Le Pen au Chocolat

Jean-François Copé is having a hard time establishing himself as Sarkozy's successor and heir apparent. It's bad enough that he has to fend off a challenge from François Fillon. But on top of that he just can't seem to get hold of the right rhetoric to prove that he is now in fact the incarnation of la droite décomplexée, the role in which his recent eponymous "Manifesto" cast him. So he's gone poaching in the Var, Le Pen country, where he came out with his now famous paean to le pain au chocolat:

« Il est des quartiers où je peux comprendre l’exaspération de certains de nos compatriotes, pères ou mères de famille rentrant du travail le soir et apprenant que leur fils s’est fait arracher son pain au chocolat à la sortie du collège par des voyous qui lui expliquent qu’on ne mange pas pendant le ramadan. »

This gem packs a lot into a small space: it manages to imply that the criminal element (voyous) coincides with Ramadan-celebrating Muslims who terrorize small children and deprive them of that quintessential snack of le Français de souche, le pain au chocolat.

This rather lame emulation of Lepenist rhetoric unleashed a torrent of laughter on Twitter. The title of this post is taken from one of those mocking tweets. Others can be read here. Like many imitators, Copé assumes that the original he seeks to copy is easily imitable. In the case of the Le Pens, it isn't.

Saint Diam's

François Miclo comments on the ex-rapper Diam's TV appearance wearing an Islamic veil. Or, rather, he chastises other commentators for focusing on the veil and ignoring the substance of the interview, which was conversion from Catholicism to Islam and the discovery of faith:

Ce qui dérange, au fond, les commentateurs, c’est la « conversion » de la chanteuse, dans le sens le plus fort du terme : son changement radical de vie. Elle hausse la spiritualité au-delà de la gloire et du succès. Elle place les besoins de l’âme au-dessus de tout autre besoin. Elle parle de cette soif intarissable de Dieu que connaissent tous les mystiques : elle commet une provocation beaucoup plus grande pour notre temps que celles auxquelles elle se livrait quand elle était rappeuse.
Il y avait, dimanche soir, sur TF1, un peu de saint Augustin, chez cette femme-là. J’hésite à l’écrire, tellement il m’aurait semblé invraisemblable de le faire il y a quelques mois encore : il y avait, chez elle, comme de la grâce. Et puis, Diam’s s’arrêtant de chanter : n’est-ce pas la preuve la plus éblouissante de l’existence de Dieu, de sa grandeur aussi ?

A Shameful Episode at Trocadéro

The French authorities are clearly nervous. Charlie Hebdo lit a fuse with its provocative cartoons, and certain zones of Paris have been placed off limits to demonstrators who might have a beef with the satirical newspaper. But the overzealous police seem to have taken the ban on demonstrations as license to cleanse the premises of anyone with the wrong racial identity. The treatment of the family described in the article is totally unacceptable in a liberal democracy, and the government should make amends to show that it understands this. (h/t Arun Kapil)

The Fear of China

Sophie Meunier examines growing French fears of Chinese competition:

57% des Français pensent que la Chine est désormais la principale puissance économique du monde, contre 29% seulement pour les Etats-Unis. Pour les Français, le monde « post-américain » est une certitude et a déjà commencé, même si les perceptions sont bien loin de la réalité.

Le Pen's UltralaÏque Offensive

Is Marine Le Pen reverting to the ways of her father? She soft-pedaled the anti-Semitism in her presidential campaign, but now she has launched an offensive against both the veil and the kippa in public places. This artfully poses "balance" as a criterion in advancing an agenda directed at what she calls "foreign fundamentalists" in France. The moment is well chosen to coincide with heightened fears of an incident following the provocation from Charlie Hebdo.

Le Pen also shrewdly implies that her move is simply an extension of existing anti-veil regulations, but this is not true. Only the burka is banned in all public places. The veil cannot be worn in schools but can be worn elsewhere. With this escalation, the Front National signals that it is not going to allow the value of its traditional xenophobic fonds de commerce to decline simply because it has also discovered economic populism.

One wonders what internal tensions in the FN may have contributed to this shift.

