On the Champs-Elysées, Thursday evening. An African man about 30 was sitting on a ledge out of the way of the pedestrian traffic. He was wearing a good suit and good shoes and had an expensive briefcase near his feet. One leg of his pants was rolled up. He had an intelligent face and looked like an educated man. But he had the most hopeless, despairing look on his face. He had nowhere to go.
Today it came to me that I have seen a name for that look-- the thousand-mile stare. Somehow this man was one of the saddest sights I've ever seen.
I wanted to go over and help him, but I was afraid he would take it the wrong way.
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Jacques Chirac just got out of the hospital and is back in the Presidential palace of Matignon. It's remarkable how while he was gone, the French press treated him as if he were dead and there were a duel going on between his two possible successors, the présidentiables "Sarko"and Dominique de Villepin. No one in the media even pretended to believe the announcements from Chirac's bedside. That's because of the massive lying during the reign of the late President François Mitterrand, who had first a dangerous and then a fatal disease while in office, completely hidden from the public. At his funeral his grown daughter by a mistress, Mazarine, also unknown to the public (but well-known in the dîners en ville), made her first appearance. When Mitterrand's doctor tried to publish a book about the illness, not only was the entire run confiscated but the doctor was barred from practicing medicine for atteinte à la vie privée.
No wonder the French could not understand why Nixon and Clinton were dragged over the coals for lying in office.
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