{"id":17729,"date":"2012-11-12T12:28:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T17:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17729"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:15:19","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:15:19","slug":"kelly-mcparland-us-and-french-attitudes-to-affairs-differ-markedly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/11\/12\/kelly-mcparland-us-and-french-attitudes-to-affairs-differ-markedly\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelly McParland: US and French attitudes to affairs differ markedly"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the National Post<\/em>, Kelly McParland<\/a> contrasts the French reaction to affairs on the part of public officials with the American reaction:<\/p>\n

In Paris they must be busily turning the pages now, looking for the rest of the story. Yes, OK, he had an affair \u2026 and? You mean that\u2019s it? He didn\u2019t murder her? Have three children that he kept in a secret location away from the press? Involve her in sex games with crowds of similarly liberated-minded partners? They had an affair and he has to quit as head of the CIA? Mon dieu<\/em>, these Americans. Four hundred years in the New World and they\u2019ve barely moved on from the Puritans. Look, they\u2019re even shocked that the other woman appeared on television \u201csporting bare, toned arms\u201d. What did they expect, a chador?<\/p>\n

France has moved on marginally from the days when President Francois Mitterrand could have a whole secret second family, and no one mentioned it in public because it wouldn\u2019t be polite. Now the press leaps happily onto news of sexual licence in the halls of power. Unlike the U.S., they just don\u2019t condemn it, as long as no one is physically abused. The latest instance \u2013 they don\u2019t even use the world scandal, because in France it isn\u2019t \u2014 relates to the former justice minister, Rachida Dati, who is suing one of the country\u2019s wealthiest men to try and force him to admit he\u2019s the father of her new daughter. The case is a bit complicated because, as Ms. Dati attests, she has \u201ca complicated private life.\u201d That would include, according to the attorney for Dominique Desseigne, the alleged father, having eight lovers in the year she fell pregnant, \u201cincluding a television broadcaster, a minister, a Qatari attorney-general and a brother of the former president Mr Sarkozy,\u201d reports the French newspaper Le Monde<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Sarkozy was the president at the time, and Ms. Dati\u2019s boss. He wasn\u2019t likely to be butting into her private life, though, having given up his own wife in favour of singer\/model Carla Bruni. Ms. Bruni has recently been offering marital advice \u2013 as in \u201cget married for Cripe sakes\u201d \u2013 to Valerie Trierweiler, current First Partner-for-a-While to President Francois Hollande, who has four children by a previous Main Partner, S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Royal. (Ms. Royal is only a Main Partner rather than a First Partner because Hollande wasn\u2019t president at the time.) Dumping the mother of your four children for an uppity newspaper columnist like Ms. Trierweiler might offend sensibilities, but M. Hollande never married Ms. Royal either, so no big deal. Nonetheless Ms. Trieweiler has become deeply unpopular since moving into the presidential palace, because she refuses to give up her day job as a columnist and because she\u2019s been rude to Ms. Royal. The messy sex stuff has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

Compared to the Bacchanalia of French politics, the Petraeus \u201cscandal\u201d is like a high-school tiff over who gets to wear the football captain\u2019s pin to the Prom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the National Post, Kelly McParland contrasts the French reaction to affairs on the part of public officials with the American reaction: In Paris they must be busily turning the pages now, looking for the rest of the story. Yes, OK, he had an affair \u2026 and? You mean that\u2019s it? He didn\u2019t murder her? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1117,28,13],"tags":[413],"class_list":["post-17729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-france","category-media","category-usa","tag-scandal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4BX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17730,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17729\/revisions\/17730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}