Has France elected its own Dubya?

Conservative commentators are as certain to be braying and gloating today as liberal ones (the more hard-left ones, anyhow) are to be crying in their cabernet over the results of France's runoff presidential election yesterday. With a reported 85 percent turnout, right-winger Nicholas Sarkozy defeated Socialist candidate Ségoléne Royal (who would have been France's first female president, had she won) 53-47%, in a narrow but decisive victory for the party of outgoing President Jacques Chirac, to which "Sarko" (the nickname given him by both supporters and opponents) belongs.

Chirac had previously announced, not giving his reasons, that he would not run for a third term. (French Presidents serve for six-year terms and can stay for as many terms as their health and the voters will allow, unlike American Presidents who are constitutionally limited to two four-year terms by that pesky 22nd Amendment the Repubs rammed through to insure no more FDRs.) Whether this reflects Chirac's honestly just looking forward to a nice, leisurely retirement after years of stressful work in a global fishbowl (the man is now in his seventies, after all) or a hard-nosed political assessment of his chances of pulling off a third win, only he, God and his strategists know, and ain't none of 'em a-talkin'.

Sarkozy's supporters have been hailing him as the second coming of Reagan and Thatcher throughout the long, bitter campaign. The former interior minister (notorious for having referred to last year's largely Muslim rioters in the Paris suburbs as "scum") campaigned as a muscular neocon, stressing the need to shore up France's centuries-long friendship with the U.S. even through policy disagreements in recent years (he, like Chirac, opposes our occupation of Iraq) have severely strained it, and an end to (or at least moderation of) France's 35-hour work week, promising incentives and added overtime to get those lazy union workers off their derrieres. I suppose we should be thankful that at least they listened to Chirac and didn't elect Jean-Marie le Pen, AKA the French Pat Buchanan, who was also running.

Anke Hagedorn, of the English-language German news website Deutsche Welle, pretty much nails it on what France and the world can (and should) expect from the newly elected Le Présidente in his column here. Sarkozy, in his victory speech, promised to serve as president "of all the French, without exception." We can only pray that this was more than just magnanimous election-night rhetoric on his part. For the French Socialist Party, this makes the third straight loss in a presidential contest; internal conflict now rages between those who believe the party should stay true to its hard-left principles and those who think it should tack more centerward, as other Socialist parties in Europe have done.

I am of two minds on what les Socialistes should do (comes with being a Gemini and having a birthday coming up soon); I have long criticized the post-Clinton Democratic Party in this country for shifting rightward, but I also do not necessarily go along with the most radical policy proposals of the left wing. My feeling is that the French Socialists should not give up principle for victories, but should steer clear of the most out-there parts of past platforms. It has been said that American national politics has never strayed very far from the center; I suspect the same can be said for my ancestral country across the Atlantic. And to the French people and their new leader, I wish a hearty and sincere bonne chance.

Real Life Heroes #4: Barbara Hillary

The first African-American woman ever to stand at the North Pole (at the age of 75, yet!) has just made my list of Real Life Heroes™, people who show the best in humanity in a time when we are all too often confronted with the worst. This woman is abso-frakkin'-lutely astonishing, and you can read her story in my local paper's reprint of an Associated Press report through the link below.

Notice she has the same surname as the man who conquered Everest first? Probably no relation, but just as probably no coincidence either. We should all hope to be half as accomplished and as giving as this woman when we reach her age (those of us who aren't there already).

Barbara Hillary: Registered Nurse, Community Activist, Cancer Survivor and Polar Pioneer

New meme: What ya listening to lately?

If you have an iPod and/or iTunes software on your Mac or Windows computer (and if you don't have the latter and want it, go here and download it for free), check the purple icon in the leftmost pane that's labeled "Recently Played." List the first 10 songs you see when you click on it (be sure to click the "Last Played" header in the resulting main window so they're sorted by date/time) in your LJ. (If you prefer not to use iTunes, this should also work with whatever other MP3 player software you use that has a similar "recently played" feature.) Post these instructions atop them and invite your readers to do likewise.

Here's my latest 10 to start you off:
1) "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)," The Offspring
2) "Animals," Nickelback
3) "Come Out And Play," The Offspring (AKA "Gotta Keep 'Em Separated")
4) "Jump, Jive & Wail," Brian Setzer Orchestra
5) "The Punk Polka," The Toons
6) "This Corrosion," Sisters of Mercy
7) "Bang on the Drum All Day," Todd Rundgren
8) "To Be A Lover," Billy Idol
9) "Finish What You Started," Van Halen
10) "Ballroom Blitz," Sweet

Want to help make my Songbird's job in Kenya a little easier?

I never cared terribly much about all this American Idol-atry spawned by Fox's hit singing-contest show up to now, so I didn't pay much attention when the special edition of the show called "Idol Gives Back" aired last week. This non-competition special featured appearances and performances by artists including Céline Dion, Jack Black, Earth, Wind & Fire, Josh Groban and fourth-season winner Carrie Underwood, as well as by the current season's contestants, to raise money for The One Project. One's goal is to end poverty, AIDS/HIV and related suffering here in the US and in sub-Saharan Africa—the very region where my Songbird, singing_phoenix, is about to spend two years (or more) working with CDC's Global AIDS Project (GAP).

All this didn't impinge more than peripherally on me until tonight, when I happened to fire up my iTunes software and visit Apple's iTunes Store to find special audio and video segments from the "Idol Gives Back" show being sold, with proceeds adding to the over $60 million the show itself already has raised. Out of curiosity, I downloaded Carrie's video for her rendition of one of my all-time favorite anthems, "I'll Stand By You" by The Pretenders.

The video shows the newly-minted country-western diva and her band performing the song in an actual African village, surrounded by little children all less than 10 years old, some of whom were born HIV-positive and probably barely understand what has happened to them. They smile and laugh and cry when getting the injections that help keep them alive and play with homemade toy "video cameras," as any children anywhere in the world might do. Carrie is also shown sitting by the bedside of an adult HIV patient, holding his hand and weeping. Trust me on this one, folks: this video will grab you by the heart and squeeze—hard—until the tears come. I wasn't a fan of hers before, but if she's willing to put her tremendous talent in the heart of the greatest need like this, I'll become one.

Also available is an audio recording of Groban performing his hit single, "You Raise Me Up," another favorite weepie of mine, with the African Children's Choir backing him. Between Carrie's video and Josh's audio, I was a bawling wreck within minutes. These superstars, and the ones on their way to becoming such, who participated show by their actions that being a real, lasting idol—of song or any other type—is about more than just having a big voice; it's also about having a big heart...not to mention tons of class. What a moving, inspiring example to set for all the wannabe-Idols on the show and elsewhere.

So if you have iTunes on your Windows or Mac computer already, please consider buying some of the "Idol Gives Back" downloads. If you don't, go to apple.com/itunes and get it. If you'd rather not install it, you can donate and watch videos through Fox's official Idol website. (One that didn't get on the show features Monty Python legend John Cleese offering to shave off his mustache of 37 years in return for viewers donating $1 million to the cause. They did, and...!) You'll be helping the folks at The One Project make CDC's job ending the scourge of African AIDS/HIV a little bit easier...and thus my beloved's work as well.