The French We Love

I have a good friend in Paris whose emails always beg to be re-read. I recently asked him if I could share something he'd sent along for me to read about a month ago. A lighthearted piece he'd written in the manner of The New Yorker, "The Talk of the Town". He agreed. I’m going to include it before he changes his mind! By way of introduction to the style and sensibilities of Jon Kite, here’s a passage from another recent email:

"Last week I did a bit of tourism about 40 kms from Sevres. Got lost in a small town. While there I encountered a street sign, under which was another. The street was "Rue d'Egalite," and under it was a sign pointing to the "CIMETIERE." Funny, if you need the nudge."

We all need the nudge sometimes. Enjoy the rumination, er, sandwiches and politics. Politics: The French Oui By Jon Kite Last week, five days before France voted non in the European referendum, the pro-Constitution Socialists held a rally in the Sèvres cultural center (the SEL). They had lined up some stars to speak: Jack Lang, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and two actors, Pierre Arditi and Ludivine Sagnier. Laing, a light-weight French politician, showed up wearing a charcoal gray suit, bright pink shirt and tie. Cohn-Bendit, the impish Danny the Red who had brought fun to les événements de mai '68, arrived in a light brown baggy sports coat and brownish open shirt (which he'd also been wearing on television talk shows, though he didn't look rumpled). The SEL, which shares the same view with Madame de Pompadour's porcelain factory on what used to be the main road between Paris and the Versailles of Louis XIV, is a green iron ribbed, nineteenth century covered market converted into an all purpose auditorium, cinema and an open room for meetings, dinners, and other events. The room was filled with the hopeful leftists of this affluent Paris suburb which votes for the right. (It's just across the river from the recently demolished Renault factory, so years ago its formerly large worker population used to elect Communists and Socialists.) Various organizations like the Greens set up their tables to distribute their tracts and stickers for the oui. Cohn-Bendit gave his usual performance of humor, exuberance and intelligence. At one point he banged on the anti-American drum when he suggested that not stopping the horrors in Bosnia (which he said could never again happen in a unified Europe) had been Bill Clinton's fault. Lang was his self-righteous self, delivering his platitudes in the same breathy, unctuous, oily voice of his mentor, François Mitterand. (Listening to Lang creates the eerie impression that Mitterrand’s ghost is speaking through him.) Lang, who thinks of himself as un penseur français, was in his customary self-congratulatory frame of mind, and told us that it was the intellectuals of Europe who made the union possible. He said only a united Europe could prevent American cultural domination, something he's been going on about for years. Most people have forgot that in the 1980s Lang helped Silvio Berlusconi set up a French television network whose main fare is recycled, dubbed U.S. sitcoms and movies. Pierrre Arditi, a long-time Socialist stalwart took the stand, identified himself as a true European, since his mother was Belgian and his father Greek-Jewish, all this really apropos of nothing. The crowd applauded Arditi's declaration of pedigree. Actress Ludivine Sagnier read some prose which she didn't seem to understand. My friend Phil, a Welsh working class type who styles himself an old line Marxist, had come to the event with me. He sneered to me that since I am an American I'll never understand the depth and authenticity of the European left. When the meeting finished, its moderator announced that sandwiches, drinks and talk were laid on. Phil and I left.