"A love of dogs is somewhat of a tradition for French leaders: the past six presidents all owned at least one black Labrador."

"The two owned by Nicolas Sarkozy, and a chihuahua, reportedly caused damage totalling tens of thousands of euros at the Élysée Palace by chewing on 200-year-old furniture in the Silver Salon. President Macron’s dog, Nemo, was once filmed urinating on an ornamental fireplace in a presidential meeting, and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s was a gift from the late Queen and nicknamed Sandringham Samba...."

From "Can the French love of dogs be transformed into election success? Doggy food banks and shared human-dog drinking fountains are among the promises on offer as candidates for the local elections try to win over voters" (London Times).

Check the reaction that's closest to yours.

What good is culture if you can't piss on it?

Why black Labs? Is it racist? Samba... really?

I want political promises for America's dogs!

It's all about love. Love is the answer.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Politicians and their wives... chez Drudge.

Right now, at Drudge, at the top of the middle and left columns:



The message of the juxtaposition seems to be: Powerful political wives dominate their husbands. Or: Bow down to women, O ye men!

Here's the story about Carla and Nicolas moving to — of all places to avoid taxes — the UK. You know taxes are harsh when England seems like the way out. (Didn't the English rock stars use to move to France to avoid taxes? (Back in the days when The Beatles contributed to the protest-song genre with "Taxman.")

[Nicolas Sarkozy] and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.

But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.

Oh, to be relatively young and super high profile! Carla is waving bye-bye. We'll see what her getaway looks like. (How "Gallic" is Carla Bruni? She was born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, in Turin, Italy. How coupled is she? She famously cheated on Eric Clapton with Mick Jagger.)

Meanwhile, in America, I've got no criticism of Barack Obama bowing to his wife as he invites her to dance. Or do you think anytime he bows, he calls up the old bowing-to-dictators meme?

"French voters elected François Hollande as president on Sunday, giving the country a Socialist leader..."

"... who has pledged to shift the burden of hardship to the rich and resolve the protracted euro-zone sovereign-debt crisis by softening the current prescription of austerity."

Sarkozy "has made a cynical attempt to win over the first-round supporters of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen..."

"... (while formally opposing an actual pact with the party), despite the Front’s deep hostility toward immigrant communities and the European Union, and the fact that its founder (her father, Jean-Marie) had a well-deserved reputation for racism and anti-Semitism."

Le Pen is ''compatible with the Republic,” he stated soon after the initial voting. Sarkozy’s stunning acknowledgment of Le Pen’s legitimacy can only help her cause: In the days after the first round, nearly two-thirds of Sarkozy voters told pollsters they favored an electoral pact with her party in the legislative elections that will follow soon after the presidential campaign. Le Pen herself clearly wants Sarkozy to lose, declaring that she will cast a blank ballot in the second round. She has called [Sarkozy's party] no different from the Socialists, and, indeed, her nationalist stance offers a starker alternative to the two major parties than they do to each other. Can this alternative achieve major party status? Having helped to dissolve the traditional French right while failing to replace it with a coherent or popular ideology of his own, it now appears possible that Nicolas Sarkozy’s principal legacy will be the rise of Marine Le Pen.

Opines Princeton history prof David A. Bell at The New Republic, under the sub-headline "The implosion of the French right." Is that the right word, implosion?

Anyway, there's also some interesting discussion of Sarkozy's claim to be a Gaullist, and what "Gaullism" is really supposed to mean. (It includes concepts like "France cannot be France without grandeur.")

ADDED: "Implosion" is "The bursting inward of a vessel from external pressure" (OED).

W. B. Carpenter in 19th Cent. Apr. 615   A sealed glass tube containing air, having been lowered (within a copper case) to a depth of 2,000 fathoms, was reduced to a fine powder almost like snow, by what Sir Wyville Thomson ingeniously characterised as an implosion.

The figurative usage, which is about all we ever hear, dates back to the 1960s. Marshall McLuhan seems to have seared it into our brains. There are 2 appearances of this metaphor in his 1964 book "Understanding Media":

The rush of students into our universities is not explosion but implosion....

