MOST FRENCH AND AUSTRALIANS HAPPY ABOUT OBAMA

Eighty-four percent of French people are ‘satisfied’ with Obama’s victory. In fact, 36% are ‘totally satisfied’, according to an article in Le Monde, reporting on a survey of 1008 people of voting age who were asked their opinion on Wednesday.

In Australia, 75% of people polled in the last few weeks ‘wanted to see the 47 year-old African American become 44th president of the United States,’ according to an article in Melbourne’s Age, written by Michael Gawenda, who was that newspaper’s Washington correspondent from 2005-2007.

Back in Paris, left-wing newspaper Liberation has brought out a special Obama edition with 40 of its 48 pages ‘devoted to the first black president of the United States’. For readers who can’t get to the newspaper kiosks themselves, this and other special editions can be purchased in PDF form over the internet.

As many will recall, Liberation was founded in 1973 by a small group comprising Jean-Paul Sartre, and far-left journalist Serge July, who had been a prominent activist in the May 1968 events which began with student riots.

In May 1968 I was preparing for my first trip to France, organised by my school, to stay with my French penfriend Brigitte. When the riots started, my mother tore up my passport application. I went to the post office and got another one. By July, when my French teacher took the group of us over to France, everything had quietened down. In any case, we were going to Annecy, in Haute Savoie, a long way from Paris. In 1968 the trip from England to Annecy by train and ferry took 24 hours, longer than it takes me to fly from Melbourne to Paris these days!