on african presidents

Yesterday there was a fair amount of noise coming from the courtyard. Monsieur motioned for me to come over to the window and pointed downward. See those kids? he asked. There were four or five little girls playing in a circle, with a woman standing over them.

They're the family that just moved in on the second floor. It's one of the wives of the president of Republic of the Congo. (Actually he called it "Congo-Brazzaville," which was its name when it was a French colony.) They redecorated the apartment ... pharaonically.

This is true. I walked by their open door one day. It's all in gold and crystal and marble, and it's blinding. I am unsurprised to read in the Wikipedia entry on Sassou Nguesso this: When Sassou Nguesso attended the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September 2006, almost £14,000 of room service at the Waldorf Astoria was added to his bill during another five-night stay. His entourage, including several members of his family, occupied 44 rooms which together ran up a bill of £130,000. The bills on September 19 included two bottles of Cristal champagne charged at £400. This was pointed out by the British newspaper The Sunday Times to be "comfortably more than the £106,000 that Britain gave the Republic of Congo in humanitarian aid in 2006."

Monsieur also said that Sassou Nguesso "came to power after killing thousands of people." It's not quite that simple, but it appears that his government is not entirely aboveboard, shall we say. And it's true that quite a lot of people have died in the Republic of the Congo for political reasons and fighting between opposition groups, and he appears to have been in the middle of most of it. Sassou Nguesso was, technically, elected, but conveniently, "Sassou Nguesso won with almost 90% of the vote, his two main rivals Lissouba and Kolelas were prevented from competing and the only remaining credible rival, André Milongo, advised his supporters to boycott the elections and then withdrew from the race." Nice.

i like my apples with peanut butter, thanks

I am greatly entertained by this comment I just received on my "Sarkozy" post, below:

A little education is a dangerous thing whether in the USA or in France. Sounds like you need to educate yourself about those "poor Arab youths." You might be shocked to discover that "racism" is not the Rosetta Stone of Western Civilization.

How do you like THEM apples?! You can't handle the truth!

Indeed.

romney on french marriage

Wow, I missed this one. Mitt Romney apparently lives in a parallel universe.

"It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking," Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. "In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

I'm sorry, what?

There's speculation about where he got this. Some people think it came from an Orson Scott Card sci-fi novel. Others believe it's from a 2003 French romantic comedy. Regardless of where he came up with it, it's pretty inexcusable that the Washinton Post printed this uncritically, without noting, "Hey! Romney pulled this one out of thin air!" How many poorly-informed Americans now hate France even more?

Romney, quit pandering. Everyone thinks your religion's a cult; you have a less than zero chance of winning the nomination for what has become, essentially, an evangelical Christian party. I'd say quit while you're ahead, but I think it's too late.

(There's also no possibility of excusing this by saying, Well, he screwed up, but it was an off-the-cuff remark. It was a graduation speech. He planned it, wrote it down and gave it. The man meant to say this. I just cannot fathom his mental processes. For a moment I thought maybe he was trying to criticize the PACS system -- essentially civil unions -- but, good God, just criticize the PACS and not some mythical seven-year marriage of your own creation.)

sarkozy

In slightly less cute news, allow me to tell you how utterly unsurprised I am that Sarkozy won.

Veeeeery unsurprised. Very, veeeeeery unsurprised.

Sarkozy talks pretty big, but a Sarko regime after twelve years of Chirac doesn't promise to change much. I'll bet you would hardly even notice, unless you're a poor Arab or African kid in the suburbs. In that case, well, you're screwed. That's who he's going to crack down on, because they can't really fight back, and it makes him look like he's doing something to appease his base (which includes a large group of Front National members, the hard-right extremists led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, as well as garden-variety racists) as well as the general "we have to do something about the banlieues but I'm not sure what" population. Still, I'm with Matthew Yglesias on this one. (The comments thread has some interesting points, if you can put up with it.) People who keep talking about "how much France is going to change under Sarkozy" seem to be living in a parallel universe, where France has been under socialist control for the past decade or so leading to their welfare-state situation, which Sarkozy is going to change! Economic initiative! Onwards and upwards! Oddly enough, a Sarkozy UMP-party regime is ... a continuation of a Chirac UMP-party regime. The French welfare state thrived under Chirac, who has the same basic affiliations as Sarko. It's not like Sarkozy has suddenly defeated some staunch socialist like, oh, say, Mitterrand, who was the last socialist to be president in France, and that was from 1981 to 1995. It's been twelve years under the Chirac UMP, and I can't say I think the Sarkozy UMP is going to be much different.

Except, again, for Arab and African youth in the suburbs. Chirac at least threw a bone to the idea that maybe there's something going on here that has deeper implications than just a bunch of kids being unruly (racism? institutionalized discrimination? unemployment? unemployment because of said institutionalized discrimination? assimilation problems? the complete unwillingness of the entire French country to admit that racism is, perhaps, an issue?), Sarkozy has a much deeper affection for riot police. I wouldn't want to be in the banlieue right now.

edit: In American race and politics news, have you heard about this?

Today CBSNews.com informed its staff via email that they should no longer enable comments on stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama. The reason for the new policy, according to the email, is that stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments.

"It's very simple," Mike Sims, director of News and Operations for CBSNews.com, told me. "We have our Rules of Engagement. They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won't tolerate it."

CBSNews.com does sometimes delete comments on an individual basis, but Sims said that was not sufficient in the case of Obama stories due to "the volume and the persistence" of the objectionable comments.

Regardless of whether you think turning off the comments was the right course of action, this is hideously, hideously depressing. Can't we get over this crap by now? Find some other way to make yourself feel better than other people, commenters. Preferably one that doesn't involve speaking to anyone ever again.