Chronicle of an Election Foretold

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“Certains lundis de la toute fin de novembre, ou du début de décembre, surtout lorsqu’on est célibataire, on a la sensation d’être dans le couloir de la mort.” Who would start a novel with lines like that ? Only Michel Houellebecq, yes ? Some Mondays at the very end of November or the beginning of December, especially if you’re not seeing anyone, you feel like you’re on Death Row.

As Jean-Luc Bitton added on Twitter, Joyeuses Fêtes. Merry Christmas ! Those are in any case the opening lines to Anéantir, the new novel by the country’s eternal pessimist and yes, best-selling author (photo above). The title is Shattered and will be out in French in January, when days grow longer and desire is in the air.

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This story goes one week back, where it appeared on Substack, so it isn’t badly out of date. Check out Continental Riffs if you care to, most of it free except for the juicy bits which cost a dime or two.

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The Prognosticator’s Ball

The French presidential election is already over. So say the prophets in the university and the press. The only question is who Macron defeats. Politeia, a political group in Sciences Po sees it this way : The Socialist Party, on the ropes since its defeat in 2017, is incapable of becoming a major player on the national scene. Caught in a stranglehold by the president’s political party, no one listens to what they’re saying, they’re lifeless. Quite a comedown for the political party that ruled the country, as if the Democrats had deflated after Hillary’s loss. The Insoumise, although strong in certain localities and the EU Parliament, haven’t been able to capitalize on Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strong showing in the 2017 presidential. Ecologists are hardly impressive even on the local level (Bordeaux, Lyon). Disputes aside, there feels like there’s no national project for the left anymore. Well, what’s the national project for Eric Zemmour ? To drag the entire country into a time machine, hand them a cold crêpe and hurry back to the never-neverland of Way Back When ? Or maybe, just get some prime publicity and sell a few books…

Zemmour ? Never heard of him ? For the better part of October and November the vegetable vendors of the press and television hawked nothing but Eric Zemmour, sixty-something mediatic gadfly, extremely right wing, the son Jean-Marie le Pen always wished he’d had. A few Sundays ago, both Zemmour and Mélenchon held rallies in Paris. Melenchon’s was far bigger, and got no press. Zemmour’s, outside Paris, featured a scuffle at the ticket takers and got all the headlines. The media is holding its breath, waiting for his next outrage. Sound familiar ?

Life is too short to cover all of Zemmour’s sleights of hand with history (the Vichy collaborators saved the Jews, hein ! and more on that order). He’s selling the past and he’s selling fear and television stations can’t get enough of him. Who is he really, the press asks, as if there were some lurking secret. Smart money says he knocks Marine le Pen out of the race in the first round in March, and makes everything easy for Emmanuel Macron.

Our French Nostradamuses say the conclusion is far gone but is it ? Or is it another case of the media repeating what they like to hear ? Now sweaty Catholic Manuel Valls has gotten in the game, gracing Journal de Dimanche with yet another version of the one article he writes over and over again, The Left is Dying. Valls was briefly Prime Minister, something he never fails to remind us. Maybe the left isn’t dying but can’t break through the media barricade. Maybe the media is protecting us from the smelly hordes on the other side with their uncouth, uncategorizable opinions. Maybe the media have a vested interest in everything staying the same. It wouldn’t be the first time.

At any rate Mélénchon and the Communists and Ecologists aren’t going to jail. That isn’t something you can say for the rightwing, where ex-President Sarkozy is endlessly on trial, ex-Ministre François Fillon got a suspended sentence and is going to work for Putin and another of Sarko’s lieutenants, Claude Géant is already there, in Paris’s fearsome old Santé. Géant, one of Sarkozy’s enforcers, is a mean type who’s run up a pile of debts he can’t pay back, so it’s off to today’s version of Debtor’s Prison. Riffs has a place in its heart for Géant, which, as a reward for readers trekking through the muck of politics, I’ll tell you about at the end.

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The story is as old as Aesop but it’s making the rounds. Just those four little words, sur un arbre perché, are a signal that some sort of trickery is in the air. A classic quote from La Fontaine, the 17th century poet, here it is on the cover of the small magazine Ecran de Veille : Lord Zemmour clinging to his branch.

The poem goes like this in Elizur Wright’s version :

Perch’d on a lofty oak,

Sir Raven held a lunch of cheese;

Sir Fox, who smelt it in the breeze,

Thus to the holder spoke: —

‘Ha! how do you do, Sir Raven?

Well, your coat, sir, is a brave one!

So black and glossy, on my word, sir,

With voice to match, you were a bird, sir,

Well fit to be the Phoenix of these days.’

