Living in France, le blog

Against all odds—or at least against the logic of cronyism that usually prevails in such cases—Jacques Chirac was convicted in French criminal court last week on charges related to criminal activity perpetrated by the political machine he built and ran as mayor of Paris. Never mind that he wasn't personally in court, or that he won't spend a minute in jail...

It seems that Tony Parker's tenure in ASVEL green will be sadly cut short.

Zut alors. For a few glorious weeks, it really looked like the billionaire vs. millionaire pissing match that was the NBA lockout was going to last the whole season. Would've served them right.

Would've served me right, too.

And I mean right now: as we speak, the far-right National Front candidate for the French presidency is trying to schmooze with American big-wigs from across the political spectrum, all in an effort to bolster her international credibility.

Gee, and I thought Facebook only used its powers for good...

Marine Le Pen's exhaustive effort to create a kinder, gentler National Front party capable of vacuuming up disgruntled ex-Sarkozyists and other moderate right-wing voters hit another snag last week, once again of the family variety: her father and former party boss Jean-marie Le Pen has dragged the far-right party into the Europe-wide discussion concerning the underlying causes of the recent massacres in Norway. And not in a nice way.

Dear loyal readers:

Sorry about April. Stuff was going on. People to see, places to go, conspiracies to undermine. But just because I stopped writing doesn't mean the French press didn't continue to turn out legions of interesting little stories that probably didn't make it to your English-language news aggregator. Here are some uncharacteristically brief highlights.

When a French court postponed the criminal trial of former president Jacques Chirac last week, the subtext was clear: the man will never be held accountable for the criminal activity that helped create the political machine that got him elected in 1995. I guess the word "equality," proudly inscribed alongside "freedom" and "liberty" on official French buildings and documents, does not include equality before the law for wealthy and powerful men.

After maintaining a well-earned (for us, at least) silence following his dismissal as coach of the French national football team last June, M. Domenech descended from his lofty, unemployment-financed cloud of self-delusion last week, granting audience to a reporter from the French weekly L'Express. Read on for the highlights of the latest edition of Raymond in Wonderland.

In an alarming calendrical conspiracy uncovered by Le Monde earlier this year, five of the 11 French national holidays will fall on a weekend in 2011...

...but the real question is this: How is that the world capital of institutionalized vacation hasn't stumbled onto the the idea of the observed holiday?

As already noted many times in these pages, political scandals and general public tomfoolery are pretty consistent landmarks on the French political landscape. This week, however, President Nicolas Sarkozy let loose one of the strangest tirades to ever come out of the mouth of a sitting European president (something even worse than his apparent show of support for the athletic teams of the University of Texas at Austin in this file photo: hook 'em, Sarko!).