 MICHAEL JOHNSON |
& TAYLOR |
 ROBERT TAYLOR |
 NICHOLAS SARKOZY ...a mutant dwarf? |
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 BRITISH PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN ...kids run and hide? |
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TheColumnists.com Correspondents Michael Johnson ("Eye on Europe") and Robert Taylor ("Man About London") have tangled on issues before in these pages but never with quite as much gusto as this time, discussing which of their national leaders comes out first in the “Most Hated” sweepstakes. Johnson is based in Bordeaux, France, and Taylor in London, England. The dialogue below took place by email during the past couple of weeks: |
By MICHAEL JOHNSON and ROBERT TAYLOR
of TheColumnists.com
MICHAEL JOHNSON: Thank god for our president,
Nicholas Sarkozy of France. The stand-up comics and caricaturists
would die of hunger without him. Sarkozy is easily the most hated
and ridiculed political figure in Europe today, even among most
of his own people. His popularity rating is down in George Bush
territory, in the 30s. I was
struck by how low he has sunk when he collapsed recently while
frantically jogging to impress the public. What a great metaphor
for his real life. Everything tends to collapse around him. The
papers hardly reported on the medical details. They wrote about
the two helicopters that took him and his bizarre skin-and-bones
wife Carla to a fancy hospital. I detected no sympathy. The following
day the stories were all about how he managed his image during
and after the episode. The French love to hate, and in their
president they have a lot to work with.
ROBERT TAYLOR: A popularity rating in the 30s? British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would pay millions for such a show of love (using public money of course). He hovers at around 20 on a good day. When one of our best-known columnists described him as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot” the only people to demur were Scotsmen with poor eyesight–they didn’t want to be associated with such a loser. At least Sarkozy won an election. Brown manoeuvred for the leadership for a decade, then didn’t have the guts to ask the voters what they thought. And at least Sarkozy has a bit of chutzpah, and can bed gorgeous Italian models. When Brown smiles it’s like he’s taking a fancy to your left ear, Hannibal Lecter-like. Children run for cover and dogs start howling. Sorry, matey. No contest.
JOHNSON: Okay, Brown can be a bit frightening
to look at but Sarkozy is a mutant dwarf. He wears high heels
to the G8 meetings so he can shake hands with normal leaders
without getting up on his tip-toes. He has the original Napoleon
complex. How he keeps Carla happy is another matter, probably
relating to his Johnson. She seems drawn to ugliness, as in the
case of her previous lover, Mick Jagger. Sarkozy is so repulsive
he covers his face with Ray-Bans when allowed out. Carla gets
more sympathy than Nicolas despite her spidery frame. In her
spoof diary one of the papers imagined that his fainting spell
was due to the starvation diet she has imposed on him. “Not
true,” she wrote. “Chouchou gets an entire biscuit
before going out to run.” I can’t forgive him for
continuing to be beastly to the lovely Ségolène
Royal, his erstwhile presidential rival and a virtual walking
erogenous zone. A TV commentator once
described her as “looking like she just came down off an
earth-shattering orgasm”. Instead, we get Sarkozy barking
at us every evening on the TV news. At least your Mr. Brown is
a rational human being.
TAYLOR: Au contraire. Brown is as irrational as he is weird. From his own mouth in December of last year about the government he purports to lead: “We saved the world.” And this from last month: “Spending will grow at /zero per cent in 2013.” That’s not a slip of the tongue. It’s plain delusional. He needs help. Did you see his attempt to connect with young people by appearing on YouTube? Gut-wrenchingly embarrassing. I had to reach for the whisky. Oh, and then his meeting with Obama at the White House. He was so desperate for star dust that he put his hands together in a little heart shape, then aimed it straight at the President. The body-language experts translated it right away. He was saying: “Take me long and take me hard. Let me be your sponge.” Thank goodness Obama looked away. In fact, I don’t think he knew who Brown was. Not surprising really. Brown has less charisma than my neighbour’s garden gnome. He tries to compensate by flashing that snarl-grin, but with zero sense of timing. “The government is spending more on pensions.” Huge, scary grin. “We’re investing more in our young people.” Broad gnasher-revealer. What’s the man on? It’s like he’s been operated by a malfunctioning computer program.
