Said the French essayist Christian Salmon, quoted in "France’s Latest Way to Sound Anger Over Pensions Law: Saucepans/Protesters have been harassing the French government in clanky demonstrations that have gone viral in a country with no shortage of kitchenware" (NYT).
The noisemaking — "casserolades" — is over raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64.
Pan beating dates back to the Middle Ages in a custom, called “charivari,” that was intended to shame ill-matched couples....
A website created by a union of tech workers now ranks French regions for casserolades based on the level of cacophony and the importance of the affected government official....
Wikipedia has an extensive article "Charivari." It begins:
Charivari (... alternatively spelled shivaree or chivaree and also called a skimmington) was a European and North American folk custom designed to shame a member of the community, in which a mock parade was staged through the settlement accompanied by a discordant mock serenade. Since the crowd aimed to make as much noise as possible by beating on pots and pans or anything that came to hand these parades are often referred to as rough music....
I remember the TV show "Shivaree." Less well known than "Shindig," it had, as one of its "go-go girls," Teri Garr. I couldn't find video of Teri on "Shivaree," which aired from 1965 to 1966, but here's a great clip from the 1964 movie "Pajama Party" that has Teri Garr go-go dancing (beginning at 0:38):
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45 comments:
There's not enough money to meet the promises the government made to you. We've been telling you that for decades. We were not being listened to, we were not being heard after decades of warnings. So now government is left with a single option...
Kudos to France for not going full fascist the way Canada did, and not seizing the bank accounts and crypto wallets of the demonstrators, or throwing them in prison for a fake "insurrection."
Bradgette Macron was heard to remark, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche bundt!"
Quelle suprise...the crowd said, "off with his head!"
Breaking news: Shaming is a long-standing custom of humans. So is the political instinct of “I will, because I can.”
Glad to see “the French” are catching up to Americans in being able to simultaneously stick fingers in their ears and bang on drums while saying “Lalalalalala.”.
i thought our Professor approved of "the hecklers veto"?
She's said repeatedly, that even our 1st amendment doesn't give you a right to be heard..
Hasn't she?
Retire at the State's pleasure.
Shivaree. Can you dig it? You get a bit of probalby Teri Garr...
She has multiple sclerosis. I got to meet her at one of the meetings. I think she was a Playbill usher in Mozart in the Jungle a few years ago. Unattributed...
I'm old enough to remember when Canadians doing the same thing with truck horns was a critical threat to their sacred democracy, which was repressed with appropriate harshness extending to those who even dared support such an insurrection.
"Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know"
With all that French smoking, maybe early retirement is actuarily sound?
I can't imagine if protests erupted in the United States over retirement age. I was born in 1969 so "full" social security benefits are not paid until age 67. And nobody can really retire on that amount alone. So 401K savings, investments, and equity in a house help.
And the tax money collected in a lifetime for the Fed, State, Sales Taxes, Fees etc...is mostly pissed away. If you look at a corrupt state like Illinois a lot of residents hard earned money is pissed away on a corrupt state pension system for the VERY FEW who receive gov't pensions.
The French are freaking out about age 64?? Wonder how much their African colonial currencies pad the coffers while little African children work the mines?
I can appreciate everyone freaking out on Macron, but really, fuck the French.
I work in the private sector and am not privy to a government pension.
Told my family to throw me a retirement party at my funeral.
France's government needs to ban pots and pans anyway to help fight climate change. You won't need a pot or pan to cook bug paste anyway.
"We are not being listened to, we are not being heard “
Activist-speak for “we aren’t winning.” Sure, we’ll play by society’s rules, so long as society’s rules give us what we want.
While we tend to laugh at the idea of retirement as 62 as a right, I think the situation is this: the French political/elite caste told the working class, “We know you have miserable jobs that don’t pay much and we give you no dignity or respect. But at least you can retire from your miserable job at 62.” Then, “Oops, you miserable people were idiots to have believed us.”
As an example of how meanings can change, in rural SW Missouri in the '50s a "chivaree" was a ritual where friends abducted a newly-married couple on their first night at home (when presumably they were enjoying marital delights) for a ride around the town square in a wheelbarrow with much banging of pots and fireworks and shotgun blasts in the air. To NOT be chivareed" was a sign of disrespect.
I love Terri Garr. And Dorothy Lamour would've been about 50 in that video.
And good for the French. They have strong labor unions and don't take crap from their Government leaders. None of this stupid American: "we need to fall-in line and support our commmnder-in-chief" or "them thar smart people in Washington knows whats best. We uns just have do what they uns say".
Of course, the pension debacle is the fault of the French Left. They could have supported Le Pen in the last election, but they decided they'd rather have Macron. I hope they enjoy working at 63/64 - all because they had to virtue signal.