Our speed-up today is not a slow explosion outward from center to margins but an instant implosion and an interfusion of space and functions.

I can't believe I'm in the middle of explaining how people used to make more sense! Whatever. You talk now.

A man murdered by the Toulouse gunman will be able to marry his fiancée.

The paratrooper Abel Chennouf had planned to marry his the pregnant girlfriend, 21-year-old Caroline Monet, and, despite his death, there will be a legally recognized wedding ceremony:

Such ceremonies are unusual but not unheard of in France, where the law allows posthumous marriages in cases where a fiance dies before the wedding. The law states that such weddings can only be approved by the French president "in grave circumstances".

"I've already had it done twice, for policemen's girlfriends," [lawyer Gilbert] Collard said. "It's a really moving ceremony, with an empty chair representing the dead spouse."

Collard said the official request was being sent out on Saturday but he'd already received approval from the French president's office.

Should the law permit someone to marry a dead person?

"I cannot stand him. He's a liar"/"You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day."

Sarkozy and Obama, picked up on a live microphone, bitching about Netanyahu.

"If you think balanced-budget amendments are the stuff of madmen or dreamers, you were in for a surprise this month."

Writes Bloomberg columnist/Harvard lawprof Noah Feldman.

No, not the requirement of the U.S. debt-ceiling agreement that Congress vote up or down on such an amendment -- everyone knows that proposal will be dead on arrival. Rather, it was the joint recommendation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that all 17 euro-area members adopt constitutional amendments by next summer that would require balanced budgets by specific target dates.

In the context of the world’s current economic troubles, how could responsible, economically sophisticated leaders think it is a good idea to impose an inflexible constitutional debt ceiling? Merkel and Sarkozy are, after all, a far cry from Rick Perry.

Read the whole thing. Proposing an amendment — even passing it — doesn't make anything actually happen, Feldman informs us. "Constitutional commitments are only convincing when they credibly correspond to elite interests over the long haul."

"Shock. Political Bomb. Thunderclap."

So read the headline in left-leaning newspaper Libération.

The deputy editor, Vincent Giret, wrote sadly on Sunday that [Dominique] Strauss-Kahn seemed “best-armed to respond to the disarray of the French, exhausted by the crisis and disoriented by the crazy reign of Sarkozy.” But Mr. Strauss-Kahn apparently believed he could win the presidency “without fighting,” Mr. Giret said, and so did not follow a path of “renunciation and abnegation.”

A path of renunciation and abnegation... Some French way to say don't rape anybody... when you're running for the highest office and the hopes of a political party are resting on you.

Socialistes pauvres!

Some of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s allies said that he must have been the victim of a setup. Christine Boutin, head of the small Christian Democratic Party, told French television: “That he could be taken in like that seems astounding, so he must have been trapped.”

Trapped... in a $3,000 a night hotel room... by the maid....

Yes. It could happen. The French are onto the machinations of the maids.

As for suggestions that Mr. Strauss-Kahn might have fallen into an elaborate sting, [Gérard Grunberg, a respected political scientist who studies the left] was dismissive. “If all this was a trap, he wouldn’t have fled in a panic”....

French politician Rachida Dati criticizes investment funds for "looking for returns of 20 or 25%, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent."

That's translated from French, in which the key word is "fellation," which she supposedly confused with "inflation."

Miss Dati was a love rival of Mr Sarkozy’s third wife, Carla Bruni, for many months as both battled for a place in the Elysee Palace bed chamber. 

Now, why is that relevant? 

"French nationality is earned, and one must prove oneself worthy of it."

"When you open fire on an agent of the forces of order, you’re no longer worthy of being French."

Said Sarkozy, getting tough.

He vowed to deny automatic citizenship at 18 to French-born children of foreigners if they are juvenile delinquents. He said he would also strip foreign-born citizens of French citizenship if they had been convicted of threatening or harming a police officer, or of crimes like polygamy and female circumcision, which are widespread in North Africa.

"Classic and romantic, wise and iconoclastic, light and serious, sentimental and moralistic..."

