anaroundtheworld

I love presidential election time. It's a time when hearing the news you can see all the media tricks the candidate are playing on us.

Appart from the image marketing: Ségolène with her white jacket and Sarko with his white shirt, there's the lobbying on what should journalists say, how to influence the audience by auto-realising prophecies.

The most blatant example is the fact that Ségolène is a poor public speaker. Sarkozy being a very good one, just like me you might think "he's going to eat her up during the very first debate". Logical! I would think that having no charisma on meeting and be unable to formulate one's idea clearly is kind of a low point for a candidate.

But it might turn up very differently! Our left-side newspaper are praising this unability to speak in public, saying Ségolène is such a good example of what French people are today. Personally, most French being poor bad public speaker I would expect my future president to be a little bit above average. But what remains is that is not in the interest of Sarkozy to eat her up anymore, he'll look like the elitist bad guy.

Won't this level down the poltical debate? Should our president be an average Joe/Jane? Is it so bad to be part of an elite that you should hide it by anyway you can?

Today I wonder...

Is she a politician who can actually admit that she doesn't know everything and that opinion can evolve? That she doesn't always have the one and only solution just because she tought about it while cooking diner. That other people's opinion can contribute in finding better solutions?

Or she is just a would-be idol, as some Socialist Party's member said "with ségolène it's Pop Idol every day, we never know if she is not going to tell a blunder and be voted out of the island"

Well to decide I have only one question : yesterday night, was it possible to vote by sms?

Last week an Economics Nobel Prize winner was invited on the Le Monde chat room to discuss on the matter of inequalities.

As the chat was entertain by French people, the US were held as the perfect example of inequalities in the world.

Is that true? I mean I always considered the US as a land of opportunities! Had it changed so much?

And as our economist quoted his ex-teacher If I knew the answer to this tricky question, I would already be in New-York making money it tickled me: it seems natural this guy wasn't going to Paris with a good idea. No way he could make money there!

So here we have the average French Joe, holding the US as THE land of inequalities, thinking only about what we call in France "poor workers", the Mexican immigrant who has to put up with 2 jobs to live.

And on the other side a teacher who thinks of the US as THE land of opportunities and relate much more to the wealthy self-made business man driving his Ferrari to get to his house in Santa Monica.

Should we see a direct relation between inequalities and opportunities?

Here is my insight and please feel free to give me yours.

French are not ready to accept low-paid job or workers with 2 jobs. It remains something we should all unite against. Why? Because the poor guy has no hope here. What he is doing today is what he is going to do for the rest of his live. At least it is how we see it and that IN FACT makes it unbearable.

As in the US there is a way out. Why is it so much more accepted? Because it is not seen as fate.

And this thought, that there is no hope here, is what makes me a sad example of one of our French problem: la fuite des cerveaux (brain-drain).

I am no genius but a well-educated 23-year old girl. I am motivated and willing to work hard and become wealthy. I feel I have no unbreakable link with France and that the world is a 10-hour flight away. So what should I do? Stay and work in a country were the world liberalism is considered an insult? Were even with a wonderful work of imagination there is no way I will ever drive a Ferrari to my house on the beach.

Well, no! It's a shame but I see no opportunities here of making my ambitions come true and I'll be in line very soon among my classmates to sell this valuable education France gave me to another country.

Maybe we found a way of reducing the opportunities: letting ambitious ones go!