Long day today… We got two flat tires in the mid­dle of the free­way and spent almost the whole day at the garage try­ing to get that fixed. Oh well, at least, the Sens won the game !

While wait­ing at the garage, I read The Sun, a rag with a lot of bull­shit in it. It’s cheap (25 cents) but it’s bad. Really bad. The Sun pet themes are usu­ally : war is good, high taxes are bad, gay mar­riage is evil, gas is too expen­sive, any­one who doesn’t speak Eng­lish or isn’t of Eng­lish back­ground is a ter­ror­ist or an ille­gal immi­grant etc. Come on, I’m talk­ing about a news­pa­per which call “youths” “punks” ! Any­way, I usu­ally laugh at this Manichean phi­los­o­phy and throw the paper in the garbage. But today, an edi­to­r­ial caught my eye :

French lessons

Newly elected pres­i­dent ready to re-educate his nation

By RACHEL MARSDEN
You know your country’s a mess when you have an elec­tion and don’t bother get­ting around to talk­ing about gays and abor­tion.
Meet France. A coun­try so highly taxed that all the rich peo­ple move away, leav­ing so much riot­ing “riff-raff” that one of the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates — frus­trated con­ser­v­a­tive turned president-elect Nico­las Sarkozy — openly fan­ta­sizes about clear­ing it out with a “pres­sure hose.”

Okay, let’s start from the begin­ning. Yes, France has a tra­di­tion of demon­stra­tions. Yes, the name is demon­stra­tions, not riots. I know peo­ple in North Amer­ica tend to think “demon­strat­ing” is to gather ten of your friends and to walk in cir­cle with a few hand-painted plac­ard, but it’s not the way it’s done in Europe. Deal with it. I took part in count­less demon­stra­tions back when I was liv­ing there, and I swear it’s pretty peace­ful. Play­ing cats and dogs with the police is to be expected.

France is highly taxed ? Yes. True. It’s a society’s choice. Taxes for services.

Accord­ing to the “jour­nal­ist”, riots are linked to high taxes. Inter­est­ing point of view. Maybe one should explain her that… Oh well, I just give up on that one. Let’s just say I’ve never seen a sin­gle cit­i­zen demon­strat­ing because of high taxes. They usu­ally run away to Switzerland…

Exactly a year ago, I wrote in a col­umn sug­gest­ing that riot­ing pro­tes­tors could drive fur­ther right. Thank­fully, they were too busy trash­ing to pay attention.

Uh… Yeah, right, trash­ing Paris. Honey, you want to see a city trashed ? Try Bag­dad. Or Kan­da­har. Come back to me and say what you think…

Yacht to talk about
Sarkozy has already upset his country’s social­ists when he took a three-day, post-victory vaca­tion aboard a yacht, on his own dime.

As a polit­i­cal strate­gist, I am appalled that there isn’t a sin­gle photo of the trip show­ing Nico­las Sarkozy with his shirt off. It’s a lot more dif­fi­cult to slap the “fas­cist” label on a guy when he’s shirt­less and hot.

And why is he back in town, any­way? He should have been sip­ping umbrella drinks on that ship until the morn­ing he has to punch in at the Ely­see. Because that’s what peo­ple do when they work hard — they get to go on vaca­tion and rub sun­tan lotion on their bods.

Shal­low, shal­low, shal­low. You basi­cally have noth­ing to say so you try to make stu­pid jokes to enter­tain the readers.

What bet­ter way to teach Paris’ social­ists and immi­grants about the ben­e­fits of cap­i­tal­ism and hard work? It’s not like Sarko hasn’t already tried. He cam­paigned on the idea of lift­ing the max­i­mum 35-hour work week, and of hav­ing uni­ver­si­ties insti­tute more voca­tional pro­grams. The response? Protests and riots.

Oh, inter­est­ing : who doesn’t know about hard work ? Social­ists and immi­grants. The later often have to work shitty jobs in order to sur­vive and the first ones spent more times doing the night shift in fac­to­ries than you spent try­ing to write this paper, trust me. Oh, and nobody riot against voca­tional pro­grams in universities…

As inte­rior min­is­ter, Sarkozy sought to decrease the country’s unem­ploy­ment rate by encour­ag­ing selec­tive immi­gra­tion of skilled work­ers, rather than “those that nobody else in the world wants.” His immi­gra­tion bill, approved last year, requires new­com­ers to learn French and assim­i­late into the culture.

Much debate ensued. And by debate, I mean protests … and riots. Yawn. The man is try­ing to make you employ­able, you morons.

Who are you call­ing morons, you stu­pid b*** ? Nobody rioted, one more time. Sarkosy wants a min­istry of French Iden­tity. I have a prob­lem with that and so did a lot of peo­ple. See, we had almost the same under the WW2 gov­ern­ment. His­tory, remem­ber ?<

Don’t like the idea of berets, escar­got, and hav­ing to learn what those funny things over French vow­els are for? No prob­lem — Sarko says feel free to go back to Algeria.

So many stereo­types packed in two lines… don’t know where to start ! Maybe I just shouldn’t start…

Sarko may be the first French pres­i­dent in recent his­tory to under­stand that some Islamists can be a bit prob­lem­atic. His sug­ges­tion of putting cam­eras in mosques is a notable depar­ture from the weapons-for-oil deals made with Arab coun­tries by his pre­de­ces­sors, Chirac and Mitterrand.

Putting cam­eras in mosques ? What, you think peo­ple are gonna plot in mosques, that Sarkosy will tape the whole thing, send it to Bush and bomb the place ? Are you stu­pid ? Alright, let’s put cam­eras every­where. You never know, you might catch a cou­ple of teens mak­ing out…

In his first post-election speech, Sarko said that that Kyoto and global warm­ing are his top pri­or­i­ties. Hey, don’t you have some neigh­bour­hoods to pres­sure wash? If not, go lie down on a yacht until the feel­ing passes. Prefer­ably “sans chemise.”

Merci.

(end of the torture)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not patri­otic and I do crit­i­cize my birth coun­try. No prob­lem with that. What stroke me was the igno­rance and the arro­gance of the journalist.

One of the first thing I learned when I started trav­el­ing, and later when I moved to Canada, is that every coun­try has its chal­lenge, its strength, its weak­ness and its her­itage and tra­di­tion. I wouldn’t go to the USA and start bitch­ing about fast foods and the lack of regional cui­sine. I wouldn’t go to Latin Amer­ica and tell peo­ple they’re naïve to believe in God, so far from Rome. I wouldn’t go to China and praise cap­i­tal­ism and indi­vid­u­al­ism. I wouldn’t laugh at a pil­grim on his way to the Mecca, Lour­des or Jerusalem.

France does have chal­lenges ahead and I’m the first one to admit it. But I don’t take crit­i­cism from a trashy news­pa­per. Period. It’s not even a mat­ter of left-wing or right-wing cause both can be arguable and it’s ulti­mately a per­sonal choice. But igno­rance and short-cuts, I can’t take.

Some days, just don’t piss me off…

Related arti­cles:

1. Power To The People
2. Why Do Peo­ple Choose to Move Abroad? [Spon­sored Post]
3. Five Strenghs, Four People
4. Meet­ing Peo­ple Is Easy
5. Bloco Da Lama (Mud People)