Official Refuses to Marry Veiled Woman

An adjunct mayor in the Var refused to marry a couple because the bride was wearing a veil:

"Le foulard laissait voir son visage mais pas ses oreilles et la racine de ses cheveux", a-t-elle ajouté. Selon elle, l'adjointe au maire a estimé ne pas pouvoir vérifier l'identité de sa cliente. "On n'en fait pas une affaire d'Etat", a déclaré l'avocate, qui souligne que ses clients ne demandent pas de dommages-et-intérêts mais simplement "la célébration du mariage le plus vite possible". Elle avait déposé à la fin de la semaine dernière un référé d'heure à heure à l'encontre du préfet.

But what's unusual about a veiled bride? This was an "Islamic" veil, you say, not a good old-fashioned honest-to-God veil? Note that it wasn't a burka; the veil covered the bride's "ears" and "the roots of her hair." The official claimed that this made it impossible to verify her identity.

Scandalous.

Regulating Gasoline Prices

Pierre Moscovici looked very proud of himself while making the announcement: gas prices would be cut by 6 centimes per liter, "a very substantial amount." Even Total tried to put a good face on things: This will be part of our commercial strategy to show our clients that we are participants in the national effort, said, in essence, the firm's chief. The national effort to do what? To subsidize the burning of fossil fuel despite an ostensible commitment to reducing carbon emissions? To reduce the share of gasoline in the average family budget still further (it has in fact been declining steadily for decades)? To prove that, even if "l'État ne peut pas tout," il peut parfois quand même faire quelque-chose.

But who is the dupe here? If the state picks up 3 of those 6 centimes but Hollande sticks to his goal of reducing the budget deficit, taxpayers--including those who don't drive--will be taking change out of one pocket to put it in the other. What the companies contribute or don't contribute will soon be camouflaged by normal fluctuations in the market price of crude and the regular ups and downs of the euro.

In short, Opération Prix de l'Essence is nothing but de la frime, de l'esbroufe, even if it does make good on a Hollande campaign promise. It's no mystery why politicians everywhere--the US is no different from France in this respect--like this particular swindle. Nobody likes oil companies. They make too much money. They corrupt the state (notoriously so in France). They operate as virtual global powers and make their own foreign policy. And the market for oil, both crude and refined, is subject to various sorts of manipulation. Consumers are sensitive to the price at the pump. It's well-known to be a prime irritant simply because it's such a visible manifestation of the capriciousness of the market.

But really. Isn't there some more grown-up way to respond? Under Sarkozy one became inured to what Hollande himself memorably called le coup d'éclat permanent. It would have been nice if the new president, having named the vice, had refrained from perpetuating it. But a promise is a promise, alas.

The Travails of Wealth

Imposing a 75% top marginal rate on incomes over €1 million has surely brought François Hollande a lot of attention, in addition, presumably, to some number of votes in the election, which may well have contributed to his margin of victory. The New York Times takes notice of the policy today with a certain amount of the usual disbelief: "What? 75%, you say? Can they get away with that?" In search of proof that such a "confiscatory" tax rate will wreck the French economy, the Times intrepidly sets out in search of tax accountants and their clients. But despite a good deal of heavy breathing, it doesn't come up with much:

“Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil.
The lawyer’s counsel: Wait and see. For now, at least.

Or, to get right down to the nitty gritty, we can look at actual numbers:

A tax accountant in Paris with many wealthy clients, Steve Horton, has calculated that a two-parent, two-child household with taxable annual income of a bit more than 2.22 million euros ($2.75 million) now has after-tax take-home pay of about 1.1 million euros ($1.35 million) under France’s current tax system.
That household would end up with 780,000 euros, or $966,000, if the Hollande tax took effect, Mr. Horton says. (The same family, with comparable income in Manhattan, would take home $1.55 million, the dollar equivalent of 1.25 million euros, after paying federal, state and city income taxes, he calculated.)

"Confiscation" looks a little less bleak now. A family of four should be able to get by on $966,000 after taxes, even in Paris. Perhaps the rich won't be forced to avail themselves of the privilege they share with the poor, to sleep under bridges, after all. And if Johnny Hallyday and Laetitia Casta decide to make their homes elsewhere, France will still have Sylvie Vartan and Sophie Marceau to console itself.

