Fast Food à la française

I came to France with a simple golden rule; Go Native. Speak French, Act French, and Be French.

Imagine then, the cognitive dissonance that came about when I was invited to McDonald’s; on the one hand, I was invited by a French person to join in, on the other hand it was to do something that could be considered the pinnacle of American (Anglo-Saxon!) culture.

It was a difficult decision. I haven’t eaten “Fast Food” for a number of years now, mainly just because I don’t like it, rather than any sort of culinary snobbery, so I desperately wanted to get out of it.

However, I ended up going because this particular mademoiselle was “persuasive”, shall we say.

I’ve asked a number of French people if they like Fast Food and how often they go. The general response is “Yes, from time to time.”

My follow up question is usually related to “Americanisation” and “cultural imperialism”. Having written a report about whether France is really Anti-American in a political sense, I was interested to look at the cultural implications. Evidently, I found that my colleagues in Bath were mistaken for suggesting the French were antagonistic towards American food, or even foreign food. My search for Soy Sauce is a good example.

Of course, my friends are generally quite young. Here in Nice, there is an independence/nationalist (you heard me) movement with the slogan “Yes to Socca, no to the Kebab!” (Socca is a Nicois speciality.)

McDonald’s is successful here because of American tourists (obviously) but also because it has been able to adapt its menu. Some options are in fact just versions of traditional French sandwiches.

Burger King, to the contrary, tried to establish a presence in France, but it was quite short lived.

The most popular chain here is “Quick”, a sort of French McDonald’s, (they tell me it’s French, but I’m inclined to believe it’s actually Belgian) which removes any cultural ramifications that might have existed. Frankly, it’s almost indistinguishable. It’s mainly just a bit of teasing against the fact that I’m an Anglo-Saxon. In reality, Anglo-French relations boil down to sibling rivalry.

That said; I won’t be going back unless I really have to, as another act of conformism!

Socialized Medicine and how it compliments National Security

As Britain’s National Health Service approached its birthday, Daniel Hannan, a popular (within his party) Conservative appeared on Fox news and bemoaned the NHS as a 60 year long mistake:

(Skip to 5.38 for the worst of it, not for the faint of temper)

In the USA, “socialized medicine” is the label applied by Conservatives to scare people away from any form of publicly funded healthcare system. (Note that I use the American spelling in this context!) I’m not going to try to convince people that this is, in fact, an excellent system, but I want them to just entertain the idea from the point of view of Society instead of Politics. I haven’t seen the film Sicko, but I imagine Michael Moore covers most of the traditional arguments.

(Part 1) Understanding the resistance to Socialized Medicine

Many Americans believe that if you introduce a “socialist” medical system that the quality of healthcare will die out. Marketisation is so integral to the American way of life that the only way to ensure someone is giving you their best is to make the system unreliable. In fact, this just ensures that those that can afford it get the best medical care and those that can’t, should work harder so they can afford it.

They oppose systems like Medicare because they believe it affects the care they’re given. The fear is that if you introduce something as simple as the government paying the doctor instead of him “earning” his own pay checks, all doctors will start leaving scissors inside your grandmother because they don’t care anymore; their salary is secure as it is paid for by the government.

The other fear is that they are convinced that they’ll have to wait a few hours for treatment like in Canada, and nobody ever wants to be Canada.

The market is so important in the USA that the very mention of the word socialist suggests that Stalin is ready to pop out of the grave and stamp on your daughter’s pet rabbit, then steal a portion of carrot to give to the poorer rabbit across the street. The term, in American discourse, is a relic of the Cold War, and it still sounds like is has nuclear weapons aimed at the declaration of independence.

(Part 2) National Security: Fighting Terrorism and Pandemics

Imagine for a moment that the country has been attacked by a terrorist network which has released a highly contagious biological weapon in a train station. The subway is used by both poor and rich people, but because the location is underground it should be easy to quarantine. The scenario can also be applied to natural pandemics like Swine Flu which can be passed on through the air.

Given that healthcare is marketised, the rich get a good service and the poor get a bad service, which works on any normal day. The problem is that disease does not discriminate by wealth, so both poor and rich people have equal chance of becoming ill. The result is that the though the rich are able to cure themselves, the poor cannot because they are not seen to, and the rich are still at risk. It is in the interests of the rich to make sure the poor are healthy.

With an NHS, everybody receives some sort of basic, minimum treatment to vaccinate against the disease, and thus the spread can be stopped. It also makes certain that the state has a co-ordinated, organised, tried-and-tested procedure for dealing with large-scale emergencies, instead of one doctor and his private practice doing the best he can.

This also prevents private practices from hoarding resources that are desperately needed elsewhere, as the Ministry of Health will be in charge of allocating equipment, and even human resources.

