So Long, Marine?

A lot of people, not necessarily French, feel sorry for Marine Le Pen. The leader of the far-right National Rally had one desperate ambition: to be president of France. Perhaps her best chance of entering the Élysée Palace was in 2027. Emmanuel Macron cannot run for another term. Neither the Gaullist Republicans nor the Socialists have a candi­date to match. Her biggest enemy is the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, along with Prime Minister François Bayrou, is dis­turbed by the court verdict banning her from public office with immediate ef­fect and a partly suspended jail term later. But while her party might believe the French public shares its outrage, only 31 per cent responding to a poll felt the verdict was undemocratic. In contrast, 37 per cent had said they might vote for her in 2027. There lies her problem: most people don’t contest that she (her party) is guilty of embezzling EU funds. Her far-right friends like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán may proclaim “Je suis Marine” but this isn’t quitethe plot of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission. That was, after all, politics. This is the law. And two years is an eternity in the former.

The Great Gatsby at 100

Literature’s most infamous lines were written by its greatest practitioner— Shylock’s first words “Three thousand ducats”—encap­sulating more of the history of anti-Semitism than most tomes. Dostoevsky’s most brilliant line, perhaps, is when Svidrigailov stares at Dunya’s gun and says “Now that changes everything.” F Scott Fitzgerald gave us two lines that changed everything even as the American Dream died a million deaths. “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge…”

and “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”, courtesy Nick Carraway. The Great Gatsby turns 100 on April 10. Fitzgerald was already famous but his masterpiece wasn’t an instant hit. The Jazz Age had crashed and burned on October 29, 1929. Nobody wanted to be reminded of the rich with nothing to do. But then critics rescued both book and author, as did American soldiers reading it through World War II. Flappers, Prohibition-era speakeasies, Jazz-Age raves, consumerism on steroids—it’s all there, summed up in one word: Decadence. Having inspired films, TV shows, operas and musicals, Gatsby, in retrospect, came close to the Great Ameri­can Novel with its quintessen­tially American hero.

Senate Marathon

If you can’t do, just talk. Then call it resistance. Democrats didn’t win either of the Florida special elections whereby they expected to inch closer to a majority to take the House but New Jersey Senator Cory Booker made history with the longest Senate speech lasting 25 hours and 5 minutes, covering all of Monday (March 31) night and Tuesday evening. The 55-year-old former football player said he would hold the floor as long as he was “physically able”, showing Democratic voters the party was doing every­thing to resist President Donald Trump’s agenda. Speech is easy, even when it lasts a day.

Cory BookerFrancegeopliticsGlobetrotterMarine Le PenNew JerseyThe Great Gatsby