Presidential Madness!
For the record:
We are in the midst of the French Presidential elections.
Allow me to explain a little:
Here in the land of berets and baguettes there are two "tours" in the election. This may ring a bell as the infamous "Le Pen" incident in 2002 made world news (I'll come back to this). In the first tour everyone who qualifies to run for President in France (anyone who collects 5000 signatures from French Mayors) ends up on the ballot. This year there were 12, and in 2002 there were 16 candidates for example. On April 22nd 85% of the eligible French voting population (yes -- you read correctly 85%!!!) made it to the polls to lend their vote to the candidate of their choice. From the first tour the top two candidates are pitted against each other for the second tour. This year the two lucky "politicos" (every French slang-abbreviation, for the record, ends in "o") were Ségolène Royal of the Parti Socialiste (I take it you can handle the translation) and Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) (again, self-evident translation). The French have been given a classic "republican" battle of the slightly left versus the slightly right. This Sunday French voters will choose which of the two finalists go on to become the next... American Idol! ... err President of the French Republic.
Ok, now that the basics are covered I can move on to the exciting tid-bits, fun observations, and neat anecdotes.
Le Pen: in 2002 this ultra-rightist candidate horrified most of France, and the rest of the word, when he made it to the second tour. With 16 candidates in the first tour, many of whom took home a rather large slice of the voting pie, that beautiful phenom of voter splitting opened up a royal path through which Le Pen and his National Front party marched right into the second tour. This pitted Le Pen against Chirac, a candidate of the moderate right Rassemblement pour la Republic party (later to become the UMP, that's right Sarko's party). Being French, and thus predisposed to public demonstrations, huge portions of the population hit the streets to make public their displeasure at the entrance of Le Pen into the second round. Although Chirac was far from popular, over 82% of voters supported him in the second round, many of whom felt forced into a decision they found very distasteful.
"L'effet 2002" and the "Vote Utile:" this is something we are familiar with in Canada -- choosing a party or candidate that is perhaps not our favourite but that has a chance in hell of forming a Government in order to insure that an even worse major party doesn't take the riding. This was, apparently, something the French never talked about before now. One voted for their favourite candidate in the first round. After Le Pen's success in 2002 one started to hear about the "Vote Utile" and "L'Effet 2002." The French started to vote strategically, or at least more so. They did not want their hands tied as in 2002. It suddenly became important to get a "less bad" candidate into the second tour, and voters started to think about who they should vote for to that end. The first tour results make it pretty clear that L'effet 2002 was no joke: the votes for smaller parties crashed this year with huge percentages propping up the major candidates.
The French care about politics. It is a BIG DEAL here. The day after the first round I couldn't leave my house without hearing about the election. In class, on the Metro, some workers on benches during lunch, coming out of cars, a mother explaining to her toddler who the two candidates were, two joggers in the park, clients and students at the hair salon, any and everyone on the street -- EVERYONE EVERYWHERE was talking about the election.
This past Wednesday Sarko and Ségo (remember those "o's" I warned you about) faced off in a televised debate that aired on a few of the major French channels. Many bars chose to air the debate on big screen rather than that night's soccer game (gasp!). Two night before the debate, the SET that had been constructed for the debate was shown to anxious audiences across the nation on the 8pm tv news, this only two days after newspapers published the first accounts of what the set was going to look like. The French actually cared what the set was going to look like. Weird.
I was delighted to discover that Nicolas Sarkozy is a brand new Myspace member! I later found out that Ségolène Royal also has a Myspace site, but apparently she has had it for a little longer than her arch rival. Welcome to the information age. But, hey, these two candidates are being viewed as representing a new young generation of French politicians: toddlers in their early 50's; one of them will become the first French President in the 5th Republic to have never been part of a Gaullist government and to have been born post-WWII.
José Bové: maybe I have mentioned this candidate in previous posts, but just in case I have not, it would be a shame to miss him. This "alter-globalisationist" candidate is most famous for having once dismantled a McDonald's ("Macdo's") with his bear hands. Wow. Do you think Stephen Harper could do that? Paul Martin? Jack Layton? Don't make me laugh.
