French weekly magazines review

The French weeklies are dominated by a jobless May Day in France and President François Hollande’s horrible first year in office.

The French leader has not been sleeping on a bed of roses writes Le Nouvel Observateur, explaining that his life at the Elysée palace has instead been marked by bumps and blows.

The left-leaning magazine says the mood at the Elysée Palace is so bad that Hollande’s strategists have launched a secret survival operation to try to recoup his standing. Under the plan, Monsieur Hollande will give himself up until the summer, like François Mitterrand did in 1984, to find the best formula to bounce back. According to the weekly, between now and then, Hollande will spend time listening to public opinion and also to what Germany really wants.

Le Canard Enchaîné picks out the new French unemployment record of 3.2 million jobseekers as one of the failures of the Hollande presidency. According to the weekly, looming recession has thrown commentators into fits of ecstasy with everyone posing as the doctor France needs.

The satirical weekly ridicules some who are calling for a reduction of austerity policies, with others prescribing deep cuts in public spending and the capping of salaries, starting from the top of the pyramid. According to Le Canard the so-called experts are fooling themselves as no government has bothered to try any of the recipes they are proposing.

With the Socialist party facing a revolt from back benchers, over the Socialists’ failure to deal with record level unemployment, the party pointed to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the cause of their woes.

Le Point expresses shock at an unprecedented wave of “Germanophobia” sweeping through the French Socialist party, marked by a blistering attack on the German chancellor. According to the right-wing weekly, a draft document to be presented to the party’s European convention slammed what it termed the “Thatcherism ” of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who yearns for an à la carte Europe weakened by the “egotistical intransigence” of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The document, inspired by “rebels” such as National Assembly President Claude Bartolone, called for an “open confrontation” with the liberals in power in Germany as the best strategy to assist President Francois Hollande in his “arm twisting duel” with the “Chancellor of austerity”.

The toughly-worded statement was finally watered down, but Le Canard Enchaîné satirizes about the “great Merkel muddle up” at the ruling Socialist party. According to the weekly, the B52 bombers launched by the French Socialists on Berlin show their true state of mind.

For Le Canard, the socialists see Angela Merkel as the scapegoat of France’s woes, and that has exposed the ambiguous attitude upheld by the Elysée’s position on the German question.

Le Figaro wonders whether the French people can afford to tolerate President Hollande for another four years. The right-wing publication called on the respected Thomas Institute to evaluate Hollande’s first year in the Elysée. The think tank ruled that it was a year of missed promises and the squandering of the confidence capital bestowed on him by the French people.

L’Express is all about the young graduates, artists, researchers, experts, entrepreneurs and sports stars leaving France in droves. The runaways are not all tax evaders, says the right-wing journal, but mostly hard-working lads in search of their American dream, money glory and sunshine.

The right-wing magazine says it has documented some 10,000 new French immigrants who have resettled in Los Angeles in recent years. L’Express picked out Dubai as the new fiscal haven for French tycoons.

Le Point profiles a Ugandan lawmaker who sponsored a bill seeking the death penalty for homosexuals in the country. David Bahati, branded by the magazine as a moral maniac, is now pushing for a ban of pornography and all sorts of exotic practices in Uganda.

Le Point wishes Bahati good luck, pointing out that Uganda is one of the countries with the highest number of prostitutes per inhabitant in the world.

Marianne invites its readers to come visit its “idiot’s wall”. It’s a billboard where photographs of favourite blokes are pasted. The practice burst into the news after a journalist on assignment at the Magistrates Union office here in Paris filmed a poster bearing the faces of people they didn’t like.

The affair has sparked a political storm as most of the photos were of right-wing politicians and their cronies. Marianne says that while the neutrality of the syndicate’s left-leaning members is being questioned, even the most intelligent people also do stupid things.