Dawn of the Dim

While lefties outside France are peeing themselves at the prospect of a Mme Présidente ROYAL, they decline to check a few facts. This from the Toronto Globe and Mail, which may be the paper that does the worst job of pandering to the political fickleness of their readers than any other paper in North America: the correspondent acting no differently than the rest of the press cattle are pretending that Ségolène Royal has already taken the cake before she’s even been voted on in her own party.

If this were a contest of mood and style alone, Ms. Royal would hold the crown, and not just because she is the first woman to reach this level in one of the Western World's most male-dominated political systems.

Except for the exceedingly corrupt former Prime Minister and poster-child of Mitterand’s magic with factions and lefty tokenism, Edith Cresson.

Which can only be true in an alternate universe where Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Ghandi is assumed to have never have existed. I suppose the UK, Israel, and India were somehow through the magic of induced liberal guilt, less male dominated than l’hexagon.

As a teenager, Ms. Royal sued her estranged father, demanding that he support his family. As both a mother and a politician, and as the partner of Socialist Party head François Hollande, she seems to be an equal combination of feminist rebel and disciplinarian, an enormously popular combination in France.

You might touch that with a bargepole, but I won’t. Let’s just say that this doesn’t speak well for the social temperament.

If she becomes Socialist leader this week, next year will almost certainly bring a showdown between her and Nicolas Sarkozy, the firebrand of the right who is offering a combination of law-and-order policies with U.S.-style economic measures.

In other words, two visions of France that have never been seen before, one male and one unambiguously female.

Cresson and Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie are ambiguous in their gender? Who knew? I certainly hope they know, because otherwise it only speaks to the Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders’ confusion.

Nonetheless the misattributions can always get worse: on air, the BBC World Service for several “top of the hour” news reports declined to mention that she was running for the party’s candidacy. An outsider with little memory or interest (which is to say the average middle-minded lefty) would easily have assumed that this poll is for the presidency.

With the concluding round of liberal guilt-tripping done, other more unctuous reds are left in the wake rather desperately with no ready anti-establishment imagery of their own to flog on the way to a greater position of authority. Imagine the abuse and the tirades of “feministing” anyone who beats Royal will get.

Fabius repeated his denial of the quotation on Tuesday. "Those who know me know that I am not a chauvinist," he said.

Funny. It sounds like he’s being forced to say “I am not a crook.”