Word: besson
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...newsweekly Marianne calls him "the most hated man in France." A Socialist legislator recently compared him to Pierre Laval -the wartime French official who most enthusiastically collaborated with the nation's Nazi occupiers. Such contempt isn't usually directed at someone in a rather anonymous cabinet role. But Eric Besson, the Minister for Immigration, Integration and National Identity, is different: he's currently overseeing a national debate on French identity that detractors on both the left and the right say stigmatizes minorities and immigrants. And yet, despite the fierce criticism and controversy, he's the cabinet member President Nicolas Sarkozy...
...Marianne headline attests, there's something in Besson that just about everyone in France can detest. A former Socialist party official, Besson is considered the consummate traitor by the left after defecting from the 2007 presidential campaign of Ségolène Royal over strategy differences and throwing his support behind Sarkozy, the conservative candidate. Since then, he's embraced his new right-wing faith with the zealousness of a convert, making many long-time conservatives uncomfortable. Chief among his more hard-line moves has been the decision to hold an ongoing series of town hall meetings across France...
...discussions are to take place during hundreds of locally organized town-hall meetings involving education, union and cultural officials and ordinary people concerned about the state of French identity. Among the questions Besson has suggested for the debates: Should France implement "integration contracts," which would set minimal levels of language and cultural knowledge for citizenship; and should students be required to sing the national anthem "La Marseillaise" at least once a year? (Read "Booing the 'Marseillaise': A French Soccer Scandal...
...Besson's supporters say the goal, however, is not to single out immigrants and minorities, but rather to safeguard the unique aspects of the French identity that they perceive as being threatened by foreign influences. "Globalization erases a little more of every nation's characteristics every day," says Frédéric Lefebvre, spokesman for Sarkozy's ruling Union for a Popular Majority Party. Given such cultural erosion, Lefebvre called for a defense of our "cultural model and la Douce France" - an allusion to crooner Charles Trenet's famous 1943 song rhapsodizing about the villages, people and traditions...
...Trenet's song was meant to be an inspiration to his countrymen to withstand the brutal Nazi occupation of France. Some of Besson's critics say the national-identity debate, meanwhile, is rooted in modern-day xenophobia, not nostalgia. Perhaps a solution might be to inspire patriotism by asking French people to warble Trenet's ditty regularly rather than dutifully drone "La Marseillaise" once a year...