Saturday scrolling

I wish I wrote down ideas for posts when I get them, because then life gets in the way, and I forget.

This has not been a good week. Those bombings in Mumbai...still not clear, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Two Frenchies were killed, apparently the founder of Princesse Tam Tam, an underwear brand and her husband (I haven't checked this, read it in the paper).

The Socialist's warfare seems to have abated for a while, they elected Martine Aubry, and now I'm waiting for the next self-implosion. The state of the left in this country is pathetic. They just fight for power all the time, and none of them seem to realise the consequences. I mean, I'm nineteen and I could tell them that they're just making themselves ridiculous and completely discrediting whatever they could do.

One thing I've been thinking about is power in France. We're often told there aren't enough female politicians in powerful places, but A) I'm not sure that's true, I don't have the statistics, and we do have a lot of female names cropping up every day in the news, the most common at the moment being Segolène Royal and Martine Aubry, and B) I don't think that's the point. No-one in France could do an Obama, ever : what, eight years of politics, and becoming president?
No fucking way.
Sarkozy presented himself as a reformer when he turned up : what a lot of foreigners don't realise is that he's been in politics for thirty years.
A job in politics here is all about the game. We're so very stuck in Machiavel. Many politicians, most politicians tend to use their power for themselves a lot.
Which I think is why they don't want more rivals. Things could change a lot if more female politicians, powerful ones, spoke out for the cause of women in general, had female protégées, thought about sharing even a bit-but it doesn't work like that here.

Sarkozy has female protégées, more than male ones come to think of it, such as Rachida Dati and Rama Yade. Has he furthered their careers? Hell yeah. No-one had actually heard of them before he gave them their jobs.
Not that it protected them.
I have little respect for Rachida Dati. She has no idea of what compromise is, and seems to prefer showing off in tabloids than actually working. But as she whines a lot, she's the daughter of two illiterate Algerian immigrants who became a lawyer by herself. That commands my respect, whatever happens.
Rama Yade is the daughter of an African diplomat. She seems intelligent, but her job doesn't allow her to show it at all. She's a political prop more than anything else, unfortunately. I'd like to see what she's capable of, and I'd love to see her prove the naysayers wrong.

But she's put herself in the power of a very dominant man, and sarkozy is not going to let anyone steal his thunder, not that a state secretary could, but he will do anything to keep the useful people and get rid of the deadweights. Rama is still useful; she does what he says, she doesn't create scandals or controversies, and she looks good as a young black woman in his government.

She isn't a Segolene Royal, who for all her craziness these days has been a very strong woman through her life; she got away from the dominating influence of her military father in her late teens, and became the first female candidate to the presidency to get to the second round.
Here's the thing. I don't like Segolene Royal, she acts strangely and goes with the flow, uttering a few crazy things along the way for shock value.
But she earned what she got, and she fought all the way, all the way to the primaries for the Socialist candidate for the presidency in 2007, when some of the left candidates asked "but who will take care of the children?" disparagingly.

Hmmm