Gopnick on Sarkozy

Do you follow French politics at all? Probably not, and why would you?

But I picked up this bad habit a few years back, and so have watched with some disappointment that the new president, in office for less than one year, has disappointed people who expected him to usher in changes to some of the problematic things about life in France.

Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker-- who introduced me to French Politics in one of his old books--tries to make sense of the news this month that the President is having a public love affair with a trashy italian singer.

It is possible to imagine that Sarkozy is not simply a man governed by his impulses and appetites but one trying to use a situation to make a strategic point. In the past, all French politicians were involved in an organized hypocrisy, where mistresses were known, and hidden with a wink. Just as Tony Blair used the cold body of Princess Diana to underline the need for a departure from the national habit of perpetual emotional postponement, Sarko conceivably is using the very warm body of Bruni to make the point that the French need to escape from their habit of perpetual cloaked privilege—of allowing an educated élite to have prerogatives and manners different from the great mass of the people. No more subsidized mistresses; instead, openly carnal vacations.