Word: frenched
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...Others are worried, though. Fleshing out how people view the concept of Frenchness today has sparked controversy, as one might expect. Detractors have loudly denounced the initiative as stealing the national-identity page from Le Pen's playbook - and casting suspicion on immigrants, naturalized citizens and French-born minorities as posing threats to it. Some opponents have also accused the government of using an emotive issue to try to divert attention from a series of high-profile political scandals in recent months, such as the accusations of nepotism surrounding a bid by President Nicolas Sarkozy's son to attain...
...French public seems to be either split or confused by the government's motivations in calling for the debate. One poll published on Oct. 29 showed that 64% of people believe the issue is being used "above all as an electoral tool," but in another poll released three days later, 60% of respondents favored a debate on the topic...
...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...
...creates the notion that immigration poses a threat to national identity - which can inspire racism," Mouloud Aounit, president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples, told the daily l'Humanité on Nov. 2. "But this debate also reveals an identity crisis of a part of French society ... and the failure of its model of integration, which doesn't allow people to do just that...
...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...