Conservatives and the French

Today after class, I was running errands for my family, listening to Rush Limbaugh (I know, I know, that was my first mistake, right?). A female caller, responding to something another called said about the French Presidential election effecting the US Pres Election in 2008, said that the election shows that 85% (don't know where she got this number since I think the guy won with only 54% of the vote, out of 84% turnout) that 85% of the French people didn't want to vote any more socialists into office and that didn't surprise her because most of the people in France, especially those living in the countryside, are basically decent people. (I should note, as a disclaimer, that I'm not absolutely sure this is what she said and that I'm not taking this from any transcripts, just what I remember hearing. I am probably wrong. I usually am. Maybe she was just saying that 85% of people voted and most of those were decent people who didn't want socialism and thus voted for the other guy.) Either way, I think she seems to be saying that no decent people could be for socialism and that the people in the country are both definately decent and against socialism, as opposed to those who live in the cities and the suburbs, many of whom might not be decent and might want socialism. Mmmmm....

Today was my first day of my intersession film class- Radical Changes Since 1945. It's three hours a day, five days a week for three weeks at the art house theater in Westport. Yea! Three weeks of non-stop films. And I get out early in the afternoon so I have the rest of the day to run errands and do whatever, unlike if I didn't have to be up for this class, in which case I'd be sleeping all day. But, to my point. our first reading was the introduction to Esslin's 1969 book Theater of the Absurd. When discussing why artists from all over the globe (meaning from all over European countries and America) came to Paris to work on their art, he writes that Paris isn't a French center for art but an international center for art, and that it is a magnet for people seeking the freedom to like an unconformist life and produce their art in an environment where they wouldn't have to be looking over their shoulder all the time to judge what their neighbors might think of them.

Is there something wrong with me that I appreciate the second description of France much more than the turn away from "socialism" that all the American conservatives are hoping will happen with this new president as expressed by the first paragraph?