The Good American and Monsieur Obama
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
PARIS
The French have always cherished a class of people called “les bons Américains.” These good Americans were those truest to a Gallic idea of what the United States should be, and in recent years those at the furthest remove from the aberrant folk who elected George W. Bush.
In recent decades, good Americans have included John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie (whose elegance betrayed a European sensibility), Woody Allen (of European urbanity and wit), Michael Moore (of European vehemence on the Iraq war) and Al Gore (of European environmentalism).
But right now, in French eyes, there’s a single good American: the Democratic Party nominee, Barack Obama. His book, “The Audacity of Hope,” is a best seller. His face is everywhere, sometimes in socialist realist images evoking Che Guevara.
An online support committee has drawn all-star support, including the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel, the Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the writer-philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late Yves Saint Laurent.
Out in the troubled suburbs, with their large African and Arab populations and broad mistrust of a political system that has produced one black parliamentarian among the 555 representing mainland France, Obama is an urban legend. In France at least, he has high-low appeal.
(Continued here.)
NYT
PARIS
The French have always cherished a class of people called “les bons Américains.” These good Americans were those truest to a Gallic idea of what the United States should be, and in recent years those at the furthest remove from the aberrant folk who elected George W. Bush.
In recent decades, good Americans have included John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie (whose elegance betrayed a European sensibility), Woody Allen (of European urbanity and wit), Michael Moore (of European vehemence on the Iraq war) and Al Gore (of European environmentalism).
But right now, in French eyes, there’s a single good American: the Democratic Party nominee, Barack Obama. His book, “The Audacity of Hope,” is a best seller. His face is everywhere, sometimes in socialist realist images evoking Che Guevara.
An online support committee has drawn all-star support, including the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel, the Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the writer-philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late Yves Saint Laurent.
Out in the troubled suburbs, with their large African and Arab populations and broad mistrust of a political system that has produced one black parliamentarian among the 555 representing mainland France, Obama is an urban legend. In France at least, he has high-low appeal.
(Continued here.)
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