Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Ghost of Jackie O. Meets Lady Di's Mother-in-Law
David Pujadas wasn't fooled for a minute. The real royalty at the palace today was the ghost of Jackie Kennedy. Carla Bruni, whom all the tabloids featured in the buff on page 1, was dressed up as the late Queen of Camelot, pillbox hat and all. She curtseyed nicely for the other queen, the dowdy one, while her prince consort, a good republican, confined himself to shaking ma'am's hand (later he could be seen caressing Carla's behind the queen's back). All protocol was observed: it was a performance sans faute, Pujadas purred. Petit Poucet has grown up. His tall, elegant wife has given him a regal gravitas to go with his regalian powers. Royalty receives him as a peer. He still has that odd gait, however, almost a limp, as if one leg were shorter than the other. It's a flaw that humanizes him, a false note in an otherwise flawless symphony of tawdry trumpery. Bernard Kouchner got to ride in an open carriage with the Duke of Edinburgh. One wonders what they talked about. A favorite claret, perhaps? And the queen chatted rather animatedly with Carla as Nicolas limped his way down the line of beefeaters. He doesn't really seem to enjoy these reviews of the troops. It's an endearing trait of Sarkozy's: unlike George Bush, he seems to know that he's a fraud, that it's all du toc. To him, the pretense is just part of the job. Bush is the more dangerous kind of charlatan: the one who believes he is whatever he says he is.
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8 comments:
Thank you so much Art for this fantastic site. Your hard work is much appreciated in this little corner of the world!
You're welcome.
I concur with anonymous above.
Also, re: the blog entry. Very few have noticed the limp. The playwright who followed him around during the campaign, Yasmina Reza, also noted it. I think most people mistake it for a swagger.
About Sarkozy's limp, as noted by Yasmina Reza: isn't Sarkozy an avid cyclist? That would explain, at least from my perspective, leg-related problems. But what do I know?
On his trip to England, two things, en ordre décroissant d'importance.
Carla Bruni has put on the First Lady veil with the sort of tired elegance she has while doing everything. She looked the same singing poppy flicks or catwalking. I think it was a mistake to see the top-model first when she became Sarkozy's wife. The tree of strass and glamour hid the forest: the daughter of an industrialist and musician, bred in the best environment, with a head on her shoulders and a bit of ambition too. One can dislike the image she projects, and she surely is not Tante Yvonne, but it would be wrong to see her as a dumbish bimbo.
ON the trip itself, I particularly liked the comment on London being "la septième ville francaise". I see it as very clearly destined to a part of Sarkozy's demographics: the young and restless, urban, the energetic new generation of entrepreneurs, or simply those who left "Old France" with the idea to find a better living somewhere else. Those moved to London in search of good opportunities (travailler plus pour gagner plus). Those also were the targets of the discourse on rupture and reform. Sarkozy sees them in London, in the City, etc, and he goes there to pay his dues. Comments?
On the relations between Great-Britain and France, what quickly springs to mind is the 1969 Soames-De Gaulle meeting. Disappointed by his relations with Germany, the old president calls for the British ambassador in Paris and proposes him a new European partnership between France and the United Kingdom. After the relative disappointment of the Mediterranean Union, Sarkozy might want to emphasize another political partner in Europe. The visit was of course probably scheduled in advance, but it is the president's choice to make of it a big deal or to play it down.
Finally, on the "foreign models" of French reform, Sarkozy has a taste for what he sees as the English model, a bit more than for the Scandinavian model others had emphasized during the campaign. Rhetoric?
By the way, on economic matters, I have found a great blog that I would like to respectfully present to your appreciation:
http://econoclaste.org.free.fr/dotclear/index.php
Best,
Louis.
You write: "Bush is the more dangerous kind of charlatan: the one who believes he is whatever he says he is."
The excuse made for Senator Obama's tolerating Reverend Wright's verbal bad behavior is that it is part of the background music, as it were, of conversation among African-Americans, and no one takes it literally. Perhaps your readers will give your words the same kind of pass.
mcg,
Your irony quite mistakes my position. First, I do not regard Rev. Wright's "verbal bad behavior" as background noise. I think a country that fails to understand, or even acknowledge, that a substantial number of its citizens entertain such impassioned negative judgments of its behavior is not politically healthy. It is also a country that can all the more easily became callous and disdainful of negative judgments by non-citizens, leading to hubristic foreign policy. That Obama doesn't dismiss the relevance of those who would "damn America" is progress, in my view.
As for Bush, you can take my remark on two levels. First, it is a judgment of his character: a man who can pretend to be cowboy, fighter ace, grunt, and liberator when he is none of those things is likely to overestimate his capacities altogether. Second, when the administration was criticized for its unrealistic assessment of the prospects in Iraq before the war, a Bush aide said, and was widely quoted: "We make our own reality." Those who make their own realities are charlatans--in the dictionary as well as in my book. If you choose to ignore those comments of mine that displease you, you'll be ignoring important data and thus committing the same error as Bush. But of course you're free to do so if you choose.
The comments I got yesterday were of two sorts
1)Carla Bruni has class. (and on and on :-) - never heard her called Mme Sarkozy - apparently that is reserved to Cecilia still - but she seems well on her way to becoming a beloved first lady.)
2) Nicolas Sarkozy looked a bit awkward and worried he might make a mistake. (Two different people used a 'child' analogy - 'a little boy invited to the grown up table' 'a boy who's been lectured and told to behave because it's important for Daddy' - perhaps related to the the limp, I also had comments about "small shoes' -?)
Apparently the arrival was broadcast live on French TV and the news preempted.
I loved your post's title ;-)
Art,
The substance of your comments is always interesting. A non-pilot who dresses up as an aviator, however, to take one example, is not a charlatan unless he both expects to deceive other people and in fact does deceive them. Taking your word charlatan to be tone, not substance, as one must, however, your tone is also troubling. The word charlatan is awfully hot to describe costume changes. As for Iraq, surely you don't base your opinions on officials' asides.
As for the attitudes of black Americans, again, one distinguishes what Reverend Wright said from the topic to which you have instead addressed yourself, namely, appropriate government responses to negative attitudes among black Americans.
Is Reverend Wright pointing to some set of facts? I assume so. Then let him talk about those facts. And let's hold him accountable when his fulminations go beyond what the facts justify.
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