Tis the Season

For too much to do, and everything to be late. I haven't updated this page for several days now, primarily because we are neck-deep in finishing a box of pipes to ship to Pipe & Pint in time for their December shopping season. Times like this make me glad that we discontinued the Yule pipes, as it will be nice to finish this box up and be done with it, without the stress of trying to make a matched set of pipes following right behind the Halloween pipes work. But because of this, I don't have anything interesting or pithy to say.. except for all the subjects that I don't have time to write about!

The one topic I very much want to tackle in some future entry is the bizarre French resistance to everything "Anglo-Saxon". Chirac recently made a speech regarding the riots, and in this speech he declared again that France would not "follow the Anglo-Saxon model" of promoting racial integration through economic encouragement and quotas, but would rather continue the French tradition of pouring welfare money on the problem until everyone is quiet again. What strikes me is the automatic, totally unquestioned rejection of any "Anglo-Saxon" solution - it's as if the very idea of adapting something proven to work by the US or Britain is total anathema to the French political class. I find this, to use an American expression, like cutting your nose off to spite your face. Too often in this country, working solutions are ignored or rejected because they are "Anglo-Saxon" in origin. Sometimes it seems to me as though the government here is trapped in a straightjacket of petty spite, determined to reinvent the wheel because it isn't "French" enough, and perfectly willing to accept a rotating concrete block on an axle if it represents a "true French" alternative to a dreaded "Anglo-Saxon" concept.

And for what it is worth, I keep using "French" and "Anglo-Saxon" in quotes because I find the terms ridiculous... "Anglo-Saxon" as used in France seems to cover pretty much anything done by any country loosely connected with the US or Britain, thereby lumping all Scots, Welsh, Irish, Brits, Native Americans, African Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, (not to mention the vast numbers of American citizens who come from French, German, Spanish, Polish, etc, ancestry) into one generic pot. "French" is equally silly, because the context in which I so often hear it invoked is one of questioning whether an idea is "French" enough... and the Bretons of Brittany would probably tell you that they are Breton first and French a distant second. Just like the countries they stereotype, France is made up of many smaller regions with unique cultures and often incompatible personalities (with the sole exception that nearly everyone detests Parisians).

I was moved to write all this because of the front page poll on Expatica News yesterday. They posed the question, "Do you think the riots will lead to lasting change?" As I type this, the current votes are:
Yes, France will work harder for successful integration policies (17%)
Yes, France will take a hard turn to the far right (21%)
No, everyone will forget as soon as the flames are out (62%!!)

For some other, better written thoughts on the subject, see these articles:
French newspaper re-evaluates reaction to Katrina
What the French failed to learn

And for a very long, yet very insightful, examination of US-French relations, have a look here:
The Terms of US-French Engagement