France: Sarkozy's "Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism", like W.? + poll

One may read Philippe Marliere's short essay on Sarkozy in Counterpunch here.

Not being French, I can't say more than that it's an interesting read. And for those interested in intellectual currents, one wonders if this new "French neoliberalism" will have a greater impact on the EU than traditional French thinking. And Marliere depicts how the leaders of the French right have diminished in intellectual stature:

Before Sarko, the Gaullist right was not quintessentially vulgar and anti-intellectual. Charles de Gaulle was a well-read man who had the good taste to choose André Malraux as Minister of Culture. Georges Pompidou was an Agrégé de lettres and a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. The apparently less highbrow Jacques Chirac is a great connoisseur of Japanese civilization (and, some cynics might like to add, of his banking system) [and leaves the splendid Branly museum as a monument, Editors]. Sarkozy breaks with the Gaullist tradition on that count: he is a self-professed idiot.

So it seems the French have to grapple with their own George W. Bush. Their problem is that France, a la Chirac (hey, that works!), was a counterpoint to U.S. diplomacy and action.

Intellectuals have a stature in France that can only be envied by others. Books matter. Thoughts matter. Now what for the country that gave us such divergent thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Maritain?  This?

Sarkozy does not read and does not even pretend that he is in the least interested in literature or arts, which constitutes yet another break with the tradition of French presidents. He is the son of an immigrant from Central Europe who made it to the top of French politics without studying in the elitist Grandes Ecoles. These features should have earned him the sympathy of the French people as they like to back the underdog. However, Sarko has squandered this opportunity: his ostentatious nouveau riche profile and his courtship of the mega-rich have put off the whole nation.

I of course do not think it is a bad thing NOT to have gone to the Grandes Ecoles. But Marliere finishes the paragraph off with the crux of the problem....Sarkozy wants the baubles but can't (and couldn't) do the work.

And so it goes. Who will be the voice of a Europe that dares be anything else than an American lapdog?

Discuss.

•  tips/recs/voulez vous a bas avec BCHC?

  by Belvedere Come Here Boy on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:25:21 AM PDT

•  The intellectual thing was bullshit all along

  Those intellectual-loving French presidents gave the world the Algerian War, support for execrable puppet regimes in Africa, sponsorship of the Rwanda genocide, the destruction of a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand, and other lovely salon entertainments.  Sarkozy can be as plug-ignorant as he wants, if he breaks with all that.

  by Rich in PA on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:37:36 AM PDT

  •  pt taken, but Sarko isn't breaking with W eom

    by Belvedere Come Here Boy on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:43:28 AM PDT

    •  I think France is a weird and wonderful case

      They're too full of themselves, across the spectrum, to define it as pro vs. anti-US foreign policy of the moment.  And I think that speaks well of them...unlike the UK, the French (again, across the spectrum) have enough self-regard not to couch their debates in terms of a Special Relationship, either with the US or with NATO.  I don't think Sarkozy is inherently more sympathetic to US foreign policy--I think he just sees that we are getting further away from the decision that caused the rupture (2002/2003) and he doesn't want to keep privileging that issue.  

      by Rich in PA on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:48:29 AM PDT

      •  The tension

        is older and deeper than that.
        DeGaulle's foreign policy doctrine (which French elites have trouble getting away from) was largely founded on keeping distance with the US. What most of them forget was that the idea was to keep EQUAL distance from the USSR and the US and therefore it does not make sense to  follow that same line once one of them has disappeared.
        But the force of habit and distrust make it easy for them to just keep keeping their distance with our country

        by doriangz on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:53:33 AM PDT

  •  Correction

    As someone who emigrated from France and is now a proud citizen here, I am as down on French politics as can imagine.
    BUT>

    First of all, at the time of the Algerian War, the Premiers had the reigns of powers. No French President had anything to do with it. It is still the French elites but if you want to start making accusations, be more precise.

    Support for African regimes ? Absolutely. I am with you on that.

    Sponsorship of the Rwandan genocide ? That is a shocking accusation that has NO basis in reality. The response of the French army has been incompetent for sure and the politicians too accomodating to both sides but at least France SENT soldies there to stop the massacres. That's more than most everybody on the planet can say.

    Greenpeace ? Ridiculous move on the French government's part. Hardly the most shocking though.

    I actually happen to believe the French elites are more pathetic when it comes to domestic policy (that isn't worth discussing in detail here but suffice it to say the economy is in a poor state when it comes to fundamentals and social relations are in a near-revolution low) and actually got quite a bit right in foreign policy.
    Sorry to say but it is the French government who had the prescience to predict EXACTLY what has happened in Iraq over the past five years. Read Chirac back in 2003 and he was warning of the Shiite-Sunni divide and so on.

    by doriangz on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:50:27 AM PDT

    •  I don't mean to deny all of the ways...