"... he created the ‘Rohmer’ style, which will outlive him," said Nicolas Sarkozy, on the occasion of the death, at age 89, of the film director Eric Rohmer.

“My Night at Maud’s” was the third title in his “Six Moral Tales,” a series of films that Mr. Rohmer began in 1963, though for economic reasons it was the fourth to be filmed. In each of the six films, a man who is married or committed to a woman finds himself tempted to stray but is ultimately able to resist. His films are as much about what does not happen between his characters as what does, a tendency that enchanted critics as often as it drove audience members to distraction.

I sat through "My Night at Maud's" and other Rohmer films back in the 1970s. I can't say that I enjoyed myself very much, but it was the sort of thing one did back then and does not do today.

"Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent."

President Obama delivers inapt remarks by video. 

Bizarrely echo-y video. He's in a cozy room at the White House. Where is that echo coming from? They needed to tweak it so it would sound right amplified outdoors — would sound like he was there. But he was so not there. And now the video with the inappropriate reverb will reverberate forever on line.

Also at the link, you can see Hillary Clinton's remarks. She's there in person, surrounded by space that makes the echo-y effect seem natural and right. And yet, she too seems wrong. Because she is not the President. We see shots of Merkel and Sarkozy, looking glum. They are the leaders of their respective countries. Why has the United States sent this woman? This woman lost the Presidency to that man who won by posing right here at the Brandenburg Gate... or no: Obama tried to pose right here at the Brandenburg Gate when he went to Berlin during the campaign, but Angela Merkel said no, and poor Mr. Obama was forced to do his Berlin-posing at the Victory Column. And now, he's here at the Gate at last, via inapt, inappropriate video through which the grim visage of Chancellor Merkel cannot stare. The German woman who opposed him will have to stare at the American woman who opposed him. Ha ha. Few would have foreseen.…

"This post does a great job of parodying Althouse’s own obsession with irrelevant minutae."

"... That *is* what it’s doing, isn’t it?"

Ha ha ha. That's the 8:57 comment (from Bitchphd) on this obsessive and humorless post about the Obama-Sarkozy ass-gawk and my description of it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Rick Lee says:

Well... I AM an expert in photography and this guy's analysis is stupid. You can see from the feet position of Obama and the girl that Obama is standing exactly beside the ass in question because they are on steps.

Indeed!

"She is dedicated to helping the poor, not to seducing world leaders. This is the wrong image of my daughter."

So said Eduardo Tavares, father of Mayara Rodrigues Tavares, the 17-year-old woman famously apparently ogled by Presidents Obama and Sarkozy.

Her mom added, "She is really skinny and only ever wears pants. Mayara is timid and ashamed of her body. This was the first time in her life that she wore a dress, and it was borrowed from a friend in the shantytown because she doesn't own one."

The high school sophomore, who hails from one of Rio de Janeiro's slums known as favelas, had been picked by UNICEF to join the counterpart Junior 8 forum of teenagers because she stood out as a community volunteer. She shares a single room with her parents and two younger brothers and can't afford the bus fare to attend a good high school.

"Why are they looking at her like that? This is a girl who is articulate and intelligent and just wants to do the right thing," the father said. "Instead, they are forcing her into a negative light."

2 world leaders demonstrate the 2 ways of conspicuously gawking at a woman's ass.

 

I see a distinct difference between these 2 stances. Yes, there are similarities. Both are blatant and hilarious. But the Sarkozy ass-gawking stance says: I admire but I must not act. And Obama is caught at the moment of as-yet-unconstrained pursuit.

Sarkozy holds his arms against his chest in a closed — but not tightly closed — position. The head is turned but upright. He is smiling, but the index finger lying against his lip blocks the edge of the smile from the point of view of anyone standing in front of him, though if the woman were to turn around, she would see it easily. His hand is tipped upward at a jaunty — one is tempted to say phallic — angle. The foot closest to the woman is planted firmly on the ground in the don't-go-that-way position, yet the other foot angles toward the object of desire. Still, the angled foot remains flat on the floor, and, at a shoulder's distance from the other foot, it the whole figure of the man a solid immobility.

