Contrary to belief, this is not the site of the official opposition to Nicolas Sarkozy.
Nor, despite this being the second occasion in three days that Salut! has raced to his assistance, are we going soft.
He gets no help from here on the holiday row. At the very least, his judgment deserted him when he accepted a free luxury yachting break for his family off Malta from a billionaire media tycoon, Vincent Bolloré.
If the suggestion contained within Le Canard Enchainé's version of the affair is to be believed, it followed another freebie, an election night stay in Fouquet's on the Champs Elysées.
No one objects to a man celebrating a great success in style. Nor am I surprised that he should wish to relax in the sunshine with his family after the strains, if we put it delicately, that his campaign will have placed upon domestic life.
The French press and socialist politicians have had their say about the wisdom or otherwise of the president-elect accepting such largesse.
My main point, in writing about it at the Guardian's Comment is Free site, was to raise the question of whether those rabidly pro-Sarko columnists and pundits across the Channel would now be as hard on his acceptance of a rich man's treats as they have always been on Tony Blair for similar conduct.
For that, one or two readers suggested I was scraping the barrel for material; an odd view of what should and should not attract reporting and comment, but absolutely their right to believe.
My support for Sarko today is on another score. It concerns la racaille.
In the International Herald Tribune , Anthony Giddens, former head of the LSE and a Blair adviser, argues that Sarkozy's programme offers only half the answer to France's "grave" problems. Right on economics - a Blairite, of course, would support a conservative on that - but wrong on social justice.
"France has massive ethnic inequalities," he writes. "What was Sarkozy's response to the riot sin the minority neighbourhoods? He dismissed the rioters as 'scum'."
Well no, Mr Giddens, he did not.
Let us put aside the question of what la racaille actually means. It can mean scum, as most of us know, but it also has less severe definitions, such as rabble.
I am assured by friends in Paris that children use the word to one another, and even parents to unruly children. But in a sense, it doesn't matter how English speakers translate it; the only real issue is how it sounds to be called it, and offence was undoubtedly taken.
But Sarkozy's infamous remarks were made before riots swept the country. He was visiting a suburban estate and used the word in conversation with a woman of, if I remember correctly, African or north African origin who had used it herself to describe the louts, petty criminals and drug dealers who made life so wretched for decent residents.
If we are to criticise Sarko for intemperate language, we should at least be fair to him and get such basic facts rights.
There is also a predisposition to be shocked when someone like him uses strong words to condemn seriously anti-social misbehaviour. Someone I know, a French person, was shocked to hear him say he had no interest in the votes of the mobs who rioted at the Gare du Nord.
Where, she wanted to know, did that leave his claims to represent inclusiveness, a France for all people?
It left them intact, as far as I am concerned. The rioters were reacting to the arrest of a fare dodger and had no business behaving like wild animals. And in doing so, they placed themselves beyond any need to consider them part of l'ensemble, and Sarkozy had no civic duty to court their support.
Recent Comments