This complex distinction reflects modern France’s anti-clerical roots: individuals are protected, but churches and their doctrines are not. There was a powerful desire among the French Republicans to destroy the hegemony of the Catholic Church after the Republic was definitively reëstablished in 1871. This desire did not, however, extend to the creation of something akin to a First Amendment in France.
.. There is a law, for example, passed in 1881, against insulting the head of state. In 2008, when Nicolas Sarkozy was President, a man in a crowd refused to shake his hand. Sarkozy said angrily,“Casse-toi, pauv’con!,” which means something like “Get lost, stupid jerk.” But when a protester later brought a sign reading “Casse-toi, pauv’con!” to a public meeting attended by Sarkozy, the man was arrested and brought up on charges. According to French law, the President of the Republic can insult you, but you can’t insult him—even with his own words.
.. Although the French are in no mood for compromise at the moment, they might want to reflect on the fact that America’s Muslim minority, which is free to wear headscarves or not, is far more integrated into American life than France’s. The immediate response in France to the recent massacre has been more forcefully to push its “our way or the highway” form of assimilation, which has, frankly, not been working.
.. Entire radio and TV programs debate daily the merits and demerits of Islam in France, without much effort to include the views of those in the Muslim community.
Hollande is harmed by Trierweiler’s book. But not for tales of his infidelity
And why have his approval ratings, already catastrophic, dropped even further since the publication of the book?
Because embedded in this otherwise innocuous kiss-and-tell is a devastating revelation about Hollande: “He presented himself,” writes Trierweiler, “as the man who doesn’t like the rich. In reality, the president doesn’t like the poor”. More than any revelation about his philandering, this aspersion cast on his leftwing credentials could bring down the president.
.. In France, money and the desire to make it are perceived as dirtier than sex. That’s why no one blenched when Hollande said in 2006: “I don’t like the rich. I admit it.” Again, in a speech in 2012 that helped carry him into power: “I like people while others are fascinated by money.”
However, in private, according to his ex, the president mocks the poor and, echoing a 16th-century French proverb, a man without money is like a wolf without teeth, calls them “les sans dents“, the toothless.’