"France just had an election, and people over there approach an election differently. They vote."
In light of last night's élection présidentielle. Here's a little YouTube video from last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher:
There's also a similar editorial that he wrote for Salon.
"For example, France just had an election, and people over there approach an election differently. They vote. Eighty-five percent turned out. The only thing 85 percent of Americans ever voted on was Sanjaya.
Maybe the high turnout has something to do with the fact that the French candidates are never asked where they stand on evolution, prayer in school, abortion, stem cell research or gay marriage. And if the candidate knows about a character in a book other than Jesus, it's not a drawback. There is no Pierre Six-pack who can be fooled by childish wedge issues. And the electorate doesn't vote for the guy they want to have a croissant with. Nor do they care about the candidate's private lives: In the current race, Ségolène Royal has four kids but never bothered to get married. And she's a socialist. In America, if a Democrat even thinks you're calling him a liberal he immediately grabs an orange vest and a rifle and heads into the woods to kill something.
The conservative candidate is married, but he and his wife live apart and lead separate lives. They aren't asked about it in the media, and the people are OK with it, for the same reason the people are OK with nude beaches: because they're not a nation of 6-year-olds who scream and giggle if they see pee-pee parts. They have weird ideas about privacy. They think it should be private. In France, everyone has a mistress. Even mistresses have mistresses. To not have a lady on the side says to the voters, "I'm no good at multitasking."
We had the first round of the presidential elections here last week. In order to win the presidential election one candidate has to win an absolute majority (more than 50%) of the votes. Since this is pretty unlikely from happening, it's pretty much guaranteed that the election will be split into a first and second round (the second round is between the top two winners). There are a few exceptions (like the previous 2002 election), but it's almost always between the two major parties: Socialist Party (PS, aka "the left") and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP, aka "the right"). Counting the minority parties, there were actually 12 candidates, but like the US the media really only gives coverage to the two major parties.
Similar to the US, every channel and possible form of media has been brainwashing and ramming political crap down our throats for the last few months. Although it feels like it has been forever, they actually started about three or four months ago instead of two years before like the US. The angle is quite different as well, there's virtually no mud-slinging and the media doesn't dig at all into the private lives of the political candidates (at all). The lack of dirt and scandal doesn't seem right at all from the American politics that we are used to.
As for the actual voting process, it's a bit simpler than what I was used to in the US. You're basically given a blue envelope and a bunch of little scraps of paper printed with the various candidate names. Once you've cleared the registration list, you stuff the candidate of choice into the envelope and drop it in the polling box. That's it. No "hanging chads" or confused seniors, it's a pretty idiot proof process.
Well, I guess all of the talk from work, television, radio, and papers have brain-washed me a bit too. I didn't expect to end up writing as much as I did about all of the election stuff, but I guess that's basically was has been on our minds lately.
Life in Paris (and life in general) as told by a computer geek and a bookworm.
"Quand il est midi aux États-Unis, le soleil, tout le monde le sait, se couche sur la France. Il suffirait de pouvoir aller en France en une minute pour assister au coucher de soleil."
--Le Petit Prince
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