French media being all French about the royal wedding

With the Irish seemingly not interested in venting anti-monarchist sentiments today and the Australians apparently legally barred from doing so, it falls to France’s media commentators to treat today’s festivities with the appropriate air of ironic condescension: France Inter radio’s equivalent of the Today Programme was under no illusions that this ridiculous piece of folklore ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

With the Irish seemingly not interested in venting anti-monarchist sentiments today and the Australians apparently legally barred from doing so, it falls to France's media commentators to treat today's festivities with the appropriate air of ironic condescension:

With the Irish seemingly not interested in venting anti-monarchist sentiments today and the Australians apparently legally barred from doing so, it falls to France’s media commentators to treat today’s festivities with the appropriate air of ironic condescension:

France Inter radio’s equivalent of the Today Programme was under no illusions that this ridiculous piece of folklore would mask the Thatcherite horrors of Cameron’s austerity cuts and "tensions" over the voting system. "Social mobility, my arse" was the general theme of the debate with the panel fuming that high tuition fees had sent Britain "back to Victorian times" ensuring poor people could no longer access universities let alone leapfrog the class system à a la Middleton. Not to mention Britain’s outrageous axing of the Film Council.

Jean-Marie Le Guen, Socialist MP and supporter of the left’s potential presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn, sighed: "I do feel French republican about this. There’s opium of the people at play."

Marc Roche, the esteemed French analyst of the royals, wanted to set the record straight on William’s so-called modernity. "He speaks no foreign language, has little interest in world affairs and his entourage is essentially made up of aristocrats. He represents an England that is white, Protestant and noble in contrast to a civil society that is meritocratic and multicultural."

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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