france24english video: Campaign Chronicles:
Countdown to Sunday's French presidential elections and other top headlines.
May 4, 2012. http://youtu.be/gbYe2gCbzE4
http://www.bfmtv.com video: Les candidats à l'élection présidentielle passent la soirée en famille. May 5, 2012. http://youtu.be/MolZvdkfrK4
AFP video: Paris and Berlin set for standoff if Hollande wins. May 4, 2012.
http://youtu.be/W1f7tC1kfw0
From Friday, the last day of campaigning, in this review of the French newspapers and media
http://www.france24.com/en/20120504-french-election-bayrou-hollande-sarkozy-press-review-fran
Article at: http://www.france24.com/en/20120504-french-election-bayrou-hollande-sarkozy-press-review-fran
Sarkozy vs. Hollande: Watch the French Presidential election returns on Sunday LIVE in English online with France24's Élysée 2012 coverage
http://www.france24.com/en/livefeed
http://www.france24.com/en/aef_player_popup/france24_player#
As many of you may already know, French law actually makes it illegal for the French news media to report any information regarding election results before the polls close at 8 p.m. Paris time. Similarly, because of this law, on almost every French news site you can think of, as well as popular blogs, there are representations of the blue Twitter icon that bears the following:
Présidentielle sur
Afin de respecter la période de réserve avant l’annonce des résultats, les flux twitter sont désactivés jusqu’au dimanche 6 mai 20h.
Merci de votre compréhension
This even applies to the Twitter accounts of both presidential candidates, which bear the same message as above.
Which is to say that all Twitter feeds featuring news regarding the Presidential election are disabled until 8 p.m.
But that won't prevent neighboring news media in Belgium to the northwest and Switzerland to the east from announcing some tallies before that 8 p.m. deadline arrives.
http://www.bfmtv.com/presidentielle-les-medias-suisses-et-belges-actu27253.html
Election returns start at 8 p.m. Paris time, i.e C.E.S.T., which is GMT +2, so for those of us looking keenly towards Paris from the East Coast of the United States, that means 2 p.m.
is when you want to be near your computer to watch the action via France24.
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Over the past few months, as the French presidential election was fast approaching with the spectacle of the European Union making like Humpty Dumpty over the most promiscuous spenders being in hock, I've been spending more and more time on the French TV, public policy and news websites than usual.
Which has necessarily meant getting used to seeing our old pals at France24, Vanessa Burggraff and Stéphanie Antoine, all over again after all these months apart, which is no problem. They're very smart and very watchable.
As always, and just as was the case when I was closely following the 2007 election between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, you get a real immediate sense of the difference in how party politics is played in France compared to the U.S. when you read the nuances on how and why the various left and Right alliances are assembled from one election to another.
Sometimes, it seems more like a national convention of Favorite Son candidacies or an American Idol or Swedish Idol try-out in a large city like Atlanta or Göteborg that's going to be televised.
The TV producers and show judges know in advance that just as in the U.S., some political parties are held together by commonly-held beliefs on issues that their most reliable supporters will support, regardless of the actual nominee, others will only support it or watch it if there's an abundance of candidates who sing their own favorite genre: rock, pop, Indie, rap, et al.
They actually want to be the choir who is sung to!
Too much of another genre or catering to one issue or sub-group, to the exclusion of their favorite, and it's both a tune-off and a tune-out, and nobody wins when that happens.
After the first round of the election where Socialist and PRG candidate François Hollande narrowly defeated President Sarkozy for first among the many candidates, I went back and looked at many of the French videos I've received at my YouTube Channel since Hollande received the nomination last Fall that I never got around to watching the first time around, so that I could see if there was something I was missing that could explain his popularity besides the straight-out anti-Sarko factor.
No, there really wasn't, which is why the specter of someone like Hollande winning so deeply concerns many of my friends living over there now, or who visit there often from other European countries, because they can't quite wrap their heads around the idea that France will take a giant step backwards after finally breaking with the past and getting someone with common sense pragmatism in French policy like Sarkozy, instead of soft leftist pretentions masquerading as serious public policy, policies that nobody outside of France respected or took seriously, but instead, just laughed at.
In short, they were tired of the sort of parochial economic policies that made France forever seem to them like it was the least dynamic nation in Europe, relative to its size, because it always had to indulge certain domestic interest groups and forces that acted like the 21st Century hadn't yet arrived in France -to say nothing of the 20th!
Groups that used the state's power as a weapon against coming to terms with reality and who
don't want anything to do with a real competitive marketplace where consumers, not producers, make the choices over what is popular and profitable, not bureaucrats and manifestos.
France24 video: Campaign Chronicles: France in denial over the economy? April 3, 2012.
The thought of Hollande winning and creating hundreds of thousands of subsidized jobs only would further postpone France's coming day of reckoning, where the professional activists, professional misfits and professional students have to leave the warm embrace of Maman et l'état and grow-up and make something of themselves.
Time to take off the training-wheels, kids!
A country that is so full of so many well-educated people who produce or create nothing that anyone else wants is... well, the slippery slope.
And when you throw in all the myriad problems associated with assimilation of overly-indulged immigrants who think nothing of throwing rocks at ambulances responding to emergency calls... and who expect the same kind of lifestyle as the well-educated without the hard work, well, c'est un déluge pour la France all around, n'est-ce pas?
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Take that! The cut that sears the most: days before French runoff election, Jean-François Copé, Sarkozy's UMP Sec.-Gen., accuses François Hollande of not being a true intellectual. Election Sunday could be beginning of Francs rushing across the Channel to wait out the economic storm under HollandeSo, all that said, for me, the most genuinely interesting and only-in-France moment came this week when I read an interview in Metro where Jean-François Copé, Sarkozy's UMP Secretary.-General, accused Hollande of not being a true intellectual.
Jean-François Copé : "Hollande est une imposture intellectuelle", A quelques heures de la clôture de la campagne. Jean-François Copé a reçu "Metro" au siège de l'UMP.
03-05-2012 22:15
Read the interview at:
http://www.metrofrance.com/presidentielle-2012/jean-francois-cope-hollande-est-une-imposture-intellectuelle/mlec!qUd9TN9yzmlA/
Be sure to see their excellent presidential election webpage: http://www.metrofrance.com/presidentielle-2012/
New York Times
In French Race, the Tortoise Sets His Own Pace
By Steven Erlanger
Published: May 5, 2012
PARIS — François Hollande, the 57-year-old favored to be elected narrowly on Sunday as France’s president, is no revolutionary. He likes to talk of “harmony” and “pragmatism” and often quotes the poet and politician Aimé Césaire about “lucid hope.”
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/world/europe/in-race-to-french-presidency-hollande-sets-his-own-pace.html
After watching the Sunday morning chat shows, I'm heading to the beach for a bit and then stop off and get some French wine and some La vache qui rit and see what happens like the rest of you.
And hope for the best
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After watching the Sunday morning chat shows, I'm heading to the beach for a bit and then stop off and get some French wine and some La vache qui rit and see what happens like the rest of you.
And hope for the best
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In English:
In French:
