High-tech MÈtÈor panned

It's modern and fast, but a transportation expert tells LibÈration newspaper the new subway was not a wise investment.

The latest MÈtro line has attracted a few brickbats along with the hosannas. At least one critic feels the money spent on the ultra-modern MÈtÈor (short for MÈtro Est-Ouest Rapide) could have been better spent on a more modest tram system to serve the suburbs. The 7 billion franc MÈtÈor, which opened last month, links seven stations in the centre of town from Madeleine to BibliothËque FranÁois Mitterrand.  Using computer controlled, driverless trains that travel at 80 km per hour. the city's 14th MÈtro line is meant to relieve congestion on the RER's A line. But that makes no more sense than enlarging the autoroute du Sud because it is always jammed with traffic, urban transport expert Patrick Ecoutin told LibÈration. 

For the same cash poured into MÈtÈor, the city could have built 70 kilometers of tramway, double the length of the pÈriphÈrique, to serve the outer suburbs, Ecoutin says. He believes the new line will make Ch?telet an even busier transit centre than it is already, while doing nothing to create badly needed transportation hubs in other parts of the metropolis. The seven-kilometer MÈtÈor will eventually be expanded to a 20-kilometer system with 18 stations linking suburbs in the northwest to those in the southeast.

Reforming schools a mammoth task

Le Point magazine says France's education minister has a rocky road ahead to modernize the country's public schools.

With students mounting raucous demonstrations in the streets, the efforts of Education Minister Claude AllËgre to reform France's creaking public school system have come under the microscope. Upon taking office 16 months ago, AllËgre likened the system, top-heavy with bureaucracy and burdened by an intransigent teachers' union, to a "mammoth" that needed to go on a crash diet. 

In a recent cover story, Le Point gives the socialist minister credit for taking on the teachers and talking tough about trimming the fat. But taming the pachyderm at a time when one out of six children finishing primary school in France is unable to read or write remains an immense challenge, writes editorialist Claude Imbert.

Quite apart from the problems with a teachers' union that refuses to change its ways, the school system has been side-swiped by deep-seated changes in society, Imbert says. Many parents have simply given up on ensuring their children are properly educated. "There are those who cannot, do not want to or do not know how to devote themselves to the education of their children, with families tangled up in divorces, joblessness, working mothers, social fatigue and the TV drug."  

Le top du chic

"Tchatchez-vous cÈfran?" or "Parlez-vous FranÁais?" Le Nouvel Observateur tries to come to grips with the new slang sweeping the suburbs

Just when you think you've mastered standard French, you're flummoxed by some strange jivetalk that sort of sounds familiar,  but you can't make heads or tails of it.

Relax, you're not alone. Even lifelong Parisians are having trouble with "Tchatcher," the latest hip lingo from the outer suburbs to cock a snoot at the portals of the AcadÈmie FranÁaise. A mÈlange of franglais zapped from the Internet, rhyming squibs from rap songsters and the neologisms of adolescents trying to distance themselves from their elders, Tchatcher has become a new language unto itself, says Le Nouvel Observateur. In some circles "le top du chic c'est de savoir Tchatcher," the newsmagazine says.

While filled with anglicisms, the patter isn't that simple for Anglos to parse.  Especially when certain coinages are thrown in.  "Maille" for money or l'argent; feume for fille; "veug," which, derived from the French "grave" or serious, means "bien cool;" "airbag" for breasts; "airbag derriËre" for buttocks; and "nuigrave" for cigarette (from the warning printed on cigarette packages, "nuit gravement ý la santÈ.")

A more anglified dialect has pervaded the "shampouineuse jet-set" in Paris's upscale neighborhoods, Le Nouvel Observateur says. Scorned by the youngsters of the banlieues, the bourgeois equivalent of Tchatcher is inspired by OphÈlie Winter, the singer girlfriend of rap artist MC Solaar, who once confided that she liked to compose a "bizarre language" with friends that others couldn't understand. 

Homosexual rights held up

L'EvÈnement du Jeudi takes the Socialists to task for flubbing long promised equal rights laws.

The Socialists took a beating in the press over the rejection by parliament of the Pacs (Pacte civil de solidaritÈ) legislation. The bill to end discrimination against gays and lesbians had been long promised by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. But on the day the bill was voted, 54 members of Jospin's ruling party were absent, allowing right-wing deputies to defeat it.

The government has promised to reintroduce the bill this month, but the Socialist no-show performance at the Palais Bourbon was derided by many editorialists as shameful. The absenteeism was worse than accidental or involuntary, it was a "symbolic desertion," fumed Georges-Marc Benamou in L'EvÈnement du Jeudi.

A stimulating arrival

An American cure for impotence has arrived on French shores but a well-known commentator for LibÈration newspaper is not impressed.

Viagra est arrivÈ en France. And with it the sneaking suspicion that not all of the legendary French lovemakers  hommes, of course  are still up to it.

It's too early to tell what the French demand for the infamous love potion will be, but if the attention given by the media here to its recent introduction is any gauge, the interest may be more than academic.

Too bad, according to retired professor Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, who departs from the stereotype of his fellow countrymen. In an opinion piece for LibÈration, Cohn-Bendit deplores the tyranny of the penis and sexual intercourse in French life.

The hype surrounding Viagra only underscores the overimportance given to the male appendage, he asserts.