Now, swivel your eyes over to Obama's feet. The foot closest to the woman, like Sarkozy's, is planted and aimed forward, but the other steps off in the direction of the woman, bending the knee upward into a bit of a crotch-squeeze and forming the base of a dramatic tilt of the entire body into a flexible S-shape that leans toward the woman. Obama's arms hang free, emphasizing the tilt, and either gravity or will causes the left arm to hang inches away from the torso. See how much lower the right hand is than the left? His neck is craned out and around so that the line of sight is directly at the ass. His mouth is open as if to say: That's what I want.

AND: Yes, I have seen the video, and I stand by my analysis of the still photograph.

"The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue; it is a question of freedom and of women’s dignity."

"The burqa is not a religious sign; it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women.

Is it not a religious sign because a sign of the subjugation? If that is what Nicolas Sarkozy means then he is implicitly asserting that whatever subjugates women is not religion. But it is not the role of government to say what constitutes religion.

Nevertheless, both government and religious may try to occupy the same niche. When it does, let government boldly assert that its policies trump religious practices and then let's have a debate about the scope of the rights of religious freedom. Don't say it's not religion. It is. And religion ought to have to take responsibility for the repression it imposes. Don't let it off the hook!

Mr. Sarkozy noted that “in the republic, the Muslim religion must be respected like other religions.” But he declared that “the burqa is not welcome in France.”

“We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind bars, cut off from social life, deprived of identity,” he said. “That is not our idea of maintaining the dignity of women.”

I can't tell what he's proposing. Is there to be a ban on burqas or is he just encouraging people to feel/express hostility to the women who adopt this form of dress? Why does denying women this choice enhance their dignity? Presumably, some/most/all of the women who wear a burqa do so because they are forced or pressured into it, and that's the indignity that the government wants to remedy. It may be that it's too hard to detect and regulate the coercion and therefore the thing that is so often coerced should be banned, even at the cost of depriving some women of their free choice.

It's paternalism attacking paternalism.

"I am interested in Nicolas Sarkozy’s bottom. No, really."

"I would like to compare its height, firmness and bounciness with the bottom of Crown Prince Felipe of Spain. Is it 'impossibly round and high,' for instance, or disappointingly flat?"

Does Obama not know who's president of France? Or is he intentionally insulting Sarkozy?

"'I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world."

Written to Jacques Chirac.

Obama in shorts ... and no shirt.

Everyone is talking about this photograph. O is on vacation at the beach, so he does not violate my "Men in Shorts" rules. Now, let's talk about that torso...

There was a time when everyone tsked about the mere mention of Hillary Clinton's cleavage, but now there's an all-out discussion of the prez-elect's manboobs. Is that wrong?

IN THE COMMENTS: Simon said:

Compare and contrast. Creating a heroically manly image is cult of personality 101.

Famous Putin picture at the link.

ONE MORE THING: "Do not forget Sarkozy!" Our commenter Chip Ahoy made this:

"We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling."

Wrote Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë in a letter published today by the New York Times on the subject of the impending possible appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the U.S. Senate.

Except it wasn't Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë.

We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model. The Kennedy era is long gone, and I guess that New York has plenty of more qualified candidates to fill the shoes of Hillary Clinton. Can we speak of American decline?

Now, why did the Times fall for this? The correction says they didn't follow their own procedures, but why didn't they follow their own procedures? Were they just a little too delighted that he was saying what they hoped to hear? American decline. The French think America is in decline...

Hey, remember that time Sarah Palin thought she was talking on the phone with Nicolas Sarkozy? The NYT presented that mistake as "one of the last straws" that convinced McCain advisors that Palin didn't have what it takes:

Ms. Palin appeared to believe that she was talking to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, even though the prankster had a flamboyant French accent and spoke to her in a more personal way than would be protocol in such a call. At one point, he told Ms. Palin that she would make a good president some day. “Maybe in eight years,” she replied.

Fake French -- it's so obvious. Except when it isn't.