In Britain, the NHS issued a leaflet to every household in the country explaining what Swine Flu is and what to do about it, and Health Secretary Andy Burnham has now told doctors they can diagnose patients on the spot instead of lab-testing. I hope the USA will realise that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone.

100 Bush-Free Days

Today marks Barack Obama’s 100th day in the White House. I have no idea how or why we need to judge him at day 100, since its little more than a nice figure to look at. 3 months, perhaps. 6 months, I get. Days, I do not.

Regardless, I’ve always been a cynical supporter of Obama. (Once, Twice, Thrice.) I still think America is as polarised and divided as it was 101 days ago, (arbitrary figure) but at least I’m on the side that’s winning at last.

On the flip-side, the Republicans are acting as if the Russians had invaded, I don’t catch Fox news much, for fear of catching something worse, like swine flu, but the clips I see are certainly not isolated examples.

Like some, I was sceptical that Obama would see himself as an American President rather than a world leader, and he would act as an American rather than a statesman (This was around the time of the “Buy American” protectionist debate). However, he’s made plenty of decisions that should have been made a long time ago.

It’s a shame he has to deal with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, but it’s not a shame that he’s the one to deal with it.

Best of luck to him.

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In other news, my best friend from school died today. I always remember going to stay with him for a week when I was seven, while my brother was being born. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to the funeral due to exams; I’m not sure I’ll even get an invite, since I hadn’t seen him in eight years.

The Wax Wings of Barack Obama

Obamamania will end in disappointment for all. Barack Obama’s media portrayal, persona and reception really are too good to be true, and the result will be hubris on his part and disillusionment on ours.

While there is a feeling of inevitability (a word used advisedly) that Obama is the president-in-waiting, his image is also built around the theme of “Hope”- everything is designed to suggest that he is some sort of Messiah. His logo, a capital letter “O” in the colours of the American flag, with a sort of rainbow at the bottom, giving the roof of the “O” the look of a rising son in the horizon inspire great expectations. Even the image on the cover of his book “The Audacity of Hope” with him wearing an almost glowing white shirt in front of a white background reinforces this god-like impression.

Obama has been on a “world tour” recently meeting various heads of state/government supposedly trying to rectify his perceived weakness as someone with a lack of foreign policy experience. While this is done with admirable intention, the concern is that, in addition to acting as if he were the current president of the USA, Obama has been taking extreme liberties with European leaders.

Obama seems uninterested in Europe, using it for his ‘experience building’ (as much experience as anyone can gain when they go on a holiday trip, despite being chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee responsible for the continent. The French newspaper Le Monde announced on July 24 that Obama has never asked to meet the European Union’s ambassador in Washington.

This primadonna behaviour was particularly evident not in Berlin, where he was greeted by about 200,000 cheering and fawning supporters, but in London, where he was given a low-key reception outside 10 Downing Street, which made him no more humble. He had a meeting with Gordon Brown followed by a press conference, which Obama conducted on his own, despite the fact that it would be unthinkable for a British prime minister to appear in the White House Rose Garden without the president.

At this stage of the campaign, rhetoric and personality takes priority over real policy, and for the moment at least, Europeans adore Obama. When it becomes time to talk about the issues, especially trade and defence, where Obama has advocated protectionism and hinted that Europe should commit more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, the shine may wear off. Barack Obama has not even been elected yet, and may just be the hare to McCain’s tortoise.

Bush Makes a State of the Union

George W. Bush has recently given what is expected to be his last State of the Union address. This is not a political obituary, but with all the coverage given to the presidential race currently, it seems as if the Bush clock has already expired.

The tone of the address was much different to last year. The message before was “We need more troops” while this year it has changed to “The surge is working.” The number of mentions of Iraq is particularly interesting. 0 in 2001, 2 in 2002, 22 in 2003, 24 in 2004, 27 in 2005, 16 in 2006, 34 in 2007, 38 in 2008.

By way of achievements, it is fair to say that on average Americans pay less tax, this is a promise he has delivered, broadly speaking. He also promised reforms of the pension scheme as well as the immigration problem, but both have failed miserably. In a wider sense, the entire campaign for the social conservatism agenda, a sentiment fuelled by his core supporters, including restrictions on the access to abortions as well as gay rights, have really amounted to very little.

His real “success” has been in the Supreme Court. Ronald Reagan appointed three judges in his time, two of which turned out to be rather unreliable conservatives. George W. Bush has appointed two solidly conservative Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito and John Roberts. The Supreme Court is responsible for making hugely important decisions, including a constitutional re-examination of ‘the right to bear arms’ later this year and as a result of Bush’s appointments, the Court moves from the centre ground and now leans to the right. In a year, Bush will be gone, but his judges will be around for years and possibly even decades.

