Once Upon A Time In France: Kamala Calls, Paris Poubelle, And Raoult Reproached
Dreaming of Reims
It’s beginning to look a lot like Noël in the Paris region where we’ll be spending our first full holiday season since settling in the far-flung Western parts of the nation’s capital. We are preparing for our annual Frenchgiving feast this weekend while adapting to the falling temperatures, grey skies, and a sun that only seems to make a half-hearted attempt to fully hoist itself into the sky before collapsing into defeat and darkness in the late afternoon.
For all my thinly-disguised cynicism about the frozen tundra of France’s north, Paris is undeniably radiant this time of year as the obligatory holiday displays are put in place and an air of festivity spreads. At times, I even catch a Parisian or two smiling as they wander the streets. Investing in a jacket appropriate for an Arctic expedition has made it possible to enjoy the season and walk outside without fear that the blustering winter winds will turn me into a human popsicle.
Having paused this newsletter for a few weeks has left me with an embarrassing wealth of French news to ponder. But since we’re on the topic of things that are frigid, the current state of U.S. and French diplomatic relations seems like a good place to start. The Biden administration made its latest attempt at a thaw by sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Paris for a whirlwind of events around Armistice Day.
Though as a long-time California resident I’m somewhat inclined to be a Kamala partisan, I will admit that I’ve found it odd that she seems to have all but vanished since the inauguration. Maybe lefty news junkies who are perpetually glued to the hellscape of 24-hour cable news stations in the U.S. will feel differently. But I would have expected her to figure far more prominently in the Biden administration than she has.
So it was good to at least see her getting the spotlight on her recent visit to Paris for a few days. Even if she was given the unenviable tasks of smoothing over a diplomatic crisis that I’m guessing approximately 5 Americans either know of or care about but has completely shattered the French national ego. Tl;dr version: U.S. and Britain convinced Australia to break a big submarine contract with France.
There was much smiling and shaking of hands. As The Washington Post reported:
And through imagery and announcements, both the bilateral meeting and the other aspects of Harris’s five-day trip to France have sought to reinforce the United States’ long-standing kinship and continuing cooperation with the French, as officials try to cast the submarine flap as a minor bump in the storied relationship between the two nations.
But because we live in a post-substance world, naturally the biggest news seemed to be a non-gaffe gaffe that Haris allegedly made. Speaking to reporters during a tour of a factory, Harris made a reference to “Thee plan” to emphasize “the plan,” as is common among Americans. But somehow right-wing pundits insisted Harris (who attended high school in Montreal and speaks French) decided to put on a fake French accent and said “zee plan.”
Despite being untrue, it naturally became a whole thing.
In any case, Harris returned to the U.S. without further incident and some ruffled feathers seemed to be smoothed over.
Paris Poubelle
You can almost set your clock to the regular appearance of the hashtag #SaccageParis (the destruction of Paris, or more dramatically: the sacking of Paris) trending on Twitter. This consists primarily of people posting pictures of garbage, or dirty streets, or something else missing or broken or in a less than pristine condition.
No doubt many of you reading this will be shocked — SHOCKED!!! — by photos of a major city that has garbage bins waiting to be picked up or some public spaces in a state of disrepair. If you imagined that Paris was an immaculate utopia, consider your dreams crushed.
Many of the campaigners seem embittered by the gradual banning of cars in the city center and the spread of bike lanes. It’s a puzzling nostalgia for car exhaust. Perhaps they worry that Paris may lose its reputation as one of the most polluted cities in the world. You can read some thoughtful correctives to this overdramatizing by Anne Swardson and Benjamin Chadwick.
Many see this mostly as a campaign to discredit Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist Party candidate who teamed up with the local Green party to easily win re-election recently. Now she’s the Socialist Party candidate for president, a futile gesture by a party that was decimated by President Macron’s victory in 2017. Hidalgo typically polls in the single digits and seems to be on a rather quixotic crusade to restore her party’s luster.