But what about the disincentivizing effect of high marginal tax rates, you ask? It's not clear that there are any, but economists convinced that entrepreneurs will go on strike if limited to a million a year will now have a natural experiment with which to prove their contention, if only they can somehow control for all the potential confounding variables, which are legion. To me, it's always seemed that one of the great attractions of building a company is the power that goes with controlling it. The income is nice, to be sure, but power, they say, is the greater aphrodisiac.

Response to Commenters

Some comments on a previous thread concerning Hollande's speech at the Vel' d'Hiv' prompted this response from me, which I think is worth posting here, where it will be more visible:

Yes, Roosevelt loathed de Gaulle, because in his eyes de Gaulle was a fantasist who took himself to be "France." A bit like Joan of Arc hearing voices, or an asylum inmate imagining that he is Napoleon. And you can see the thing from Roosevelt's point of view. In one discussion, Roosevelt and Churchill were laying plans for a major operation, talking about deployments of troops, fleets, airplanes. De Gaulle piped up: "France will contribute 1,000," he said. Roosevelt wondered, "One thousand what? Tanks? Divisions? Ships?" So he put the question to de Gaulle. The answer: "One thousand men." To a leader thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands of troops, this may well have seemed ... risible.

But Roosevelt underestimated the importance of symbolism, which was de Gaulle's forte, and when circumstances are right, symbolism can turn into real force. It has been estimated that the French Resistance was worth several divisions to the Allies. But all this is quite irrelevant to Hollande's apology. Unlike Boris, I find the Franco-Israeli historian's contribution quite small-minded. True, de Gaulle and the Resistance did not have the fate of French Jewry in mind (nor did Roosevelt, for that matter). But it's quite right of Hollande, who is the leader of all the French, not just French Jewry, to recall, while apologizing for France's failings, that de Gaulle and the Resistance did save France's honor by refusing to capitulate. What made Hollande's speech so splendid was that he didn't feel the need to choose: either I am a Gaullist or I am a defender of the Jews. No: he said forthrightly that one can speak of the Jews and still pay homage to de Gaulle. I wish that Henri Guaino, now joined by Bruno Le Maire, who really should know better, understood this.

(I will have to rethink my previous praise for Le Maire. Both his interview with Mediapart and his statement on the Hollande speech were extremely disappointing. I gave him credit for more intelligence.)

Hollande at the Vel' d'Hiv'

François Hollande gave a superb speech, one of his best, at the site of the Vel' d'Hiv', where Jews rounded up by the French police in 1942 were taken to await deportation. Giving full credit to Jacques Chirac, who was the first French president to acknowledge the responsibility of the French state--the French Republic--in this crime, he went even further than Chirac had.

Some people on the right are not happy, however. Henri Guaino is one of them. From Guaino we hear the familiar refrain that Vichy was not France, that the true France was in London with de Gaulle, etc. etc. One can understand the argument at a symbolic level, however feeble the actual adherence to the idea, let alone the reality, of resistance in 1942. What is not acceptable, however, is Guaino's further suggestion that Hollande's acceptance of responsibility in the name of France is motivated by an alleged affinity between Hollande and the collaborators of the 1940s:

Peut-être que M. Hollande se sent plus proche de la France des notables apeurés qui se sont précipités à Vichy après l'armistice? Ce n'est pas ma France.

This is a slur on anyone whose reading of history is different from Guaino's. It is tantamount to an allegation that anyone who does not believe that l'Appel du 18 juin exonerates France--the state and the nation--of all responsibility for what happened during World War II is "objectively" a collaborationist. Such a charge is unworthy of M. Guaino, who is a student of history. He should know better, however commendable his commitment to the Man of June 18.

Merkollande

Angela Merkel and François Hollande managed to project a little actual or simulated warmth yesterday as they celebrated 50 years of Franco-German entente. It's nice to see them thinking about something other than the euro for a change. The economic imbroglio, which has pushed all other aspects of the European project into the shadows for the past two years, was not allowed to obscure the importance of a partnership built on the ruins of three disastrous wars. The importance, and even the sacred memory: the two leaders joined in a service at the cathedral of Reims, and thus far I haven't heard any snippy remarks about violations of republican laïcité. For after all the cathedral itself, though a potent symbol of the French monarchy, was also a victim of one of those wars and therefore quite a suitable lieu de mémoire for a republican Catholic to meet with a German Protestant.

Now back to the euro. Because peace is not enough to ensure stability, as both leaders know well.