It's a busy day in Francophilic Zionism news. The French are protesting and the Israelis are voting. Or possibly they're all asleep--I hadn't thought to calculate the time difference. Regardless, this is certainly amusing:
Adrien Reynaud is a revolutionary, but only part time. A 20-year-old history major at the University of Avignon, in the south of France, he had been waging a round-the-clock protest against the new youth labor law, camping out with fellow protesters in two dozen tents pitched across the campus lawn. But by last Friday afternoon, Mr. Reynaud had a birthday to celebrate and laundry to be done. So he was going home to his parents. "I've been staked out here for 16 days," he said. "I need a weekend off."
Why stop there? Why not a demand a 35-hour protest-week? However, not all stereotypes are met by this particular passage--who imagines French students doing laundry? It doesn't go along with the artfully-rumpled idea American students have of them.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Part-time revolutionaries
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2 comments:
Who said he was doing his own laundry? That he could do at any blanchisserie in Avignon. A safer bet is that his parents were doing it for him, which leaves the stereotypes blissfully met.
Y'know, I'm a Francophile forty seven different ways 'til Tuesday.
But labor solidarity and the enduring national sense of bourgeois Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is very high on that list of 47.
For the sane lefty perspective, here's a piece covering the underlying issues in a less smirking fashion than the major dailies.
(Not that I have anything against snark when the snarkability quotient of this story is so obviously high. But the underlying issues are pretty interesting too.)
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