2007/03/30 Amsterdam
Happy days
Cette obsession du drapeau
The French newspaper Le Figaro published an interview with presidential candidate Bayrou.
Le Figaro asked him: “Êtes-vous d'accord avec Ségolène Royal qui veut que les Français mettent le drapeau tricolore à leur fenêtre le 14 Juillet ?”
And Mr. Bayrou answered: “
“Jamais en France il n'y a eu cette obsession du drapeau. Cela, c'est la culture américaine.”
The obsession with national identity is by no means limited to the Netherlands or the Balkan.
It seems to me especially interesting when a leftwing candidate for president turns the anthem and the flag into the center of her campaign.
After socialism with a human face we are going to see the slow advance of socialism with a carnivalesque face. Happy days are coming.
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5 comments 
And your observation that Happy Days are coming is, I take it, not entirely void of irony.
(ps: referring to comments a while ago: yes, you may start a sentence with 'and'. And in Dutch, I slike to start as many sentences as possible with 'I'. Come to thinks of it: so do most journalists these days.) And so on. And so forth. And.
(ps: referring to comments a while ago: yes, you may start a sentence with 'and'. And in Dutch, I slike to start as many sentences as possible with 'I'. Come to thinks of it: so do most journalists these days.) And so on. And so forth. And.
I like, instead of I slike. Sorry, typo.
No, no!
No, no, Tess, happy days are coming indeed. It all depends on how you define happiness of course. Today is Friday and Friday is for me almost completely void of irony.I don't like carnival.
Socialism with a carnival’s face! Praise Mankind! (De Mensheid zij geprezen) By the way this is a book so delicious I wish I had written it myself. So Mr. Grunberg, if you ever break under torture feel free to declare ‘Oh no, it is not me nor Marek van der Jagt, it is Jan Thys who wrote that dreadful sinful book. Please torture him, not me’. At least there will be a jolly good reason for our futures sufferings.
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