Housing, not polygamy, the cause of the French riots

Daniel Drezner has already pointed out that the French rioters do a very good job of acting very, well, French. This continues when one examines the new alleged root cause of the rioting: polygamy. While polygamy is illegal in France as elsewhere in the West, isn't one of France's claims to fame that it is highly tolerant of men's extramarital dabblings? When Mitterand's wife and mistress showed up at his funeral, France was showing how much more of a sophisticated place it was than the U.S., where around the same time, Clinton was getting impeached for receiving some now-infamous non-intercourse acts from a woman other than his wife. France saw itself as more liberated than America, but also as more highly evolved, and plenty of Americans agreed. But now, the fact that many African families in France are polygamous has led some to believe that such a lifestyle is conducive to producing children who will go out and burn cars.

The only difference I can see between the often-accepted, traditional French mistress model and the African polygamous model is that a Mitterand is not living in a tiny apartment with all the women he's sleeping with and all their children, while an African immigrant with several wives and their children is. The problem's not polygamy, then, it's housing. Get each wife her own charming flat in the 7th Arrondissment, get the man one of his own nearby, and the next thing you know, cars will remain flame-free.