"Culture is the Hard Disk of Politics"

The minister of culture, Aurélie Filipetti, has delivered herself of an oracular pronouncement. Her actual words were: "Encore une fois, je défends l'idée que le patrimoine et la création sont le disque dur d'une politique générale." This is surely the most inelegant remark about culture ever made by a person in this position, and I'm sure that André Malraux is spinning in his grave faster than the 10,000 RPM of a first-rate hard disk.

I have no idea what Filipetti means by these words, and I'm not sure she does either. No doubt they emerged from her lips because le numérique is much on her mind. But it gets worse:

Quand on numérise les archives départementales du Tarn, c'est 65 millions de pages vues dans l'année. La culture est le ciment du pays.

I'm sure that digitizing the 65 million pages in the AD Tarn will be of great use to future historians, but is this really the "culture" that hardens into "the cement of the country?"

Ah, well, never mind. There are other priorities, such as shutting down certain costly pet projects of Sarkozy's, such as the history museum and the museum of Lascaux cave painting and the photo museum and a new theater for the Comédie Française. Austerity hits home. But exactly how were these priorities determined?