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Celebrity Culture
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Sarkozy winks at tradition
--and anything in skirts?
of TheColumnists.com
I’ve been around France for a long time but I have never seen what we are witnessing today--a country so consumed by celebrity gossip that little else is discussed in café society.
The French have even borrowed a term from the English language--“people”--for their celebrity culture and now they have a new president who is leading the way. L’Express, the main French newsweekly, defined the trend last week with its coverline “Le Président People”.
“People”, pronounced pee-pull, is a new French adjective meaning media-savvy celebrity status, as in “Il est très people”, and it is not a compliment. President Nicolas Sarkozy, just a few months ago basking in a wave of popularity not seen since Charles de Gaulle, has tumbled in the polls since he became too people via his recent divorce and media revelations about his personal life.
Swaggering across the world in blue jeans and aviator sunglasses, his new girlfriend on his arm, paparazzi in his wake, make him indeed “très people”. Over the holidays he was snapped holding hands with Carla Bruni, the new girlfriend, and carrying her son on his shoulders just like real folks.
Is this the next First Lady of France? the media breathlessly asked, not sure how they felt about it.
To be fair, part of Sarkozy’s behavior is calculated to break down the stiff traditions of the French Presidency. His political aim is to modernize France and to Americanize it to some degree. Personally, that kind of thinking scares me. I don’t want them to become more like us. I moved to France because of the way they were.
Sarkozy is far from a perfect example of Americanization. Three new books about his ex-wife Cécilia, a former super model, were published last week portraying him as a cynic and a bounder. His single-mindedness in search of the Presidency cost him his 18-year marriage to Cécilia. Seeking true love, she decamped to New York with a Paris advertising executive shortly before the presidential campaign of last spring.
One author quotes Sarkozy indirectly as having said Cecilia is welcome to come back, “but she’d better hurry. There’s a long list of girls who would love to take her place, and I can have any one of them I want.” Quite an assertion for a short guy with a face like an old baseball mitt.
President Nicolas Sarkozy is the kind of leader who elicits strong reactions pro and con. The cons have the upper hand this week as stories of wife-beating, philandering, poor fathering skills and a gigantic ego are bubbling to the surface.
Cécilia told one journalist, Anna Bitton, author of “Cécilia”, that Sarkozy never once joined the family for dinner. He preferred to leave the children to her while he worked and ate in solitude. “He loves no one, not even his own children,” she purportedly said.
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work as a model. She may be the next First Lady of France. Now try to picture this pose with Laura Bush or Hilary Clinton or, if you can take it, Eleanor Roosevelt. not America. |
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Cécilia sued the publisher to try to ban the book in France. I searched Bordeaux for it on the day the court decision was due. In the third nervous bookshop I finally discovered a stack of them hidden on a lower shelf. The sales girl feigned surprise when I found it. I took two copies. In the end, the courts allowed it to be published anyway.
The book makes it clear that until her beautiful relationship went wrong, Cécilia functioned as Sarkozy’s alter ego. She had become a trusted adviser throughout his climb to the political summit, reminiscent of such American First Ladies as Nancy Reagan and Rosalyn Carter. A couple of years before things soured between the Sarkozys, Cécilia was heard to ironize, “I love him more and more, and so does he.”
As recently as a year ago, Sarkozy told a friend, “I read everywhere that Cécilia is the one who makes the decisions. It’s the truth.”
Sarkozy has freely admitted that he depended on Cécilia’s opinion in his choice of aides and policies. She apparently hand-picked several of his current cabinet ministers, including the doe-eyed Justice Minister, Rachida Dati, daughter of immigrant parents from Morocco.
Sarkozy’s “gang”, as it has become known in France, was dismayed when Cécilia was caught by photographers cuddling with her new love, the advertising executive. A brief separation ensued but she returned to his side for the victorious campaign.
One of his advisers told a journalist, “He functions so much better when she’s around. He does everything with much more ease. This place has more of a soul when she’s here.”
But the signs of breakdown were evident last summer when she refused to attend a gala dinner for wives of European leaders at a G8 meeting in Germany. She followed that snub with a last-minute pullout of an invitation to visit the Bush clan at Kennebunkport, pleading a sore throat that conveniently went away the next morning.
Then she refused to vote in the second round of the presidential election, and only reluctantly appeared at his inauguration ceremony. As Sarkozy approached her in the receiving line, he pinched her cheek for the cameras. She looked away. No one in France missed the signals. It was all over. Three months later they announced their divorce.
Now all eyes are on Carla Bruni, a singer and former model with strikingly similar looks to Céclila and 10 years younger. She and Sarkozy made their public début at Euro Disneyland. Later they promenaded for the media in Egypt and Jordan.
Much of the French public shrugged it off. After all, this is the country that invented the two-hour dayend tryst between married lovers that is so prevalent it has a name, the “cinq-à sept” (five-to-seven). Adulterous wives and husbands tend to tolerate their partners’ pecadillos and get on with their separate lives. It works for some.
What worries the Sarkozy “gang” is that Carla has a past. She once bragged on television that she had had so many lovers she couldn’t remember their names. And her modeling was not limited to Dior gowns. Photos are circulating of her posing topless and even bottomless.
Sarkozy’s recent trip to the Middle East and an upcoming visit to India had to be rearranged when host country protocol could not accommodate a chief of state and his lover. Carla had to stay at home. Sarkozy was no doubt pining for her. Television cameras caught him punching out SMS messages during his official visit to Saudi Arabia last week. No doubt Carla was the happy recipient.
Maybe all this will be forgotten once they are married and larger state issues take center stage. But Sarkozy will be remembered for breaking with tradition and pushing France away from its stuffy past.
©2008 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted Jan. 21, 2008.
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