La France Présidente: this is Ségolène Royal's very clever campaign slogan. What does it mean? Something like "France as President" or "France for President" and as such alludes to her campaign angle: that she has held many public meetings to find out what the French want, and that she will continue to listen to and consult French citizens if she is elected. She suggests: It will be France ie, the entire public who will be president. NOW here's where it gets neat. French is a gendered language in which one finds masculine and feminine words. "La France" is feminine, therefore "Presidente" is used in place of the masculine "President" without the final "e." Ségolène is the first woman to make it into the second tour and possibly become the French President... so there is the "between-the-lines" reading wherein "Presidente" refers to Royal. At any rate, the feminine "Presidente" is very striking to any french speaker and can't help but refer back to Royal as a woman. Clever, clever.
The Polls: are showing the two candidates are VERY close with Sarkozy at about 53% and Royal at about 47%. This is going to be a close one.
OK I THINK I AM DONE WITH THIS ELECTION CHATTER NOW!
A really great French snack:
Baguette and dark chocolate. Just take a piece of baguette, a couple squares of dark chocolate, and make yourself a little sandwich. You are doubting me. Just try it.
I recently hear Patti Smith's cover of Helpless by Crosby Stills Nash and Young. 1)This made me think that I haven't listened to any Neil Young in a while now and that this is a shame. 2)It reminded me what a stellar track Helpless is. 3) I remembered that at about exactly this time a year ago I went through a Neil Young/all his projects phase and started listening to Buffalo Springfield. 4) In particular I remember a night at Steph, Sean, and Jeff's house where we had a campfire. It was chilly out. Everyone came in and hung out in the living room. We started flipping through the old 12" records choosing tracks by whim. Stephanie pulled out a copy of her recently acquired Deja Vu for which she had paid next to nothing and was quite enthusiastic. We all spent a few minutes revelling in the sounds of Helpless. It was at this moment that I though for the first time "damn, this is a good song!!" Does anyone remember this event? Good times. 5) It must be this time of year that brings that old Canadian rocker close to my heart. 6) There is nothing like spring, friends, a campfire, and tunes. I hope you guys in Edmonton are really getting out and making it happen -- I wish I could join you.
May Day, May 1st
I had forgotten that there are countries in the world where the day of the worker is observed! A number of demonstrations were planned for the occasion, and while they would have certainly offered an interesting cultural experience I chose to spend the day in a more solemn observance: in honour of the domestic labour often performed by women and so regularly and woefully overlooked by Marxists and the traditional left, I cleaned my apartment. Really well. I actually scrubbed the kitchen floor.
After two years of trimming my bangs with the kitchen scissors I finally got my hair cut. It is short. It is good. It washes and dries so quickly and easily! It does not shed small hair creatures in the shower! I can wake up and it looks awesome! Can someone remind me why I let my hair grow so long?
I have just come from a crazy string of shows. Between April 16th and 24th I was lucky enough to see Joanna Newsome, A Silver Mt Zion, Thrones, Growing, Faun Fables, Wolf Eyes, Laura Veirs, and Marissa Nadler. I cannot say that a single show of the lot disappointed me. I also discovered that I live less than 5mn by bike from Les Instants Chavirés -- a super cool venue that I have visited a few times since coming to Paris, but never realised was so close to my new apartment. The weather here has hit 27 degrees Celsius -- a veritable summer -- and the nights are incredibly beautiful. Perfect for taking my bike out to the neighbourhood venue. I should also mention the coolness of the name "Instants Chavirés." It means literally "capsized moments" a great name in and of itself, but then one learns that in french an "instant chaviré" is a moment of being awe-struck and this image of being "capsized" by an experience makes the choice of name all that much more inspired.
In France the names George (without an 's' as in Georges) and Frederick and traditionally held to women, not men. This, at times, can become confusing for Anglo-Saxons.
I would love to tell you all about my travels, but this is getting a "bit" lengthy. It is something I hope to get around to, but knowing me, it is best not to promise.
Until the unscheduled next-time,
Erin
Some great links:
http://www.sarkozy.fr/home/ this one is really good. All I can say is that I hope they are still showing the "Si vous le voulez..." video. It is special.
http://www.desirsdavenir.org/ not nearly as much fun.
