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.