Michael Stevenson, aka Dai Bando, Johnny Foreigner, Monsieur Pas De Merde, is a blogger of French and British culture. His blogs "Pas De Merde" and "The Hobbledehoy" have been called "marvelous" by some, and "meh" by others.
This morning began with House Democrats filing one article of impeachment against Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection.” It makes its case by noting that Trump’s months of lies about the election and his inflammatory speech to the rally on January 6– including lines like “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore”—led directly to “violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.”
The article also noted Trump’s attempt to subvert the election through his phone call on January 2, 2021, to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he “find” enough votes to overturn the results of the presidential election in the state. Including this in the impeachment article will prevent Georgia Governor Brian Kemp from pardoning Trump for it.
The article says that Trump is, and will remain, “a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.” He must be removed from office and disqualified from any future positions in the U.S. government.
This document and the procedures around it tell us far more than their simplicity suggests.
A political fond farewell from British-Indian novelist Hari Kunzru
“Mike Pence, you repressed joyless would-be witchfinder, every time you spoke you always looked like you were straining to expel an enormous bolus of your own hypocrisy from your clenched sphincter.
“Betsy DeVos, you blandly foolish soulless entitled child-stealing witch, rotting like a corpse inside your Chanel suit.
“Kayleigh McEnenay, you evacuated husk of a mean-girl cheerleader, the cavity where your heart once was pumped full of spite and moronic lies.
“Bill Barr, you vast pompous pus-filled bladder of casuistry, you are an enemy of justice, bloated with resentment and cruelty, wobbling like a jelly at the feet of the oligarchs.
“Jared Kushner, you vacuous dainty preening overpromoted nub of mediocrity, squeezed like an entitled smear of toothpaste into a silk suit bought with tear-stained dollars wrung out of the suffering tenants of your slum apartments.
“Ivanka Trump, you monstrous slug of vanity, you infantile ninny so marinaded in self-regard that in your pea brain you believe we ought to love you for your crimes.
“Mike Pompeo, you bubble, you booby, you flatulent zero, that roiling in your ample guts that you mistake for world shaking significance is just the acid reflux of irrelevancy.
“Don Junior, you scabrous single-nostriled unloved elephant-murdering human wreckage, vibrating with bitterness and impotent rage at all the opportunities you’ve squandered.
“Interlude: all you staffers and interns, so eager to crunch your way in your shiny new work shoes over the bodies of the poor and powerless, I smite you and cast you out one by one.
“Eric Trump, you pallid clammy suppurating nocturnal semi-human grub, your absence of charisma is your only notable trait and the act of flushing you from memory will so be smooth and painless that in a month people will find it hard to picture your moon face.
“Rudy Giuliani, you capering cartoonish skull-faced bag of graft and corruption, too stupid even to ask who’s pulling your strings just so long as you can cake your crusty face in tv make-up and clack your jaw at a camera.
“And of course Stephen Miller, you weeping pustule upon the social body, you dreg, you homunculus, you noxious slime felched from the gaping cavity of Jim Crow, one day may you find yourself walking barefoot across hot sand, desperate for water, crying for your missing child.
“With that I’ll rest a while, and go to find a street corner to dance on.”
Mayor Anne Hidalgo gives green light to £225m-scheme to transform French capital’s most famous avenue
The mayor of Paris has said a €250m (£225m) makeover of the Champs-Élysées will go ahead, though the ambitious transformation will not happen before the French capital hosts the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The Champs-Élysées committee has been campaigning for a major redesign of the avenue and its surroundings since 2018.
“The legendary avenue has lost its splendour during the last 30 years. It has been progressively abandoned by Parisians and has been hit by several successive crises: the gilets jaunes, strikes, health and economic,” the committee said in a statement welcoming Hidalgo’s announcement.
“It’s often called the world’s most beautiful avenue, but those of us who work here every day are not at all sure about that,” Jean-Noël Reinhardt, the committee president said in 2019.
“The Champs-Élysées has more and more visitors and big-name businesses battle to be on it, but to French people it’s looking worn out.”
The committee held a public consultation over what should be done with the avenue. The plans include reducing space for vehicles by half, turning roads into pedestrian and green areas, and creating tunnels of trees to improve air quality.
The Champs-Élysées’ name is French for the mythical Greek paradise, the Elysian Fields. It was originally a mixture of swamp and kitchen gardens.
André Le Nôtre, Louis XIV the Sun King’s gardener, first designed the wide promenade lined with a double row of elm trees on each side, called the Grand Cours.
It was renamed the Champs-Élysées in 1709 and extended, and by the end of the century had become a popular place to walk and picnic.
An image showing the planned redevelopment of the Champs-Élysées. Photograph: PCA-Stream
Paris celebrated the 1944 liberation from Nazi occupation on the Champs-Élysées and World Cup victories still bring out the crowds, but its famous charm has faded and it is mostly shunned by Parisians.
Today it is famous for its expensive cafes, luxury shops, high-end car salesrooms, commercial rents among the highest in the world and the annual Bastille Day military parade.
Before the Covid-19 crisis halted international tourism, the architect Philippe Chiambaretta, whose firm PCA-Stream drew up the makeover plans, said that of the estimated 100,000 pedestrians on the avenue every day, 72% were tourists and 22% work there.
The eight-lane highway is used by an average of 3,000 vehicles an hour, most passing through, and is more polluted than the busy périphérique ring road around the French capital, he added.