      ...in which French foreign policy has been right compared to ours in recent years and even decades.  I just don't think it correlates to a greater love for intellectuals and intellectualism.  Some certified very Smart People bought into the war, and some people who opposed it are not exactly rocket scientists!

      by Rich in PA on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 07:11:51 AM PDT

      •  But in that case

        it is because French elites ARE intellectual and knew about Iraq's history and society that they saw what our leaders should have seen.
        Read one book about the UK's history in Iraq or have even the faintest notion of the Iraq-Iran war and what it means for Iraqi Shiites and you could have told what would have happened.
        I am the first one to be annoyed at the French tendency to pretentiously overthink stuff but in that case, KNOWING stuff helped a great deal.

        by doriangz on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 07:15:19 AM PDT

        •  Plenty of people who knew about

          Iraq's history and society supported the war.  And the French opposition was not based on the predictions that Iraq will turn out the way it did now.  Rather, they predicted year-long street combat with Iraqi Army over Baghdad and other things that just didn't come to pass.

          by Drgrishka1 on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 07:29:45 AM PDT

          •  I disagree

            I don't think people who REALLY knew anything about Iraqi society supported the war unless they had other motivations. Give me an example.

            And I am not familiar with their military predictions, but I can assure you I distinctly remember Chirac talking about the dangers of civil war back in 2003 (I read the French paper alongside the American one which was very instructive in 2003)

            by doriangz on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 07:37:30 AM PDT

            •  What does that mean?

              People who "REALLY" knew?  Surely, you don't suggest judging the knowledge in retrospect.  In order to judge whether or not someone was an expert at the time of invasion, you have to put on a "veil of ignorance" as to the future events.  

              The government of Turkey, intimatelly familiar with Iraqi society supported the war (though they could not get the Parliament to go along).  Government of UK (the same country that actually created Iraq) also supported the war.  Colin Powell, while not being very gung-ho on the war at the end supported it.  As did Norman Schwartzkopf.  

              by Drgrishka1 on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 12:02:22 PM PDT

•  I don't think

  his anti-intellectualism is the crux of the problem
  I think his major flaw is what he wanted was fame and fortune. He saw politics as a way to achieve that - which it somehow is - but obviously there are responsabilities that come with that. And he didn't realize the trade-offs from his dreams he would have to do to be efficient as a politician.
  The unseemly spectacle of his private life and his remarriage with a very famous and slightly trashy model-singer did not hurt him in itself - God knows their Presidents have often had unseemly personal lives - but it hurt him because it fed into the vague notion people had of him until them of him being enamored with the spotlight more than with the job. It is not that he divorced and remarried so soon. It is that he literally staged it - with "Invited" paparazzi to reveal his new gf - and that people, like my mom who lives there, who were supporters but were already disappointed with the poor management of the economy, started becoming more open to the ideas I had been developing with her about him and his egomania.
  It is the old story of attacks on politicians work when they feed into an already pre-existing storyline. There was a meme out there about his ego and fascination for money and fame and that story just made it all come together in the mind of his supporters.
  The "anti-intellectualism" actually HELPS with them (coz God knows the French elite is as incompetent as  can be) and it does not really matter because Sarkozy IS brilliantly intelligent - a major difference with you-know-whom.

  by doriangz on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:44:44 AM PDT

•  Drudge Breaking: W calls Sarko "Elvis"

  I cannot make this up Drudge links to Reuters here.

  BUCHAREST (Reuters) - It's "Love me tender" between the United States and France after President George W. Bush compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy with rock'n'roll singer Elvis Presley.

  Bush told NATO leaders at a Bucharest summit on Thursday that when Sarkozy visited the United States recently, he was seen as "the latest incarnation of Elvis".

  Sheesh. It has a 04/03 date on it, so no April Fool's Day joke.

  by Belvedere Come Here Boy on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 06:55:25 AM PDT

•  How do you say, uhhhhh... absurd?

  France is just so self-indulgent that it's hard to take it seriously.  It exists as a nation of spoiled children who lack the ability to take care of themselves knowing that they have the U.S. as a safety net.  And as a result they invest next to nothing in their own defense.  We are their defense.  Your tax dollars cover them.  And anytime some bully wants to roll his tanks down the Champs Élysées, they just roll right over and let it happen. "America, can you come save us?  Again?"  

  You could give Andorra a box of rubberbands, a few stink bombs, and then teach them that spooky trick where you put the flashlight under your chin, and France would surrender inside of 15 minutes.

  Rob Corddry nailed it in his coverage of the French riots a couple years back.  He said they went on so long because nobody could figure out who was supposed to surrender first... the French or the French?

  It's hard not to sound like a Neo-con jingoist when you speak about France, but it's just such an absurd place; it's unavoidable.  

  by nocore on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 07:10:16 AM PDT

  •  I am going to pass

    on the offensive generalization of a country and its people.

    But the idea that the French invest next to nothing in their defense is a huge fallacy. But I guess your anti-French cred prevents you from reading French papers and knowing about that.
    Because they withdrew from NATO command, they actually developed a very strong defense system and army BECAUSE they did NOT want to rely on the US for their security - unlike most of the rest of Europe.
    I am not keen on having to defend them but that's the wrong angle to go at them

    by doriangz on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 07:17:55 AM PDT

    •  Feewings

      .

      by nocore on Thu Apr 03, 2008 at 09:41:11 AM PDT