Journalist Agnes Poirier, writing in The Times of London, insisted the notion that this is a political hit-job was off base: Parisians are simply fed up with the state of Paris:
The cruel irony is that filth, demolition of historical buildings, neglect, ecological disasters and a cult of hideousness have been especially visible since Hidalgo, at the helm of the city for the past 20 years (as deputy and then mayor), entered an opportunistic partnership with the Greens.
The Times also gave a nice headline to noted cultural preservationist, TV celebrity, and Eurovision co-host Stephane Bern’s decision to move out of Paris, calling the city a “rubbish bin” (a British phrase meaning “trash can”):
In comments that have intensified an already virulent debate, Stéphane Bern, 58, who is close to President Macron, said that the city was dirty, increasingly ugly and violent. “Where has the City of Lights gone?” he asked in an interview with Le Parisien, adding that next month he would leave his flat in the Pigalle district and move to in a disused military school he purchased in 2013 and renovated in Perche, northern France.
Of course, French bashing in the British press ranks just after Football and Cricket as the national British pastime. But it appears the complaining about the state of Paris will continue as long as someone can find a wayward hamburger wrapper tumbling down the street in a strong breeze.
Raoult Reproached
Hey, remember notorious French scientist and former Lynyrd Skynyrd bass player Didier Raoult? He was the infectious disease specialist based in Marseille (which, speaking of cities that could use a little Spic and Span…) who touted chloroquine as a cure of Covid.
This has put him at the center of controversy while making him a hero to the horse-dewormer-guzzling anti-Covid restriction crowd. (Who said that irony is dead?) Anyhoo, independent investigative journalism outfit Mediapart published a blockbuster story in which a dozen of Raoult’s scientific colleagues accused him of falsifying medical research.
While seeming to come as a shock, other researchers noted that they have been raising questions about Raoult and his institution for years only to be met with stonewalling and threats of retaliation.
The hospital group that oversees the lab where Raoult works said it would launch its own internal investigation into the researchers’ accusations. But safe to say that Raoult’s chances of ending up in the Pantheon are looking pretty slim.
Dreaming of France
One of the advantages of Parisian-ish life that I’m just beginning to appreciate is the convenient transportation options. Toulouse, and the Southwest of France, is basically the Land That The TGV Forgot. But Paris is the center of everything, which means a TGV can zip us just about anywhere in a blink (except Toulouse).
So last week we took advantage of that to hoof it 40 minutes over to Reims, the capital of Champagne Country. Though we didn’t do much in the way of Champagne tasting. But we did have a lovely day strolling around its city center and seeing the things that one should see in Reims. That includes the crown jewel Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims, a dizzying Gothic masterpiece.
Because the city was hit hard in World War I, the subsequent rebuilding gave birth to a decent array of Art Deco architecture, including the Bibliothèque Carnegie. You can do self-guided tours of Art Deco sites in Reims, but beware that the city’s definition of this term seems to be rather…elastic.
We finished the day by stopping at the Café du Palais where I ordered an obligatory glass of Champagne just to say that I did, and then inadvertently ordered a gallon of chocolate mousse. The interior sports a kooky, electric mix of decoration that seemed inspired by the Let’s Throw Everything At The Wall And See What Sticks School Of Design.
Great Reads
Maybe this is not so much a “great read,” but Astronaut-cover-boy Thomas Pesquet returned to Earth this month where the French welcomed him as a conquering hero after his stint running the International Space Station:
So much other stuff. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd has some fun with the U.K.-France submarine tiff. Presidential pretender Eric Zemmour faces a hate speech trial that seems totally on-brand for his right-wing outrage politics. The national freak-out over “wokeism” now includes a fight over a gender-neutral pronoun in an official French dictionary. Even more critical: People are choosing sides over whether to say ‘hop’ or ‘toc’. And definitely read this Narratively story by Julia Métraux about the 14th century “Lioness of Brittany.”
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq, France