Jaloux !

Over the past few weeks, I have hardly had time to cut my fingernails, much less blog. I have been working day and night it seems for the past month. My singing career, on a tear only a month ago, is now in serious trouble. This in a country that supposedly has a 35-hour workweek. Actually, this is not inconsistent with my customers’ approach in recent weeks. Several of them think I do work 35 hours a week, … for each of them!

Despite all this, I am able to get a few minutes of radio news in each morning, and it was refreshing to wake up the other day to news reports of Newsweek’s latest exploit. As we all know, Newsweek has been in the news lately, but not exactly for the reasons it would have liked. It’s had to retract a story about alleged desecration of the Koran that has produced a firestorm across the Islamic world. My (French) radio station followed up with the item that Newsweek had found a sure-fire way to divert attention from that “news story” to one it thinks all its readers can agree on: France-bashing.

Apparently it was the cover story on last week’s international edition. I tried to find a print version of it, but my work schedule limited my search to the newsstand outside my office, which had only “Time”. I would have had to go to the railway station to find more. Anyway, we can all read the article here.

The article trots out the usual charges. French government showers money on unimportant things. The social welfare system needs reform. France has a rich past but its present is mediocre in every way. It is having trouble integrating its growing Muslim population. Its president is old and out of touch. In fact, the article harps so much on Jacques Chirac that one wonders if the editors realize there are 60 million other people in the country.

Even the caption under the picture accompanying the article on the magazine’s web site is called into service: “Lonely figure: After 10 years, Chirac looks weary”. In the picture, Chirac looks as if he’s ready to keel over. So would I if a picture of me were printed at a gravity-defying angle!

I’ve seen so many books and news articles with titles like that of last week’s article (“France: Delusions of Grandeur”), so much attention lavished on this Texas-sized country with a lot of old churches and surly waiters smoking Gitanes on their interminable breaks, that I’m beginning to think some quarters of American journalism are not so much disparaging of French people’s attachment to their history as they are ... jealous of it.

Many French people already believe this to be true. Several have told me personally, knowing that I’m American, that they view the United States as a country without a history. They sense (or think they do) a need for history amongst Americans and they associate Americans’ fascination with France and the rest of Europe as an expression of this. I tell them that we Americans view European history as our history as much as theirs, that it was Europe that gave birth to our country, but they don’t buy in. They want to see something deeply rooted – geographically – to the country. They want to see old stone buildings (“de vieilles pierres”). Are they on to something?

I’m going to drop out of sight for another week or so, but I promise to back with something exciting. I’m going to see lots of people I haven’t seen in years, 25 years for some of them.