My husband and I each subscribe to a weekly magazine: he to Marianne, which is politically aggressive for French standards, and I to Time. When I saw this week's editions side-by-side on our coffee table, a picture of Obama on the French magazine cover caught my eye. Below it was a foreboding question that has been omnipresent in the French media since the summer: "Will he lose because he's black?" As though in reply, Time boasted its own passport-sized snapshot of Obama with the headline: "Race is not the key to the U.S. election." I'm sure most French people would think that this was just hypocritical American political correctness talking. Call it what you like. (Personally, I prefer "rosy naïveté.") But, for once, Americans are analyzing a current event with greater nuance than the French. And I must say, it feels good to have something to be proud of again (and, no, I don't mean lipstick and Naughty Monkeys).Katherine Houghton as Joey Drayton. [Online image] 1967.
