Yo, Caroline, Whachu Got Against da Bronx?

Last week, in connection with some research I was conducting for a possible book, I took the IND up to the Bronx--specifically, to the corner of the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road. (Not my first time in that vicinity, by the way.)

That part of the Bronx is primarily African-American and Latino. It's a lower middle-class neighborhood with a lot of hard-working people. Not far from that intersection is Fordham University. A little further away is the old Italian enclave whose center is on Arthur Ave. To the west is Riverdale, where many of the borough's Jews live.

There's a lot of energy on the Grand Concourse: national chains as well as local enterprises along the storefronts; guys hawking things on the sidewalks; the bustle of thousands of people racing from one place to the next.

My point is that the Bronx is New York City through and through.

So I was somewhat startled to see that according to a recent post by Caroline Fourest, Nicolas Sarkozy's endorsement of the religious yearnings of the general public would result, five years hence, in the French president's being sworn in on the Bible, while "our suburbs will look like the Bronx."

I don't know if Caroline Fourest has been to the Bronx--I'd be delighted to take her to lunch on Arthur Avenue should she like to visit--but no doubt she is thinking of the urban blight of the South Bronx of decades past, symbolized by vacant lots and burning slums.

The Bronx of today, a place where people from different backgrounds, of different faiths and no faith, live and work together, more peacefully than not, might well be a model towards which the French banlieues should aspire. It is hardly the "social desert" that she thinks it is.

Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité. Diversité?

I have been observing with some amusement, and not a little confusion, the reactions among the French intelligentsia to Nicolas Sarkozy. No matter what he says or does, he invites an avalanche of hostility. I don’t have a dog in this fight, as the saying goes. But I am struck by the incoherence of much of the criticism.

As is well known, France, like several other countries in western Europe—dare I say “old Europe”?—suffers from declining population and the rising cost of entitlements. It’s the same demographic trap that has ensnared many of the members of the European Community. The only possible solution is some kind of retrenchment, which Sarkozy has attempted to pursue—already at the cost of strikes and other demonstrations.

At the same time, the government has to deal with the social and cultural challenge posed by their Muslim population. Muslims find themselves discriminated against and ghettoized. But the non-assimilationist tendency of some Muslim communities feels like a threat to the secularism of the French state.

It’s a tall order, and Sarkozy has approached it with an amplitude of bravado, inelegance, and the kind of hard-line rhetoric that is easy to pronounce but hard to enforce. His message on both fronts—economic and social—is to call for a cultural shift in France.

This is what seems to infuriate the intellectual class. Sarkozy has not hidden his admiration for the “Anglo-Saxon” model, as it’s known in France. This seemingly quaint term—it reminds me that Israelis like to call Jews from English-speaking countries “Anglo-Saxim”—conjures up a variety of French nightmares: America, for one; England, for another; unfettered capitalism of the Reagan-Thatcher variety, for yet another.

For Sarkozy, I imagine, the “Anglo-Saxon” model is a way to try to goad the French to being more productive and less entitled—as well as to create a public sphere that is more open to divergent cultural traditions.

All of this smacks of anti-intellecualism to the French noosphere. Bernard-Henri Lévy, who, one would think, would be making common cause with Sarkozy (they share a Jewish heritage, fondness for America, and the urge to shake up conventions), twisted himself into a pretzel explaining why he won’t, in a recent review-essay in the New York Times Book Review. Sarkozy’s drawing his cabinet from all parties, for instance, is neither an attempt to create unity nor a shrewd political ploy; it’s a sign of intellectual bankruptcy. “Sarkozy is the first French president willing to listen to all ideas, because for him they are indistinguishable,” he writes. Better for Sarko be close-minded, I suppose.

The eminent—and eminently hot—Caroline Fourest has found in anti-Sarkozism a ticket to ride. I don’t want to come down hard on Fourest, who is in many ways a penetrating critic of much of French society. But her distaste for Sarko does not make much sense to me. Surely a feminist like Fourest should respect the fact that seven of the fifteen posts in Sarkozy’s cabinet are taken by women—the most in French history?

This week in Le Monde, Fourest published a bitter riposte to an attempt by Sarkozy to insert into the preamble of the French constitution the concept of “diversity.” She accused him of fomenting a “counter-revolution.”

Why the fuss? In Fourest’s view, altering the constitution to allow for considerations of “diversity” would give a legal foundation for the government’s attempts to ameliorate social inequalities through discrimination positive. The color of one’s skin, rather than the facts of one’s economic situation, would entitle someone to a remediating benefit. It’s what we would call affirmative action.

This is a horrible thought to an ardent secularist like Fourest. (French secularism, unlike the American kind, is really in-your-face and bolshy. It seems to view anyone who avows a religious sentiment as an out-and-out de Maistre.)

I am overstating Fourest’s case a little. She has elsewhere made the persuasive argument that Sarkozy’s stated intolerance of xenophobia actually provides cover for the most separatist and anti-social Muslim groups. She genuinely believes in diversity as well. Nonetheless, is it not astonishing to see a member of the left oppose affirmative action?

All of these outbursts seem overly reactive. It’s not unlike all this discussion of Sarko’s personal life. As has been widely reported, his wife left him, and he has taken up with a former model. All of which is hurting his image and providing fodder for all sorts of smart-aleckiness.

What no one seems to be saying, however, is that, had she been elected president, something quite similar would have befallen Ségolène Royal. Her long-time partner has left her, and I am sure that if she were now occupying the Élysée, much of the same speculation about her love life would be rampant in the media.

And none of this helps France conquer its problems. I hope for France’s sake that a way forward can be found, that France’s public intellectuals can get beyond these criticisms of style and foster a productive conversation about how to recharge the French economy and make all of its citizens feel as though they count. Otherwise, France will result to short cuts, like offering nuclear expertise for sale to dodgy gulf states, to bolster its accounts, and become a locus for the kind of resentment and dissatisfaction that leads to acts of violence, within its borders and out.