JOHNSON: Haw, that’s nothing. Sarko
is also on something that makes him pretty unstable. At the slightest
provocation he erupts into street language, as when he shouted
at a detractor at a recent public event, “Get lost, asshole”
(Casse-toi, pauvre con.) He forgot that the phone camera
is everywhere these days and one of the spectators caught it
all. Then when he went to Spain recently to speak at a meeting
of the Spanish Parliament he was caught making goo-goo eyes at
his airhead anorexic
wife across the rotunda in the balcony. His presidential timbre
melted into a display of a lovesick dog. Some good news: Gangly
Carla apparently has talked him down from his former nouveau-riche
habits such as wigglng his wrist to show off his Rolex. The biggest
recent embarrassment was Carlita’s singing performance in
her tiny little voice
at the Nelson Mandela birthday event in New York. The sophisticated
French can’t quite believe that their fist lady has turned
out to be a second-rate Italian pop singer. The French are braced
for Sarkozy’s return from summer vacation full of ideas
to turn France into a mini-United States. He keeps saying, “Work
harder, earn more.” The
voting public is fed up but they have three more years of this
facing them. A five-year mandate could well stretch to 10.
TAYLOR: What’s all this about “gangly
Carla”? The French are spoiled. All Brown can offer up is
his worthy, matronly Sarah. Zilch sex appeal in that partnership,
I can tell you. We Brits have suffered a dearth of sexy second
ladies for too long. Before Sarah we had Cherie Blair, with her
mail-slot mouth and terrifying eyes. And before that was Norma
Major, who was as grey as her husband. We’d take leggy Carla
any day. But things are looking up. Samantha Cameron, wife of
David–-the Conservative who’ll be Prime Minister within
a year--is a smasher. Dewy eyes, slim limbs and bone-china complexion.
She’s worth a few million votes. Meanwhile Brown continues
to sound like a man who’s been booby-trapped and believes
his head will blow off if he says anything truthful. Is it
true we’re deep in recession Prime Minister? Brown:
“Um, err, I think the important thing is that we focus
on ways to help people.” Is your name Gordon Brown,
Prime Minister? Brown: “Look, it’s err, um,
I think, well, I’m getting on with the job.” For
all the hugely expensive strategists the man employs, he’d
be better served just to answer a straight question with a straight
answer. But he has so little emotional intelligence he thinks
that by brazenly ducking he’ll somehow
deflect our attention. Psychologically flawed, he lashes out
at word processors and photocopiers–anything he can lay
his hands on. Even Peter Mandelson, his key cabinet advisor,
let slip that Brown is “insecure, self-conscious and
angry.” Yet he plows on, dragging the country down with
his own doomed fortunes and nailing his reputation as our worst
post-war prime minister.
JOHNSON: I still think my guy will win
our most-hated contest in the long run. He plans to turn this
country upside down. His dream is to remake France along the
American model–with money as the main measure of happiness,
with France becoming a big noise in foreign affairs, and with
a government cut to the bone, squeezing out thousands of civil
service jobs. He doesn’t seem to know that most of the French
like the nanny state they built, and they hate being compared
to the Yanks (known as the “Ricains”, which when slurred
sounds like “Requins”, or sharks). Sarko already started
the New France process, slashing jobs in the judicial branch,
an experience so traumatic that it led to the resignation of
the Justice Minister who was so discredited in the fight that
no one would deal with her. Sarkozy just threw her out and got
a replacement. Now he wants to reduce the number of “Départments,”
or
counties, by one-third, again cutting back administrative headcounts
and letting the victims fend for themselves. These plans are
just for openers. When Sarko gets finished, three years from
now, he will be the most American of European leaders. He will
also be France’s least-loved leader since Louis XVI, who
lost his head in a wicker basket way back in 1793. It will take
years for France to become its charming old self
again but it surely will. Talking, eating and drinking for a
living is what they do best. It’s in their genes.
TAYLOR: … whereas it’s in the
British genes just to get as drunk as possible. And they’re
stepping up the pace with Brown in charge. The latest figures
show that the British drink more every week than the Germans,
French and Italians combined. Or something like that. It’s
Brown’s fault for looking so stark-raving miserable all
the time, and bankrupting us with his policies. I’ve seen
happier faces on death row.
That’s not surprising when his whole objective is to retain
power, with no vision nor strategy. He raised the top rate of
tax to 50 per cent not because it’ll create more revenue
(it won’t) nor because it’ll make rich people pay more
(they’ll just go and live in Switzerland) but because it
wrong-foots the opposition Conservatives. It’s just one
example of how he governs the country for his own narrow political
interest, rather
than for the good of the country. Of course the power he craves
like a druggie in need of a hit is slipping away from him relentlessly.
You can tell how bad it’s got–-the public no longer
hates him; they just laugh at him, and the kinder ones pity him.
But look, you’ve convinced me that the yankophile Sarko
is ghastly, too. Maybe we should put them both in a ring, and
see who wrestles dirtiest. (With leggy Carla and dewy Samantha
Cameron next on the bill.) And look at it this way, there’s
no way Sarko could ever get elected in the UK, with his infidelities
and outbursts. And the French are way too sensible to elect the
emotionally neanderthal Brown. Maybe we have both got what we
deserve.
©2009 by Michael Johnson and Robert Taylor. This column first posted Aug. 24, 2009.
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