How the French View Sarah

Here's another post from Charles Bremner's Times Online blog brilliantly explaining to the Brits how the French view America. This time he weighs in on how the French view Sarah Palin.
Enjoy . .

This might be an exercise in what the French call "shooting at the ambulance", or kicking someone when they are down. But here's a look at the French reaction to Sarah Palin.

Like the Gallic adoration of Barack Obama, the French view of John McCain's vice-presidential choice has been simplified by the cultural filter. The personnage of Palin and the initial enthusiasm she generated were puzzling for a country that disdains displays of faith and moral certainty. Her convention joke about hockey moms being pitbulls with lipstick took a lot of explanation.

In le Monde, the elegant Dominique Dhombres explained that Palin was an elemental type from l'Amérique profonde. "She is a go-getter, almost an assault tank. A virago ? That's for you to decide... She believes in God, America, the family and firearms. She defines herself as 'une maman hockey'."

On France-Inter, the main state-run radio station, a commentator this morning described Palin as une sacrée bigote -- a really sanctimonious woman (literally 'a holy bigot', though the words are softer in French).

French feminists have had the biggest trouble with Palin. They have come round to the conclusion that she is a dangerous agent of anti-feminism. "The exhibition of this fundamentalist version of femininity and maternity in the American presidential election concerns all of us," wrote Julia Kristeva in Libération. "Whether she represents the banality of evil or tragic caricature, can this strangling of women's emancipation... be reversed?"

Elle, the thinking Parisienne's fashion weekly, denounced Palin on Monday as "the incarnation of a new femininism, as dangerous as the 'Islamic feminism', which has recently been invented by the Muslim fundamentalists." Marie-Françoise Colombani, Elle's editorial columnist, concluded that Palin was proof that the "worst enemy of woman is often a woman."

Palin's self-undoing with her inept interviews has been greeted with relief and a little gloating. Headlines today called her "Sarah la gaffeuse" and McCain's Achilles Heel. Libération had fun filling a page with her confused answers to questions from Katie Couric and others. Her words about Vladimir Putin "raising his head" and flying over Alaska and her incoherent views on the Wall Street bail-out have been prompting widespread mirth.

The cartoon is from le Nouvel Observateur. McCain says: "There's only one solution left." Palin replies: "Bomb Wall Street".