Nevertheless, Bush seems to be fading away, like a radioactive substance going through the half-life process. Due to his political toxicity, the Republican presidential candidates are constantly trying to identify and compare themselves with Ronald Reagan instead of backing up Bush.

Ultimately, this is not necessarily Bush’s final State of the Union address; in the past, some presidents have decided to add in another burst of rhetoric just before the inauguration of their successor, but it is nobody really expects the USA’s 43^rd president to bother.

Only In America: The Gold Medal of International Politics Goes to…

The question raised by every political commentator this week comes from America; Will the USA elect its first black male, its first white female, or its forty-fourth rich white male, to the presidency?

The answer is, of course, impossible to tell at this stage; the parties are in the process of choosing their candidates. The one thing we can discern safely is that the reason that the race has started so early, and has been given so much media coverage, is because of the appalling current government. Now, Americans are so keen to get rid of George W. Bush, some members of congress are reviving calls to impeach the president (something that was ruled out months ago by Nancy Pelosi), while the public and media seems to have all but forgotten the loony lame-duck president.

There are 295 days to go though, which means about 42 weeks of campaigning. In the United Kingdom, there are a maximum of 3 weeks, by which time the nation is standing on a high ledge screaming “Someone please make the chattering stop!” However, Europeans may be forgiven for assuming that the Democrats will win the presidential election, regardless of whether they choose Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton. This is a mistake though, as it was though John Kerry could have won in 2004. While the Democrat Race is essentially a two-horse race, although John Edwards is a viable third choice, the Republican contest is much more difficult to predict. In the last few months, we have seen a huge comeback from John McCain (who won New Hampshire), Mike Huckabee has propelled himself from the fringe to the front (winning Iowa), while Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have started to slip away.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, with all his progressive and modern views (he does not believe in evolution, thinks foreign people should more-or-less be imprisoned, and has equated homosexuality with necrophilia) resonated with Iowans. Huckabee was also joined on stage throughout the Iowa campaign by Chuck Norris. Now, readers may be forgiven for thinking that there must be another Chuck Norris, perhaps a professor of politics somewhere or maybe even a lesser known senator; there’s no way he would take kung-fu star on stage with him, in a presidential primary. I am afraid you are wrong. It is that Chuck Norris, the one from Way of the Dragon and who has the same birthday as I do (March 10^th).

While it is anyone’s guess in the long term, the second primary, New Hampshire, has confounded absolutely everyone, not just in the journalistic circles, but also on the campaign buses. On the Democratic side, it was thought that Obama would be proclaimed the overall victor, having already won the Iowa vote. Clinton though, having come third place in Iowa, was able to pip Obama.

The analysts are working overtime. Never in history has every single poll been so dismally wrong; Obama showed a firm lead between the primaries, with no sign of slowing momentum. So the question is how did Hilary manage it? TIME Magazine lists about 30 different theories.

The other question has been the focus of some commentators, and one important theory; can Hilary cry herself to the White House? One explanation for her win in NH was her little emotional breakdown in a small café last Monday. A female voter has just asked her how she managed to stay so upbeat, which prompted a small display of tears. Usually criticised for being a witch, lacking humanity and compassion, it can be argued that this emotional outburst allowed her to endear herself to the women vote, a key demographic for Obama. The other explanation has been that younger and new voters, the cornerstone of the Obama support, failed to turn out in a significant enough number.

Everything is on the table; Prof. Jon Krosnick of Stanford University has another argument: That the order of names on the New Hampshire ballot – in which, by random draw, Clinton was toward the top, Obama at the bottom – netted her about 3 percentage points more than she would have had otherwise. European voters may find it hard to comprehend that this could actually make a difference, but around 40% of the voters who turned up were still undecided on the day.

Political theorists have also tried to understand the Obama defeat with an old phrase known as “The Bradley Effect” or in his case “The Reverse Bradley Effect”. It originates from a man named Tom Bradley in 1982 and his campaign to become Governor of California. Bradley was an African American and registered a consistent poll lead as the election approached, but then still lost. The idea behind the theory is that White voters try to make themselves look good by telling pollsters that they support a black candidate, when in fact they do not. The Iowa Primary was not a secret ballot, and so a voter could be seen whom they support by their neighbours. The population of Iowa is the third whitest in the country, so Iowans may well have supported Obama as a gesture, giving him the win (hence the ‘reverse’ effect). Conversely, as the New Hampshire choice was a secret ballot, it is likely that voters claimed to vote for Obama and told this to the pollsters, while actually voting for Hilary.

Still, do not assume it will be Obama or Clinton in the White House. The USA still has a firm republican base, it is important to realise that after the primaries, the real election will take place.

Article originally published in Impact on 14/01/08