If Johnny Carson were still around and hosting The Tonight Show, he might launch a bit during tonight's monologue with "Boy, it's really hot out there in Nîmes today…" and then the audience would burst in, sounding almost rehearsed and shouting, "HOW HOT IS IT?"
"It's so hot that the schoolchildren are passing out in class and nobody is allowed to do anything about it."
Wait, that isn't funny.
But it is the situation in Nîmes, a city of about 148,000 in a lovely part of the south of France. Actually, I've been in the south of France, and all the parts are lovely (except Marseille, of course), but I digress.
The region is suffering a record-breaking, early-summer heat wave with temperatures soaring as high as 40–44°C, the way the French reckon it, or 104–111°F in actual degrees. This is when Americans would set the thermostat to 68° (actual degrees) or maybe go see a movie at a theater where they keep it that temp all the time.
But at the École Primaire La Planette school in Nîmes, they have no air conditioning — naturellement — and according to Miss Jo on X and other sources, a child there "recently fainted because of the heat," even while "classes were being taught in corridors to get out of the heat."
Parents of the students there did what parents in America would almost certainly do in a similar situation, and they raised money to buy five portable air conditioning units for the school. The community got so involved that the parents needed just three days to raise the required €2,000.
So far, so good.
But Mayor Vincent Bouget is an actual member of the Parti communiste français (PCF), and if there's one thing Communists can't stand, it's the community doing stuff. Bouget ordered the school to remove the A/C because "it sets a precedent," and "in some neighborhoods, parents don’t have the means to act."
I mean, I guess those parents could hold a fundraiser like the other parents did. The community seemed pretty excited to jump in and help.
But no.
What was Winston Churchill just saying about socialism? Ah, yes — here's the quote: "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” That line actually dates back to a speech Churchill gave in Scotland in 1948. But it's so timeless that it still has that fresh quote smell.
Unlike the schools in Nîmes, which likely smell like sweat and desperation.
Honestly, I'd enjoy nothing more than to write about something, anything other than how vicious Europe is to its own people, but it just won't stop being so vicious to its own people.
If I were a particularly coldhearted eugenicist, this is where I'd argue that it's one thing to force young children to put up with potentially deadly heat, but it just makes good sense to deny A/C to old people who are nothing but burdens to the State. Which is exactly what happens even during normal summers, when tens of thousands of Europeans — typically older — die unnecessarily due to the heat.
But that would be gross. And also wrong. This is America, and we have A/C for pretty much everybody who needs it.
The way God and Willis Carrier intended.
Recommended: How Government 'Affordability' Turns an $18 Antibiotic Into $2,500
Stay frosty.
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