The End of France as We Know It

President Sarkozy, France's new "rightist" (ha ha) leader, is driving his vanquished leftist rivals completement fou (that would be 'crazy') with his ideological zigs and intellectual zags.

To start with, not only is his wife grandstanding in Libya (taking credit for the release of the Bulgarian nurses), but he has been appointing members of the Socialist Party (whose candidate Segolene Royal lost the election to Sarkozy last spring) to one high post after the other. Dominique Straus-Kahn to the International Monetary Fund, Bernard Kouchner (founder of Doctors without Borders) as foreign minister, and now, as Education minister, the famed extrovert Jack Lang, that erstwhile culture minister who gave (zoot alors!) Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone their French Knighthoods (Chevalier des arts et letters) - though I can't complain since I got one too.

Neurotic socialists are worrying that Sarkozy is dismantling their party. But the truth seems to be, in keeping with his pragmatic (anarchic?) turn of mind, that Sarkozy has set about to assemble a decisively leftist administration and do forward looking things, as in Libya. Imagine Bush putting Charlie Rangel in charge of the World Bank, making Joe Biden Secretary of State and turning over HEW to Hillary Clinton.

Sarkozy has now added the provocation of turning Descartes ("I think therefore I am") on his head, declaring instead something like 'I don't think, am proud of it, and therefore I am.' A self-styled man of action, he has also announced "I am not a theoretician." Nor an "ideologue."

Moreover, (this is the coup de grace), "I am not an intellectual." Telling the French "I am not an intellectual" is like telling an American "I don't believe in God," or worse, "I don't like puppies." The intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy was shocked. "This is the first time in modern French history that a minister dares to utter such phrases." Has the man no shame?

The latest is that he has dared send his wife to Libya to claim belated credit for securing the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor who had been held for years and condemned to death on trumped up charges of spreading AIDS in a Benghazi hospital.

The actual release was negotiated over months by Qadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam and a number of Bulgarian and European Commission officials, and was ultimately the doing of Qadhafi himself, who has been moving prudently in recent years towards rapprochement with the West and greater popular participation in governance inside Libya. But Sarkozy's clever grand-standing led to articles in Wednesday morning's papers with titles like "French First Lady Helps," making it seems like he had stepped in and done something that was actually the achievement of others over a long period.

And if all this weren't enough for the fragile French national psyche, President Sarkozy also, well, jogs. You heard me, jogs. Not "takes walks" or "faire les promenades" like the ones enjoyed by Jean-Jacque Rousseau to mark his Enlightenment reveries. No, jog as in 'exercise the body in flagrant disregard of the inclinations of the intellect.'

What is shaping up is not a pro-American administration but an American administration plain and simple. Not the end of 'old France,' but the end of France (merde!) as we know it, the end of France tout court! Quel freakin' domage!