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At left, the model Cecilia, who was Sarkozy's wife when he was elected president of France last June. She's history now. At right, TV journalist Laurence Ferrari, who's now rumored to be his No. 1 lady. |
like an aphrodisiac
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
Every time the freshly-divorced French President Nicolas Sarkozy makes a trip abroad, he takes one of his exotic female colleagues with him and the salons of Paris go crazy. What is happening out of sight of the cameras? The world’s most eligible president seems to have his hands full most of the time.
Since his sudden split-up a few weeks ago from the former model Cecilia, gossip has been rampant over sleeping arrangements at the Elysée Palace. Someone else must be there, goes the argument, with all that Sarko-brand testosterone sloshing around.
But since his election last June, Sarkozy, 52, has chosen to stay on the road more than he stays at home, seeking to put France back on the international map. He has been to Berlin twice, the U.S. twice, to London, Morocco, Bulgaria, Romania and Chad. He makes so much news with his travels that his opposition is complaining they are squeezed out of the media.
The president is most commonly portrayed in editorial cartoons as a peripatetic Napoleon, and he certainly has the physical stature for that image. One London television channel described him as “some kind of dwarf,” and editorial cartoonists draw him with high heels. He is also depicted with his hand in his shirt.
Another detail that often shows up is a set of horns popping out of his head. In France, a cuckold--a man whose wife sleeps around- is said to grow horns. Cecilia briefly fled the family nest and was caught by a photographer with her boyfriend in New York last year. That seems to have been the beginning of the end of this marriage. She returned home for the presidential campaign last spring but was never part of the strategy.
She failed to vote in the second round of the election, signaling to some that her choice was “anyone but Nicolas” to run the country. At the inaugural ceremony she kept up appearances but only just. Their five children by current and past marriages looked glumly on. The couple maintained the fiction of their marriage for four months into the presidency but the French press never saw her. “Where is Cecilia?” asked one Paris headline.
When she did turn up, she was trouble. She skipped a G8 gala dinner in Berlin last summer, and famously stayed home with a “sore throat” when the president visited the Bushes with wives in Kennebunkport last summer. Everyone politely looked the other way.
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Sarkozy is a study in the aphrodisiac potency of political power. I marvel at how such a strange little man can attract such beautiful women. His drooping eyes have something of the Sylvester Stallone look. His repertoire of facial and muscular tics would keep an analyst awake nights, and his entire adult life has been coldly dedicated to winning the presidency. Personal warmth is not among his qualities.
But attract the gals he certainly does. Rachida Dati, a divorced dark-eyed beauty of Algerian parentage, functions officially as Garde des Sceaux (Justice Minister), a presidential appointee. She has traveled with Sarkozy to Bulgaria, Morocco and elsewhere recently, and served as his personal spokeswoman during the presidential campaign. She is a lawyer, but any man would be happy to overlook that. A journalist asked her last week, “Would you have been so successful if you had been fat and ugly?” Her demure reply, “Oh I’m not everyone’s type.”
Rama Yade, the smoky, Senegal-born secretary of state for human rights, accompanied Sarkozy on his recent trip to Chad where he picked up the just-released French journalists and air stewardesses and escorted them home amid the Zoe’s Ark African orphans affair. She seemed to be excess baggage for that mission. Ms. Yade is the daughter of a diplomat and a tough debater in the National Assembly. She is also gorgeous by any standard.
Probably the most important of Sarkozy’s beautiful women is Laurence Ferrari, a television journalist who is rumored to be his current favorite. Paris journalists who dare not publish the tidbit say Sarkozy will announce in a few weeks that he and Laurence are in an intensely personal relationship. Ms. Ferrari was divorced last month from her TV journalist husband after two children and 14 years of apparent wedded bliss.
Sarkozy is well-known for his strong personality and his impulse to let it be known when he is displeased. U.S. TV journalist Lesley Stahl felt his wrath when she got too personal during a recent "60 Minutes" segment that was videoed before his divorce was made public. When she asked about his marriage, he said he had nothing to say, and if he did, he certainly would not say it then and there. When Ms. Stahl said his spokesman had made references to the Presidential marriage, Sarkozy hissed under his breath, “He is an imbecile.” And with that, he unclipped his microphone and walked out.
When the French elected Sarkozy they expected turmoil. His ambitious institutional reforms have triggered strikes, street demonstrations and violence during his early months in office. But the gossip around his private life seems to be what interests the public and irritates him the most.
©2007 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted Nov. 19, 2007.
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