Rachida Dati announced her pregnancy in the fall. She is single and says it's none of anyone's business who the father is.
Conventional wisdom has it that the French media and public are much more gracious than the American media and public about leaving their politicians' private lives out of the public sphere. And perhaps this is true. Exhibit number one is usually Mitterand's illegitimate daughter Mazarine Pingeot, whose relationship to Mitterand was not revealed by the press
Nonetheless, look at the most popular searches that came up as I typed Dati's name into teh Google:
Enceinte is 'pregnant', pere is of course père, 'father', enceinte de qui 'pregnant by whom'.
Then we get ivre 'drunk', nue 'naked', then Bernard Laporte, who was rumored to be the father but denied it, and Paris Match, which is a celebrity magazine that Dati has appeared in, to much criticism.
In any case... evidently someone cares about Dati's extracurricular activities.
5 comments:
French people care about politicians private lives. We just make a clear cut between them and their public lives that's all.
(btw, Mazarine was revealed to the public before Mitterrand's death)
Yeah, that just (misplaced) curiosity.
The question is does it influence vote as in the US.
Incidently people care about actors private lives, but do they stop to watch a movie because this actor might have add an affair?
Should it be different for politics?
Interest in popular peoples' lives may well be hard-wired into us...monkeys will actually "pay" to look at photos of popular monkeys... but you have to pay them to look at photos of unpopular monkeys.
There is, I think, a substantial minority of Americans who vote based on peoples' private lives... the legacy of living in a country founded by Puritans, perhaps? But I think most Americans don't vote that way. Bill Clinton remains fairly popular despite everything.
Is the substantial minority enough to influence votes? Probably. But worse, often the media punches up a scandal to make it seem worse than it really is.
Politicians, though, are getting better at dealing with that tendancy in the media. Or at least Obama is. :) He's admitted taking drugs, for instance... oh, the horror!
Anyway, yes, things are still somewhat different in the US from how they are in France.
I'm not sure about the actor analogy, just because you're not paying an actor to run your government. And if you really feel it is a "trust" issue... well, of course, that's not at all how I feel, but I could see how some people might make the distinction between an actor and a government official.
Though, having said that, I'm sure there are people in the US who do avoid movies with actors who don't conform to their "values!"
Interesting link.
My point is that the interest for Rachida's child's father is more a from a star system point of view than from a political one.
I don't think Rachida Dati's popularity is really changed by her pregnancy.
More interesting was the affair of Dominique Strauss-Kahn IMF president. His wife was a very popular TV anchor. Yet I doubt this affair really troubled is popularity. The press coverage was more like "it's a political manipulation of private affairs for political purpose" and "how puritan are those americans".
I think the Clinton affair had the same kind of coverage here.
Yet indeed, things are changing, apparently if the press is not telling who is the father of Dati's baby is because they don't know, and not because their hiding it like it the time of Mazarine Pingeot.
Concerning DSK, I think that it was news for foreigners only that he's had more affairs than Mitterrand and Chirac put together.
But it's quite telling that it never was an issue before, and suddenly he lives in the US has international stature and there you go: it's an issue...
Yeah, "how puritans are those Americans"!
I can't wait the day when Carla Bruni is gonna cheat on Sarkozy, it'll be interesting.
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