For the record:
We are in the midst of the French Presidential elections.
Allow me to explain a little:
Here in the land of berets and baguettes there are two "tours" in the election. This may ring a bell as the infamous "Le Pen" incident in 2002 made world news (I'll come back to this). In the first tour everyone who qualifies to run for President in France (anyone who collects 5000 signatures from French Mayors) ends up on the ballot. This year there were 12, and in 2002 there were 16 candidates for example. On April 22nd 85% of the eligible French voting population (yes -- you read correctly 85%!!!) made it to the polls to lend their vote to the candidate of their choice. From the first tour the top two candidates are pitted against each other for the second tour. This year the two lucky "politicos" (every French slang-abbreviation, for the record, ends in "o") were Ségolène Royal of the Parti Socialiste (I take it you can handle the translation) and Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) (again, self-evident translation). The French have been given a classic "republican" battle of the slightly left versus the slightly right. This Sunday French voters will choose which of the two finalists go on to become the next... American Idol! ... err President of the French Republic.
Ok, now that the basics are covered I can move on to the exciting tid-bits, fun observations, and neat anecdotes.
Le Pen: in 2002 this ultra-rightist candidate horrified most of France, and the rest of the word, when he made it to the second tour. With 16 candidates in the first tour, many of whom took home a rather large slice of the voting pie, that beautiful phenom of voter splitting opened up a royal path through which Le Pen and his National Front party marched right into the second tour. This pitted Le Pen against Chirac, a candidate of the moderate right Rassemblement pour la Republic party (later to become the UMP, that's right Sarko's party). Being French, and thus predisposed to public demonstrations, huge portions of the population hit the streets to make public their displeasure at the entrance of Le Pen into the second round. Although Chirac was far from popular, over 82% of voters supported him in the second round, many of whom felt forced into a decision they found very distasteful.
"L'effet 2002" and the "Vote Utile:" this is something we are familiar with in Canada -- choosing a party or candidate that is perhaps not our favourite but that has a chance in hell of forming a Government in order to insure that an even worse major party doesn't take the riding. This was, apparently, something the French never talked about before now. One voted for their favourite candidate in the first round. After Le Pen's success in 2002 one started to hear about the "Vote Utile" and "L'Effet 2002." The French started to vote strategically, or at least more so. They did not want their hands tied as in 2002. It suddenly became important to get a "less bad" candidate into the second tour, and voters started to think about who they should vote for to that end. The first tour results make it pretty clear that L'effet 2002 was no joke: the votes for smaller parties crashed this year with huge percentages propping up the major candidates.
The French care about politics. It is a BIG DEAL here. The day after the first round I couldn't leave my house without hearing about the election. In class, on the Metro, some workers on benches during lunch, coming out of cars, a mother explaining to her toddler who the two candidates were, two joggers in the park, clients and students at the hair salon, any and everyone on the street -- EVERYONE EVERYWHERE was talking about the election.
This past Wednesday Sarko and Ségo (remember those "o's" I warned you about) faced off in a televised debate that aired on a few of the major French channels. Many bars chose to air the debate on big screen rather than that night's soccer game (gasp!). Two night before the debate, the SET that had been constructed for the debate was shown to anxious audiences across the nation on the 8pm tv news, this only two days after newspapers published the first accounts of what the set was going to look like. The French actually cared what the set was going to look like. Weird.
I was delighted to discover that Nicolas Sarkozy is a brand new Myspace member! I later found out that Ségolène Royal also has a Myspace site, but apparently she has had it for a little longer than her arch rival. Welcome to the information age. But, hey, these two candidates are being viewed as representing a new young generation of French politicians: toddlers in their early 50's; one of them will become the first French President in the 5th Republic to have never been part of a Gaullist government and to have been born post-WWII.
José Bové: maybe I have mentioned this candidate in previous posts, but just in case I have not, it would be a shame to miss him. This "alter-globalisationist" candidate is most famous for having once dismantled a McDonald's ("Macdo's") with his bear hands. Wow. Do you think Stephen Harper could do that? Paul Martin? Jack Layton? Don't make me laugh.
