WHERE'S MAYOR DALEY WHEN YOU NEED HIM?:

Why are the French so ready to take to the streets? Maybe because, unlike the British, they have something worth fighting for (Stuart Jeffries, March 20, 2006, The Guardian)

Last week I had the misfortune to watch a DVD of Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Innocents. It's an old sex pest of a film about a libidinous, incestuous threesome in Paris, 1968. When the brother and sister light a Molotov cocktail behind a barricade at the picture's insufferable denouement, I was rooting for the CRS - the nasty, brutish and futuristically attired French riot police. Please, I urged Bertolucci, let them break at least two finely chiselled Gallic jaws. I had suffered pointlessly for two hours, so now it was their turn. It didn't happen.

Then I flicked over to the news, where those Parisian streets had become a battleground again. The CRS, in even more barmily chic outfits, were getting pelted with rocks. No less dressed up for the televised ritual were the sons and daughters of soixant-huitards. With their hoodies up, they wore getaway trainers and, often, ski goggles to nullify the effects of CS gas.

I was torn between admiration and contempt - the latter because street radicalism often seems poised to collapse into narcissistic posturing.

Collapse? Protesting against having to do your job well starts as narcissistic posturing, no?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2006 8:08 AM