Let Them Eat Merde

"Man is born free and everywhere is in chains" was said by a Frenchman, Jean Jacques Rousseau. Two centuries after Rousseau, another Frenchman, one Nicholas Sarkozy describes millions of his fellow citizens as "scum" - among several other pungent epithets directed at them because they happen not to belong to what Sarkozy clearly conceives of as the master race.

Fortunately for France, its president - himself no paragon of egalitarian virtue - is at least more intelligent and civilized than Sarkozy. Speaking at a news conference with the visiting Spanish Prime minister, President Chirac said: once order is restored, France will have to ''draw the consequences of this crisis, and do so with a lot of courage and lucidity."

''There is a need to respond strongly and rapidly to the undeniable problems faced by many residents of underprivileged neighborhoods around our cities,"

It seems that the statesmen of the world are divided, like the general populations, into the realists and the fantasists. Sarkozy wants Chirac's job and he is appealing to the crasser sentiments of his fellow citizens, a sizeable portion of whom voted for Chirac's racist opponent last time the president was elected. He calculates that with the hardcore of the Gaullist movement allied to the far right fascism of the ultra nationalists, his bid for the presidency is all but assured.