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During her rise to fame, American comic Roseanne Barr once baited detractors with the observation that she and then-husband Tom Arnold were "America's worst nightmare: white trash with money." Some pundits in France are now wondering if there isn't something of that at work with French President Nicolas Sarkozy's iconoclastic Elysée reign. Out are the days of somber, aloof and understated figureheads of the French Republic; welcomed in are the celebrity and multi-billionaire visitors, whom Sarkozy greets while wearing expensive suits, stylish sunglasses and conspicuously large wristwatches. Sarkozy has become what the front...
...pundit who has lamented Sarkozy's star-struck flashiness in an office formerly characterized by the monumental solemnity of Charles de Gaulle, the intellectual loftiness exhibited by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand, and the less formal yet dignified detachment of Jacques Chirac. The French media has wryly covered Sarkozy's open affection for celebrities like iconic rock star Johnny Hallyday, popular comic actor Christian Clavier, and the subtly named Doc Gyneco - a rapper whose dwindling popularity and fan base further shrunk when he announced his support for Sarkozy's presidential bid. Sarkozy...
...that perceived immodesty a problem - particularly in a French President who likes to cast himself as "the American" leader unafraid of adopting the dynamic aspects of U.S. society he feels France needs? First off, because even as it follows Sarkozy's lead to reform elsewhere, much of French society still remains unwilling to drop the traditional attitudes that frown upon the flaunting of wealth, and which divide the celebrity of showbiz and the recognition of political leadership in separate categories. Sarkozy may well express his admiration for the career trajectory of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but French voters take politics too seriously...
...Such attitudes explain the other issue some have with Sarkozy unabashedly admiring the same stars, musicians and even reality TV programs everyone else in France does: the disdain that the average French person frequently expresses for the average French person. Indeed, the very term "français moyen" literally means "average French person", but is usually used to refer to the kind of vulgar, uncultured and intellectually lazy person that "white trash" and "chav" designates in the U.S. and U.K. And that's an image that Sarkozy detractors predict will return to haunt him in the public mind over time...
...life in the press has become an established part of his communications strategy: for example, he'll invariably allow his personal life to dominate when he wants to divert media attention away from political troubles. That was certainly the case when he sprung his romance with Bruni on a French public that had been watching Sarkozy take a prolonged bashing over his hosting incorrigible Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. And it was déjà vu when he announced his long-anticipated divorce on the same day he faced the first massive strikes to protest his reform program. Indeed, given...