France to Sarkozy: 'Get Lost, You Jerk'
It's hard to believe that anyone could long for the good old days of Jacques Chirac, but when President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the Agriculture Fair in Paris a few days ago, he managed to remind the French how comfortable they used to feel with his lanky, laid-back predecessor. When Chirac visited the annual fair, he did so as a bon vivant. Sarkozy, on the other hand, went through it in an overheated rush, using language fit for a scrum in the Metro. The video of the event captured by the tabloid daily Le Parisien has been watched by more than three million viewers. The climax comes when Sarkozy is shaking hands with the crowd and one man pulls back, "Ah, no, don't touch me." Sarko, his fixed smile unwavering says, "Get lost, then." To which the man responds, "You got me dirty." To which Sarko responds (this is a polite way of putting it), "Get lost, you jerk."
The French don't like their presidents to talk that way in public. (Chirac's language was plenty salty in private.) But the real problem is that they're discovering they just don't like Sarkozy. The cover story of this week's Le Nouvel Observateur explains why. In the lead article headlined "And if this were to end badly ...," François Bazin writes that other presidents have been unpopular, but for the most part late in their terms. When Chirac's ratings took a nose dive in 1996, early in his first mandate, his prime minister, Alain Juppé, took the fall. But Sarkozy wants all attention fixed on him, and is managing to attract opprobrium to the office of the president itself. "What's happening today is literally unimaginable," writes Bazin.
Note EU-Digest:For the video on Sarkozy's outburst and the translation by the Shadow Land Journal click on this link
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