Notes towards an histoire of George's underpants

The news from the Middle East is dismaying. I can’t bear to listen to the BBC go from one scene of carnage to the next. But it is curious that for the last six years France has been the voice of reason. After Canada and the United States, France is my third home. The French think of themselves as preeminently reasonable; in fact they consent to a rigid authoritarianism. For instance, the first few months I lived there back in 1967 everyone wore exactly the same extreme fashion. That’s what “fashionable“ meant. It was the mode. My friend Suzanne spent a dozen married years in Paris back then. Every year every French person bought two new outfits and wore them out. However, their underwear was generally many years old, and looked it. Anyway, a certain Texan is the antithesis of everything French. Starting with the Middle East, he’s wrecking the planet.