So this morning on France Culture radio a Germain daily — a German daily — was quoted as describing the effect it feels the American presidential primaries are producing on the American public as ‘collective hysteria.’ Germans accusing Americans of collective hysteria. The French views, if not hypocritical, still revealed how a country which, on the one hand, offered more choices on the far Left in its General Election than Americans will get in total for theirs, on the other hand still often cleaves to sexist and racialist points of view:
**Thus Maria Shriver, who has never adapted her husband’s last name, was called Maria Schwarzenegger by a French newscaster.
**Barak Obama is constantly referred to as ‘Black.’ Never mind that this country thinks it doesn’t see people in racial terms; never mind that Obama is actually Metisse or mixed; never mind — most important — that Obama represents not racialism but post-racialism.
**And a French Socialist representative actually said that the election of a woman would bring a needed serenity to the world stage. (At least he didn’t say she’d be too hysterical.)