I guess we'll be seeing throngs of purple-haired, facially pierced young people banging pots and pans at every Ron DeSantis rally. And we'll be told that it's Democracy in action, that we should accept and allow it, and that anyone who pushes back will be denounced as a reactionary Fascist.
Fun times ahead. Democracy to be assaulted in the name of Democracy, once again.
My parents were chivareed in 1953. As they told the story, it was the custom in our small Nebraska community to play pranks on a newlywed couple. When they believed they weren't home, the couple's friends let themselves into the house to shortsheet the bed, remove the labels from canned goods and replace salt in the shaker with sugar. No one locked their doors back then--Charlie Starkweather and the Clutter family murders were still several years away.
Somehow my dad knew the night they were coming, so he decided to turn the prank around. He and mom climbed a ladder and watched and listened from the roof as their friends made merriment in the house. My dad always enjoyed telling the story and until today I had no clue a chivaree was ever anything but a fun prank. They've both been gone for years now, so I can't ask them to tell me more.
What are they bitching about? I have to wait until 72 to get my full Social Security. Seriously most Western countries don't have enough young people who earn enough to be taxed enough to float retirees for twenty five years or more of retirement. The French can protest all they want but the money just isn't there. Or they could be cynical pay them at 62 and tax them one hundred percent until age sixty four.
France appears to have numbers accompanying the noise. Here protesters represent noise, not numbers.
Except for January 6th which also represented numbers. And look what happened to them.
If two-year-olds could articulate reasons for their tantrums, it would be along these lines: "So now we are left with a single option, which is not to listen to you either." Somehow, I prefer the "Wahhhh!"
If only there had been some way of defeating the Nazis without liberating France.
The takeaway is simple; don't associate with saucy women.
Wasn't there a chivaree at the end of the musical Oklahoma! that provided a dramatic end for Jed?
Pikers! Lower the retirement age to 55. And raise the school leaving age to 25. Thirty years of work is enough.
“Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed“
rehajm said...
There's not enough money to meet the promises the government made to you. We've been telling you that for decades. We were not being listened to, we were not being heard after decades of warnings. So now government is left with a single option...
5/22/23, 8:09 AM
THIS^^^^^^
Isn't there a Shivaree scene in Oklahoma!?
Terri Garr was a tall 'un, wasn't she?
That said, I'd rather watch 30 minutes of the Grateful Dead, while sober and sitting in a pool of chilly water, than three minutes of that stuff.
"government is left with a single option."
That's one more than most American citizens will have.
I don't know how to do accents here but: liberty, egalite, vacances.
Why doesn't the US just print some money and give it to them? We have infinite amounts of it, after all.
A diversity of diversity of opinion about shared responsibility on the Marne.
Currently the work week in France is 35 hours. Overtime is a bitch for employers because the French government wants more workers to be hired. They're talking about cutting it down to 32 hours now.
Pots & pans may overcome French bans,
But guillotines work forever.
Why doesn't the US just print some money and give it to them? We have infinite amounts of it, after all.
Redistributive change backed by [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform, labor arbitrage in China, environmental arbitrage in Green fields, and natural resources from South Africa, Nigeria, Libya, and, perhaps soon, Russia, too.
I love 'muricans. How dare those damn frenchies not work 50 hours a week. Or put in unpaid overtime. Why we 'muricans love to work. Hell, we'll do it for free, and let the boss take the profits!
And we don't need no damn retirment pension. That's socialism, boy! We 'muricans just pay taxes and work till we die. Hell, we'll go out and caddy for a billionaire when we're 67. We don't "envy" the rich. We just clean their pools.
That's what's made the Biden's America the great place it is.
Blogger Steven said...
If only there had been some way of defeating the Nazis without liberating France.
I still think there is case to be made that we should have stayed out of WWI. I also think the British should have let the Germans have France. Millions of Tommies would have survived, millions of girls would have married them instead of dying as spinsters and the Nazis and Hitler would never have been. Pat Buchanan has a pretty good book about this but he blames Churchill, which I think is wrong.
"The desire to deafen and respond with noise reflects a kind of discredit of the political discourse."
"We are not being listened to, we are not being heard after weeks of protests. So now we are left with a single option, which is not to listen to you either."
So now we are to be ruled not by democracy, but by cacophony. China is looking better and better.
hen the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
'Terri Garr was a tall 'un, wasn't she?'
Not sure, but she did have nice knockers...
I used to enjoy Pat Buchanan on the talk and opinion shows, but his historical stylings aren't taken seriously by historians.
He is skilled at drawing an indictment, but not so skilled proving his case; the meta-problem with his thesis is that history is not a game of jenga. You can't take pieces away and declare victory.
Despite what his looks, name, and fighting Irish reputation would suggest, three of Buchanan's grandparents were ur-Catholic Germans. Put those strains together and don't be surprised to find an Anglophobe.
An Anglophobic Nixonite Beltway lawyer with plenty of time on his hands and guaranteed exposure, but he's well past his due date.
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