Sir Raven, overset with praise,

Must show how musical his croak.

Down fell the luncheon from the oak;

Which snatching up, Sir Fox thus spoke: —

‘The flatterer, my good sir, Aye liveth on his listener;

Which lesson, if you please, Is doubtless worth the cheese.’

A bit too late, Sir Raven swore

The rogue should never cheat him more.

Here’s Grandville’s illustration to the original edition.

Meanwhile, across the channel, some 100,000 cases day of the new Omicron variant in Albion. Astonishing but that’s the official count as of Friday. Boris Johnson, with an eighty-seat majority in Parliament, has an almost free hand in turning Albion into a mad laboratory run by Tory ‘Spartans’ and yet he’s mucking it up. Can’t be bothered with details. Beloved North Shropshire voted nay in the recent byelection, plumping instead for those perennial dateless wonders, the Lib Dems. North Shropshire ! A place so far from London most commentators couldn’t find it on the map and who wouldn’t go there if free tickets were offered. That hasn’t stopped the Guardian’s experts from telling us What It All Means. More telling perhaps, is the sight of one of the architects of Brexit slipping out the side door just before Christmas : Lord Frost, formerly of the Scottish Beverages Association, has departed. He vocally opposed Brexit, changed his tune when Boris Johnson dangled a peerage, negotiated the final proceedings, complaining loudly the whole while that it wasn’t exactly as he liked, then, like predecessors Fox and Davis, huffed and puffed and quit while crowing about his success. People generally stay on when they’re having a good run… The Tory gene pool being extremely limited, and Johnson’s paranoia about rivals boundless, cabinet member Liz Truss simply tosses another dossier to her desk. At least she at least knows where Calais is.

(On Sunday evening new photos of Boris partying while the bodies piled high in May last year surfaced in the press. Oh, the damning details !)

But what about Scotland, you ask. Wasn’t it well on its way to extricating itself from Tory Fantasyland some time ago ? 2014 : water long under the bridge. The country is being run by a competant crisis manager who has no intention of making her life difficult with independence. There’s a good take on the country’s drift in an essay by Craig Murray, who knows whereof he speaks. Murray, ex-English ambassador, was just released from jail in Edinburgh, after serving four months for the crime of ‘jigsaw identification.’ Yet another journo in the coop. The First Minister, Sturgeon, did nothing to stop that travesty of justice. But why should she ? Everybody’s throwing reporters and whistleblowers behind bars these days.

My Affair with Claude Géant

Claude Géant and me go way back. Who doesn’t love gossip ? Still, Géant, seventy-seven years old, presumably has a long-suffering wife waiting for him once he gets out… Secrets, Jean Cocteau observed, get around Paris faster than the métro.

Years ago I worked on the street. Not that street, thanks. I drove bike-taxis all over town. My garage was in Strasbourg-Saint Denis, where I lived. It’s one of the last centers for street walkers in the city and I got to know and respect the women for their tough hides and their humor. (Think you can hold off on the moral judgements ? Save your penny-ante putdowns for Twitter.) At that time Claude Géant had just finished his tenure with Sarkozy, where he played the role of enforcer, objecting to everything Muslim, whether it was Halal food in the schools or Burkinis on the beach. So there I was, struggling home on a summer’s day, bag of tools slung over one arm and battery under the other, and suddenly I’m walking behind Claude Géant. Now what would the minister be doing in the neighborhood ? Walking alongside was a man built like a brick shithouse, who carried a dainty, translucent umbrella. I recognize people quickly, found the scene fascinating and slowed down. Géant, coming up St Denis, stopped at a doorway on the corner of Saint Apolline. There stood a towering Vesuvius of a street walker, legs on heels supporting a mountain of flesh that dwarfed Minister Géant. She was North African, maybe Algerian. The scene was picaresque in the extreme. The two concluded their negotiations and headed up the stairs, Géant trailing behind. The door shut and the bodyguard assumed a bored, defensive stance. It started to sprinkle so Muscles opened the tiny umbrella, which made him look ridiculous. I ambled over to chat. That was somebody, wasn’t it ? I asked, playing the fool. He nodded but wouldn’t confirm the minister’s name. Claude something, isn’t it ? I wheedled. He smiled. Come here often for Arabic lessons ? I asked. He just stared into space.

Journalist friends told me at the time that if I’d had a camera and taken a clean shot, I could have lived off the scandal for the rest of the year.

Until next week. Questions ? Galore. Ask away.

Originally published at https://continentalriffs.substack.com on December 19, 2021.