Chiambaretta said the Champs-Élysées had become a place that summed up the problems faced by cities around the world, “pollution, the place of the car, tourism and consumerism”, and needed to be redeveloped to be “ecological, desirable and inclusive”.
The plans also include redesigning the famous Place de la Concorde – Paris’s largest place – at the south-east end of the avenue, described by city hall as a “municipal priority”. This is expected to be completed before the Olympic Games. The aim is to transform the Champs-Élysées by 2030.
Hidalgo told Le Journal du Dimanche that the project was one of several intended to transform the city “before and after 2024”, including turning the area around the Eiffel Tower into an “extraordinary park at the heart of Paris”.
In France, every child is now obliged to have 11 vaccinations. If parents want their children to attend school, or take part in many extracurricular activities, they must accept. There is no opt-out or concessions made to vaccine doubters.
On Monday France’s government and health authorities are speeding up the country’s Covid-19 vaccine drive – a process complicated by widespread scepticism about the inoculation that has encompassed the usual global conspiracy theories.
“There’s a very big difference between what the French say and what they do,” he told the Guardian. “And polls whose methodology and questions can seem abstract do not reflect what happens when people know where they will have the vaccine, what it does, the how, when and why.”
Laurent-Henri Vignaud, Science historian
For weeks, polls have suggested up to 60% of French citizens do not wish to be vaccinated. As the government’s vaccine operation enters its third week, official figures show that as of Saturday at least 93,000 people had been given the jab – a much lower number than elsewhere in Europe, including the UK, Germany and Italy.
Killing Eve withdrawal? Pencil in some time for Call My Agent
BY KATE FINNIGAN
Those still craving the TV fashion fix of Killing Eve might currently find some box-set style satisfaction in Call My Agent! (Dix Pour Cent), the hit French comedy drama on Netflix. Set in a Parisian talent firm called ASK, it follows four agents dealing with the dramatic highs and lows of representing the biggest stars in France – Isabelle Adjani, Juliette Binoche and Monica Bellucci and dozens of other actors happily send themselves up in the show.
Fast-paced and funny, it’s been going since 2015 with the third series just released this month (only six episodes per season, so easy to catch up). And while clothes are incidental to the show – which deals not only with diva strops and demanding directors but also equal pay, sexism, racism and the comic hell of office romance – the female characters’ chic Parisian style is a pleasing bonus and one we’re taking hard note of for office dressing inspiration. Here’s a quick guide to the key players and their style before you settle in.
Andréa Martel
The style star of the show is the badass agent played by Camille Cottin, who tells it like it is, parties like its 1999 and is a serial womaniser. A die-hard Parisian (her response to finding herself in the countryside with no phone reception is to call the police) she’s blessed with great hair and the legs of Emmanuelle Alt. Her uniform is modern French Vogue to a (slubby V-neck) T: skinny jeans, stiletto-heeled ankle boots, sharp navy and black blazers and a slouchy black leather tote. By night she goes for back-bearing dresses, ramping it up with gold sequined hot pants and a waist-coat, garnished with a bow-tie (only in Paris) for a party at a theatre, and a cool metallic shift dress by Martin Grant for the Cannes opening ceremony. Did I mention she has great legs?
2/7
Colette Brancillon
In series one, Andréa becomes besotted with the uptight tax auditor Colette (Ophélia Kolb). Colette does excellent trench coat and fierce pony tail for work but transforms into a pre-Raphaelite goddess in soft cashmeres at home.
3/7
Sofia Leprince
Receptionist and aspiring actress Sofia (Stéfi Celma) rocks a natural afro and has a smile like Julia Roberts. Whether doing the post round for her ungrateful colleagues or legging it to auditions with vile, racist/sexist directors, she’s an athleisure devotee in trainers, leggings and racer-back vests. Watch her style evolve into rich tonal colours and knee-high boots in series three as she starts to find success.
4/7
Camille Valentini
Fanny Sidney’s new-girl-in-town arrives in series one in dreary pastels and purple Converse, but when she snags a job as Andréa’s assistant she ups her Parisian style game. Think Vanessa Bruno velvet bomber jackets and spriggy floral and polka dot shirts (very Soeur Paris) worn with straight-leg jeans and block-heeled ankle boots. For after-work parties she does short LBBs and bare legs.
Catherine Barneville
The glamorous wife of untrustworthy agent, Matthias, Catherine (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) is in her fifties with a yoga-honed body and a nice line in vintage kimonos and antique earrings. She wears Louboutin boots to the hairdressers and you just know her lingerie collection is all devastating La Perla.
Laure Calamy’s voluptuous brunette assistant has a pounding desire for her boss, Matthias. She’s overtly feminine in low-cut print dresses – we’ve spotted at least one from & Other Stories – wide leather belts to emphasise her waist, and mid-heeled pumps. She likes vivid colour because she’s that kind of girl.
Liliane Rovère’s Arlette is a veteran agent and actress and works a version of classic Chanel with artistic Left Bank flair – boucle cardigans, sparkly knits, long skirts and wide trousers with flat shoes, accessorized with silk flowers, ginormous costume earrings and layers of long necklaces. Because in Paris, as in life, one is never too old for glamour.
“We believe in the strength of our democracies. We believe in the strength of American democracy… A universal idea — that of ‘one person, one vote’ — is undermined”
