::SIGH::
No Sex, Please, We’re French.
Historically, French presidents have been old, bald guys — Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac. In terms of sexiness, imagine an endless line of Dick Cheneys.
Ahh, a false premise, allowing one to segue into one's own personal fantasy AS IF there were any basis whatsoever in discussing it. Does anyone really give one flip about the so-called sexiness, or lack of it, of France's prime ministers? No. Is it relevant in the least to a discussion about the front-runners in this campaign? No. Is this author bringing it up so as to engage in a voyeuristic fantasy? Yes.
Also, I'll thank the author not to use any variation of the word 'sex' and Dick Cheney in the same sentence.
This time, though, both front-runners have all their hair and, in one case, lipstick. Quite a novelty.
In the right-hand corner, you have a free-marketeer and friend to pop stars, Nicolas Sarkozy, 52. On the left, there is Ségolène Royal, age 53 but looking younger every day. She is unmarried but has four children with her partner, François Hollande, the Socialist Party chairman.
Does Royal "look younger every day," or would the author just rather sleep w/ her than w/ Jacques Chirac?
Given Ms. Royal and Mr. Sarkozy’s relative youth, it’s not surprising that this is the first time that sex has played such a large part in an electoral campaign. Everyone knew that Messrs. Giscard, Mitterrand and Chirac had mistresses, but no one paid much attention because everything was done discreetly. Besides, the French don’t believe that monogamy makes a politician any more efficient.
Seriously, that paragraph. How do these folks get published in the Times? So the candidates are young, meaning that they have more potential for sex appeal, and though previous oldsters actually had sex (mistresses), no one cared because it was done discreetly behind closed doors (where it belongs outside of the reach of this busybody's prying) they were oldsters having sex, not like the hottie Royal who is being scandalously "indiscreet" by, you know, walking around in public campaigning for the highest post in French government. What a cheeky minx! And to conclude, the French public doesn't think monogamy has any bearing on a politician's being efficient. Though I am heartened to hear that, what in the mofo'n hell does that have to do w/ anything? Is this guy paid by the word? (By the non sequitur more like.)
This time around, sex has come storming out of the closet. There was the incident a couple of years ago when Mr. Sarkozy’s wife, Cécilia, ran off to New York with her lover. In a dramatic turnaround, Mr. Sarkozy wooed his wife back, maybe with promises that she’d soon be choosing the curtains in the presidential palace. Meanwhile, the Mona Lisa smile on Ms. Royal’s face suggests that either her doctor has prescribed some very relaxing herbal teas, or she is exceptionally enamored of campaigning. Her, let’s say, permanently fulfilled expression prompted so much speculation about her sex life that she has issued legal threats to rumor-mongering Web sites.
Honest to God. Where to begin? Sex has come storming out of the closet? Is someone gay? Is this guy into tortured prose? He's certainly into tortured logic (see? it's easy to do), because only a guy who spends more time w/ women in his head than in real life could think that a woman could be "wooed" back from fleeing across the Atlantic Ocean with her lover by the prospect of picking out curtains. Faugh.
And Mona Lisa smile? "Permanently fulfilled expression"? Is everyone in the world so in need of titillation that we have to impose our own sexual narratives on other people's lives? Am I hopelessly naive here? Is it possible that we could take Segolene Royal's expression (such that it is) as confidence, serenity, a political mask, as dispassionate regard for the circumstance at hand? MUST IT be crammed sideways into some asshole's erotic longing? F*ck off.
