Hebdo attack:

Screen grabbed on 13 January 2015.

Speaking of the attack, it's worth learning to read French (a.k.a., the "Freedom Language") just to experience this heartbreaking first-person account from Charlie staffer Sigolène Vinson featured in Le Monde this morning: «C’est Charlie, venez vite, ils sont tous morts».

Viewing Charlie Hebdo artists as cartoonists rather than victims.

This was recorded two days after the murders of Charb, Cabu, Tignous, Wolinsky, Honoré, and others in the Charlie Hebdo offices. Even if you don't understand a word of French, this video from On n'est pas couché will give some idea of how well known and well respected these artists and their profession were -- and are:

#JeSuisCharlie

Another August Anniversary : Joyeux Anniversaire AFP

When the Allied forces entered Paris in August 1944, eight French journalists took over the Office Français d'Information (OFI), which had been a tool of the Vichy regime and the Nazis.

On August 20, 1944 the Agence France Presse (AFP) we all know today sent out its first dispatch.

«À tous les journaux libres de Paris. Grâce à l'action des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur, les premiers journaux libres vont paraître, à la veille de l'entrée des troupes alliées, dans Paris presque entièrement libéré. 

L'Agence Française de Presse leur adresse aujourd'hui son premier service. Au moment où des combats se livrent encore dans la ville, et où tombent de nombreux combattants de la liberté, nous saluons tous nos camarades de la presse, disparus, emprisonnés et déportés, et notamment nos 21 collaborateurs tombés dans les mains de la Gestapo. 

Au service de tous les journaux libres, l'Agence Française de Presse assurera, avec l'objectivité stricte qui est le devoir d'un organisme d'Information, la diffusion de nouvelles scrupuleusement contrôlées et recoupées, qui, en attendant l'installation d'une censure militaire, ne doivent en rien gêner la marche des opérations sur différents fronts.»

Happy 70th birthday to the AFP.

What? Two Days With No World Cup Soccer?

What will we watch until Friday?

Zidane!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Is the Internet So Blue?

An article on Slate.fr this morning asks, "Pourquoi tous les sites Internet utilisent-ils le bleu?"
True Blue Liberal responds, "Pourquoi pas?"

Squirrels and les écureuils

Watch 10 Germans try to pronounce one of the most complex combination of consonants for non-English speakers.


But before you get too cocky, consider one of the more difficult juxtapositions of vowels for non-native speakers of French. 

Happy 100th to Albert Camus (1913-1960)

As one of millions who works in a job whose rewards are not always immediately apparent (except on payday), I've often found the last lines of The Myth of Sisyphus a useful mantra in the midst of a complicated spreadsheet or the middle of a long meeting:

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." (La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.)

Mitt Romney's Coming of Age Travails, per CNN. Quelle Horreur

CNN may have forsaken its quest to become Fox News. The original cable news network is now attempting to become The Onion, or Comedy Central, with their recent Mitt Romney infotainment, "Romney Revealed":


 Forget the horrors of the Vietnam War in 1968, that war that Mitt Romney demonstrated in favor of, and whose draft the young Mormon missionary avoided:

CNN Narrator: “In 1968, France was a dangerous place to be for a 21-year-old American, but Mitt Romney was right in the middle of it.
Fellow Missionary Mike Bush: “There were protests and there were blockades and there were marches all over the country."
CNN: "The streets of France were in chaos."
Bush: "There was no train service, there were no buses, no newspapers. The electricity would go off from time-to-time. There were no letters from home. The money at the time came via check. That was our lifeline was getting letters from home.”
CNN: "So you were totally isolated."
Bush: "Totally isolated."

No Checks from Dad?!

Vote early in the new True Blue Liberal sidebar poll

In France this week, published opinion polls are illegal [see update below]. If we lived in Avignon or Tours, we would have to spend this week reading about something other than the constant tracking polls during the final days of the presidential horse race. We would have to wait until Sunday to cast our vote for Ségolène Royal, and to see whether our countrymen had agreed with us or chosen Nicolas Sarkozy to occupy the Élysée Palace for the next five years.

Unfortunately, we can't include Ségolène in our sidebar poll. Being born in Senegal somehow disqualifies her from occupying our Oval Office. You'll have to choose between one of the seven alphabetically-arranged also-rans to your right.

Fortunately for us, there is never a shortage of meaningless horse-race polls in the U. S. of A.!
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UPDATE 4 May 2007: The law changed, or I was mistaken, because the French press is full of polls like these today showing Sarko in the lead in advance of Sunday's voting.