Le Monde: Vote Kerry, it'll please Woody

Le Monde establishes what really matters in the upcoming American presidential election. It seems that it will be a tragedy, for Woody Allen, if Bush is reelected. (Tragic in a different way, one assumes, than having your longterm boyfriend leave you for your own daughter.) Such a shame that Woody Allen's influence, political and otherwise, is probably somewhat greater in France than in the U.S.

The article in Le Monde has in its favor, though, that it mentions what is perhaps the funniest situation in any of Allen's later films:

"Dans le plus récent, Tout le monde dit I love you (1996), un militant républicain redevenait démocrate après une opération du cerveau."

In other, Englishier words, a militant Republican returns to being a Democrat after undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor. The ex-Republican in question is a young son of a very liberal Upper West Side family, so all are relieved when not only the tumor but also the objectionable politics disappear. I took that scenario to be both a criticism of the Young Republican (comparing, as it did, his opinions with symptoms of a disease) and a send-up of what Adam Bellow calls the Zabar's Left, the sort of folks who would look upon conservatism as an illness and upon a transformation from Republican to Democrat as recovery.

In any case, Woody Allen admits to being apolitical, so he's allowed to skewer Upper West Side liberals and Republicans alike. And everyone else, in turn, is allowed to skewer Woody Allen, for being a talented, yes, but silly, silly man with a family life that, even by sophisticated French standards, is stinkier than long-forgotten camembert.