More Gaullish Behavior

There are a lot of tired brown faces on the train to Charles de Gaulle airport at 5:30 in the morning. Most of them work at the goddamned airport, but I suppose that’s beside the point, as there are certainly thousands of Franco-African worker bees headed in every direction to-and-fro Paris at this ungodly hour – their faces rapt – nay wrapped – with exhaustion. This particular day, I am almost certainly the only white person on the RER-B headed north two hours before sunrise.

The rumor mill back in the States was that the Gauls were keener on the blacks than the ’Mericans, but terrified in the face of those riot-lovin’ A-rabs. While the former is certainly untrue (or at best half-true), the fact remains that we have an African-American friend who got turned away from certain Parisian apartment rentals because he’s black. The distressed look on the landlord’s face upon opening the door to greet him often made him walk away from the encounter without a single spoken word.

Meanwhile, in the Near-Complete-Non-Sequitur Department, Nicolas “Let’s Get” Sarkozy is in D.C. today kissing the Bushes and provoking Iran. Maybe they’ll do the ol’ Chef Boy-ar-dee tonight (you know, have a Franco-American), then complete the only wine-and-coke addled suicide pact that might actually save “the free world.”