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Posted on 05/03/2002 2:27:19 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
PARIS - It's not every day that you see 8-year-olds pretending to be head of state, but in France these days, politics has grabbed just about everyone's imagination.
The boys leaping off a park bench on a recent day shouted: "I am Super Liar," a reference to President Jacques Chirac, so dubbed by a satirical television program here. The show has featured a latex puppet of Mr. Chirac dressed in a Superman-style outfit and carrying a briefcase bulging with stolen bank notes - a reference to the financial scandals that have tarnished the chief executive's reputation.
But as Chirac heads into a runoff against a far-right ultranationalist Sunday, France is holding its collective nose as it looks set to reelect the man seen as the lesser of two evils.
It's a measure of the state of politics here that more than a million people took to the streets this week, to urge their fellow countrymen to vote for a man they have called a swindler and a thief.
Brandishing placards that read "Votez escroc, pas facho!" ("Vote for the crook, not for the fascist!"), and "No to fascism, yes to democracy!" demonstrators have marched in more than 100 towns and villages in France.
The nation was stunned April 21, when a record-low turnout resulted in a shut-out for the country's socialists - and a No. 2 two spot for Le Pen, who garnered an impressive 17.3 percent of the vote.
Frustrated left-wing voters, who didn't bother to turn out during the first round, are now forced to cast their ballot for a man they largely despise. Some say they will wear gloves to "protect" their hands from "contamination" or use tweezers to pick up the ballot paper bearing Chirac's name. The protesters say anyone is better than Le Pen, who is famous for calling Nazi gas chambers "but a detail of World War II history."
But Le Pen strikes a chord among some middle- and working-class Frenchmen, for whom he eloquently articulates fears of immigrants, rising crime, and a presumed erosion of France's traditions and status through globalization. Last week, LePen, waging his fourth presidential attempt, said that as part of his anti-immigration initiatives he would set up "transit camps" for illegal immigrants before their deportation - a choice of vocabulary critics say harks back to Nazi camps for Jews. He has also pledged to reintroduce the death penalty and to take France out of the European Union.
In Paris, the anti-Le Pen crowds grew to as high as 800,000, organizers say. Outside the capital, officials in several towns said there had not been so many people on the streets since Liberation Day in 1945.
Blandine Ranquet, a middle-aged mother of four, had never taken to the streets before. At Paris's Place de la Bastille with her youngest son, Théophile,10, she explained: "I would have been proud to know that my grandparents were demonstrating in the 1930s against the rise of fascism. I want to be able to tell my grandchildren that I took a stand myself when it was necessary."
At the same time, Le Pen staged his biggest rally yet before tens of thousands of jubilant supporters in central Paris. He told the crowd: "The current president is the godfather of the clans who are bleeding the country dry. He stinks of corruption. He is dripping with dirty money."
It is hard to imagine that only a few weeks ago, pre-election boredom reigned. But since the first round, phones have been ringing off the hook at voter registration centers across the country, and celebrities have been lining up to endorse Chirac.
On Tuesday, some 100 of the country's best-known sports, pop and film stars gathered in front of the Pompidou Art Center to urge voters to reject Le Pen.
Most analysts agree that Chirac, who attracted less than 1 in 5 of the voters who bothered to show up for the first round, is due to win the runoff in a landslide. One of the country's leading pollsters, the IPSOS institute, has reported that Chirac would garner between 74 and 81 percent of the votes, as opposed to between 19 and 26 percent for Le Pen. Pollsters say one difficulty in trying to take a measure of the electorate is that Le Pen voters typically deny having voted for him. Giles Corman, a political analyst with the Taylor Nelson Sofres Polling Institute, said his company did its usual phone calls on the day after the first round and found that about 7 percent said they had voted for Le Pen. In reality, about 17 percent did.
"If you admit you're a Le Pen supporter, you're automatically marginalized in society," said a Paris schoolteacher at a pro-Le Pen rally who gave her name only as Catherine M. "I don't tell my friends or colleagues. I even hide it from my children."
The high level of abstention in the first round, particularly among young voters, and the strong results for extremist parties on the right and on the left - more emphatic in impoverished and racially mixed suburbs of France's big cities - have been read as a clear sign that the country's mainstream parties have lost credibility - and that key issues, such as a failure to integrate immigrants into society and rising crime, haven't been addressed.
Unfortunately, too many Americans loved Super Liar between 1992 and 2000.
Gloves may protect your hands, but nothing can protect your soul, which you sell all too happily.
Tuor
Does it have a nickname?
Jean-Marie LePen
I guess no one told these mobs on the Left, that Mussolini took over the streets in 1922 with his show of numbers--many of them former Socialists--as was Mussolini, himself. The Communists and Nazis, also, always made their case in the streets. They just love the show of numbers. But no one will debate Le Pen. Isn't there something incongruous in the picture? Now who, really, is the Fascist?
It is Chirac, not Le Pen, who is acting like a Mussolini. Le Pen has not advocated anything at all radical. He offers to debate, his opponents appeal to the mob.
said that as part of his anti-immigration initiatives he would set up "transit camps" for illegal immigrants before their deportation - a choice of vocabulary critics say harks back to Nazi camps for Jews. He has also pledged to reintroduce the death penalty and to take France out of the European Union.
These unnamed "critics" are either pathologically paranoid, or engaged in the cheapest type of demagoguery and scare tactics--sounds almost like a French James Carville. There is a great difference to any rational person, between putting people in a detention center, before they are sent home, and putting people in a detention center before they are murdered. It is really a pity if the Left and "Center" in France cannot understand that. As it is, Le Pen is the only French leader, today, who is offering to do anything to protect Parisian Jews from the crimes being committed against them by the North African gangs in the city.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
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I don't think this is really a good way to look at the numbers, but the latter part of the quote implies that Le Penn gets 17/7 times the vote that polls claim. That is about 2 and 1/2 times the poll vote!
If that applies to the 19-26 vote then it will be a close race!
I doubt that will be the case though. For various reasons the 17/7 figure is liable to be accounted for in the 19-26 numbers.
They will...and they will get caught at it because Le Pen's people know it is coming and have their truth squads prepared to video tape it.
The election this Sunday is going to delegitimize the 5th French Republic.
They will...and they will get caught at it because Le Pen's people know it is coming and have their truth squads prepared to video tape it.
The election this Sunday is going to delegitimize the 5th French Republic.
Le Pen fought bravely in Vietnam (then "Indochine") and Algeria. He is a war hero and a patriot. Any nation that votes for a liar and a cheat over a war hero deserves its own descent into hell.
(Come to think of it, sounds a bit like what we did in 1992, eh?)
The evil menace of Socialism, coming to a city and state near you, sooner than you think (especially if you live in California)
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