Word: pompidou
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...Paris, where he had journeyed to join in a memorial service for President Georges Pompidou, his exuberance led to a series of small, yet embarrassing gaffes. Obviously cheered by the friendly throngs that surrounded him whenever he appeared in public, the President at one point declared that it was "a great day for France." In fact, it was a national day of mourning. At the U.S. embassy, Nixon startled British Prime Minister Harold Wilson by enthusiastically grabbing his face with both hands, Italian "good-ta-see-ya" style. Then, motioning toward a blonde woman in Wilson's entourage...
Before Nixon left Washington, Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren said that substantive talks with the foreign leaders assembled in Paris for Pompidou's wake would be "inappropriate." But meetings were requested by six visiting government leaders (among them Wilson, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny), and Nixon naturally enough honored the requests. The meetings offended some French sensibilities. Complained Le Monde in an editorial: "It was a President under reprieve who stole the show from a dead President." Nonetheless, his aides pointed to the sessions as evidence that world leaders look on Nixon as vital...
...than Americans do. In the case of the French press, that delicacy has material aspects. The government controls the supply of paper and since World War II has granted the press important tax concessions. Whatever the motive, most French newsmen managed to ignore the ail too visible symptoms of Pompidou's ill health until the President's meeting with Richard Nixon in Iceland last May. When American journalists reported on Pompidou's sickly appearance and speculated on the cause, French publications began to take note of it. Revealing photos were widely published, and some commentators openly called...
Most restrained of all was the government TV network ORTF, which virtually ignored the illness for a year, avoided using unflattering pictures and did not even prepare a film obituary. The coverage on all three government channels on the night that Pompidou died consisted largely of pictures and classical music...
Died. Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou, 62, President of the French Republic since 1969 (see THE WORLD...