The Lotus Eater

Oh no! The jig is up! The secret’s out! Now you all know where I get my marching orders. Oh, and sometimes from this guy too.

Now that I have duly undermined any claim I might lay as to not being a cheese-eating, wine-bibbling, infrequent bather and cowardly Francophile (you’re welcome, Messrs. Miller and Molesky), let’s all go out to the kitchen and have ourselves a snack. Plat du jour: French Student Riots.

From what I gather, the students are angry about a new employment law and organizing through the age-old Parisian method of recitative: “At Notre Dame the sections are prepared!/At rue de Bac they’re straining at the leash/students, workers, everyone/there’s a river on the run/like the flowing of the tide/Paris coming to our side!” Then someone generally breaks out into an angry, but hopeful, song to show those gendarmes what-for.

No, no, sorry, sorry (but, really, did you think I was going to resist that kind of temptation?).

In anycase, the measure seems so poorly designed with respect to civil liberties that even David Brooks might side with the French populace on this one. Whatever its economic potential, the new First Employment Contract is wide open for abuse. Unspecified dismissals could be made on political, sexual, or whimsical grounds without any accountability.

What I really love about this situation is how the French just take to the streets and start building barricades whenever they disagree vehemently with their government (”What do you theenk, Jacques? Anozzer one, for ol’ times’ sake?) . The NY Times article I linked to above suggests that this kind of demonstrating is rooted in despair and indicates a defective democracy:

“France likes to think of itself as revolutionary. But it is run like a big corporation with a powerful president at the head. Any change in the distribution of power can set off a crisis. Parliament is seen as too weak to serve as a check to that power. Protests are one of the only ways to get the government’s attention.”

Well, hell’s bells, that sounds pretty revolutionary to me. We know all about a strong executive and weak legislature, but you don’t see too many people getting up off their asses to protest against wire-tapping.

I am also interested in the contrast between these largely middle-class, student riots and the immigrant riots last fall. A somewhat appropriate stateside analogy can be drawn in looking at the difference between our anti-globalization protests and our race riots (hmm, interesting word choice). In both countries, minorty-sparked disorders reflect a desire for equal treatement and a sense of belonging to the society at large (my theory about race riots, looting, democracy, America, and consumer v. citizen must wait for another day, I’m afraid). The student led movements seem motivated not only by the private, post-adolescent fears of evaporating farmland in the middle-class, but also by that old stand-by vision of an all-inlcusive, economically progressive society.

Maybe Column A should get together with Column B, you know, for drinks or something.