Taking Your Date to Disneyland Doesn’t Make You a Liberal

Nothing much has changed in France’s so-called ‘Arab policy’. Paris is still willing to snuggle up to dictators, if it means they could -hypothetically- sell them some armaments or nuclear facilities. Gaddafi’s ridiculous stop in Paris during his European tour (Spain’s motivations for receiving him seem no more glorious) shows that the French are still cozying up to terrorists.

The analysis of the French commentators is also pretty habitual. Serge Moati failed to elicit any positive indignation from his panel -no-one thought that Gaddafi shouldn’t have been invited. Indeed, it was suggested in that same broadcast that it is perfectly normal to welcome the Libyan torturer since France is going to host Shimon Peres shortly: no-one seemed particularly shocked at the comparison. While the majority of the French public was opposed to his visit, it seems that a large part of the intellectuels (except for the usual crowd, including Bernard-Henri Lévy, who was subsequently disowned by his ‘friend’ Sarko) were not opposed to it, and they were joined by a number of… Africans, notably women. This is apparently Sarkozy’s excuse for his public opinion: the Arab world (a reference in matter of democracy, as we well know) doesn’t see Gaddafi as a dictator.

This state visit was, however, sponsored mostly by Sarkozy himself, with very dissonant voices in his very government. Rama Yade and Bernard Kouchner both expressed, in no uncertain terms, their displeasure at the dictator’s visit. This might be a slightly new factor in French politics, but in fact the true novelty lies in Sarkozy’s distraction from the Gaddafi visit -and from its failure to bring the promised lucrative contracts for France.

As soon as Gaddafi had left French soil, Sarkozy, faithful to his “people-isation,” as they say in French, of politics, turned the attention of the media back to a more valuable subject: his private life. While the highbrow media, while still avoiding covering the actual issues, delved into the traditional how-it’s-impossible-to-talk-about-the-serious-issues due to Sarkozy’s tabloid lifestyle complaint, everybody was just rushing to comment on the President’s new flirt -Carla Bruni, of modeling and singing fame.

Thus the real question in French politics this week is: how acceptable is the place of the first official date of Sarko and Carla -Disneyland Paris? Some laments are heard on the devotion of the media to the national authority, but seriously, what do you expect in a country where (all) journalists have historically benefited from an income tax discount?

The funny thing, of course, is the way in which Sarkozy plays with this very controlled publication of his private life. While the attacks on the stars’ private lives by the tabloids -and their leakage into general press coverage- are absolutely senseless and contribute to the dumbing down of content in the media, Sarkozy has no place reacting to paparazzi in the same way Julia Roberts or Nicole Kidman do. The point is not so much that Sarkozy is transforming French, supposedly issues-centered politics into American-style, supposedly personality based public debate; rather, it is that he is providing the French with what they like -sort of like the badly dubbed shitty old American soaps they love watching- while in fact practicing the same old, anti-liberal, public policy.