by oldfrog
Mon Apr 16th, 2007 at 03:12:49 PM EST
Round One
The battle for France.
by Jane Kramer
April 23, 2007
Politicians Late one night toward the end of March, after a day spent listening to too many Frenchmen talk politics, I called room service at my Paris hotel, hoping for a sandwich. "We have ham and Emmental, on toast," the waiter on the phone told me. "Good," I said, "and could you grill the sandwich?" "No, Madame. The menu says ham and cheese; if we grill the sandwich, that would be more like a croque-monsieur." "Agreed," I said. "Make it more like a croque-monsieur." "Alas," he said, "that is not possible. A ham-and-cheese sandwich is never grilled, only when the menu says `croque-monsieur,' and it does not say `croque-monsieur.' " It occurred to me then that I was lost in a very French conversation, and never mind that the waiter came from Senegal. He was French now, and our conversation was no different, really, from the ones I'd been having all day with those stock characters from the country's ongoing campaign commedia--the pundits, the philosophes, and the pols.....
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/23/070423fa_fact_kramer?currentPage=1
8 pages of analysis and interviews with Bayrou, Royal, Christine Ockrent and more...
interesting reading, interesting date for the article too...
