Rien de rien

I thought yesterday’s French Presidential Press Conference was a sad day for French journalism. Even though I would defend the President’s right to a private life, and a certain amount of privacy afforded him from the press – the situation he has dealt the French public is, I think, appalling.

To install a girlfriend, not a wife, into the First Lady’s apartment and department is one thing – if he treats her with the long-term commitment and affords her the status and dignity of a wife. But his apparent fling elsewhere has utterly devalued the status of France’s First Lady to whatever-girlfriend-the-president-is-dating-at-the-moment.

Plus, France’s First Lady (as in any country) is expensive to the tax payer. It was an entirely justifiable question – the one and only he was asked about this yesterday – to question just who is the First Lady at the moment, and who will he be taking as First Lady on a state visit next month? What was inexcusable is that he was allowed to fudge his answer and say rien.