La France Présidente: this is Ségolène Royal's very clever campaign slogan. What does it mean? Something like "France as President" or "France for President" and as such alludes to her campaign angle: that she has held many public meetings to find out what the French want, and that she will continue to listen to and consult French citizens if she is elected. She suggests: It will be France ie, the entire public who will be president. NOW here's where it gets neat. French is a gendered language in which one finds masculine and feminine words. "La France" is feminine, therefore "Presidente" is used in place of the masculine "President" without the final "e." Ségolène is the first woman to make it into the second tour and possibly become the French President... so there is the "between-the-lines" reading wherein "Presidente" refers to Royal. At any rate, the feminine "Presidente" is very striking to any french speaker and can't help but refer back to Royal as a woman. Clever, clever.
The Polls: are showing the two candidates are VERY close with Sarkozy at about 53% and Royal at about 47%. This is going to be a close one.
OK I THINK I AM DONE WITH THIS ELECTION CHATTER NOW!
A really great French snack:
Baguette and dark chocolate. Just take a piece of baguette, a couple squares of dark chocolate, and make yourself a little sandwich. You are doubting me. Just try it.
I recently hear Patti Smith's cover of Helpless by Crosby Stills Nash and Young. 1)This made me think that I haven't listened to any Neil Young in a while now and that this is a shame. 2)It reminded me what a stellar track Helpless is. 3) I remembered that at about exactly this time a year ago I went through a Neil Young/all his projects phase and started listening to Buffalo Springfield. 4) In particular I remember a night at Steph, Sean, and Jeff's house where we had a campfire. It was chilly out. Everyone came in and hung out in the living room. We started flipping through the old 12" records choosing tracks by whim. Stephanie pulled out a copy of her recently acquired Deja Vu for which she had paid next to nothing and was quite enthusiastic. We all spent a few minutes revelling in the sounds of Helpless. It was at this moment that I though for the first time "damn, this is a good song!!" Does anyone remember this event? Good times. 5) It must be this time of year that brings that old Canadian rocker close to my heart. 6) There is nothing like spring, friends, a campfire, and tunes. I hope you guys in Edmonton are really getting out and making it happen -- I wish I could join you.
May Day, May 1st
I had forgotten that there are countries in the world where the day of the worker is observed! A number of demonstrations were planned for the occasion, and while they would have certainly offered an interesting cultural experience I chose to spend the day in a more solemn observance: in honour of the domestic labour often performed by women and so regularly and woefully overlooked by Marxists and the traditional left, I cleaned my apartment. Really well. I actually scrubbed the kitchen floor.
After two years of trimming my bangs with the kitchen scissors I finally got my hair cut. It is short. It is good. It washes and dries so quickly and easily! It does not shed small hair creatures in the shower! I can wake up and it looks awesome! Can someone remind me why I let my hair grow so long?
I have just come from a crazy string of shows. Between April 16th and 24th I was lucky enough to see Joanna Newsome, A Silver Mt Zion, Thrones, Growing, Faun Fables, Wolf Eyes, Laura Veirs, and Marissa Nadler. I cannot say that a single show of the lot disappointed me. I also discovered that I live less than 5mn by bike from Les Instants Chavirés -- a super cool venue that I have visited a few times since coming to Paris, but never realised was so close to my new apartment. The weather here has hit 27 degrees Celsius -- a veritable summer -- and the nights are incredibly beautiful. Perfect for taking my bike out to the neighbourhood venue. I should also mention the coolness of the name "Instants Chavirés." It means literally "capsized moments" a great name in and of itself, but then one learns that in french an "instant chaviré" is a moment of being awe-struck and this image of being "capsized" by an experience makes the choice of name all that much more inspired.
In France the names George (without an 's' as in Georges) and Frederick and traditionally held to women, not men. This, at times, can become confusing for Anglo-Saxons.
I would love to tell you all about my travels, but this is getting a "bit" lengthy. It is something I hope to get around to, but knowing me, it is best not to promise.
Until the unscheduled next-time,
Erin
Some great links:
http://www.sarkozy.fr/home/ this one is really good. All I can say is that I hope they are still showing the "Si vous le voulez..." video. It is special.
http://www.desirsdavenir.org/ not nearly as much fun.
posted by ErinCW at 7:00 PM
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