Oh, By the Way, France's Biggest Power Couple Is Splitsville

I know interest in this is limited, but just to update the story I mentioned a couple of weeks back, l'affaire Closer (so called because the French celebrities-and-scandals glossy Closer broke the story) has come to an end.

Saturday night, French President François Hollande announced -- singly, not jointly -- that Valerie Trierweiller would no longer be the First Lady of France.

Bill Clinton sent him a congratulatory email. Not really, but you must know he thought about it.

The president announced this Saturday the end of "his shared live" with Valèrie Trierweiler. The former first lady had expressed all of "her gratitude" to the personnel of the Elysée [the presidential palace] on Twitter.

She had been the "woman of his life." It was as such that François Hollande described Valérie Trierweiler in an interview in the magazine Gala in 2010. He regretted not having added "as of the moment," out of respect to Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children. [That is, he wished he had said "as of now" so as not to slight his ex-girlfriend who was also the mother of his four children.] François Hollande announced this Saturday night to AFP the break-up with the First Lady, Valérie Trierweiler, after eight years together.

...

The break-up of the presidential couple had been expected after the revelation by the celebrity magazine Closer of photos that revealed the liaison of Francçois Hollande and the actress Julie Gayet. According to the report of the Journal this Sunday, François Hollande and Valérie Trierweiler, who spent these last few days in the presidential residence of Laterne, at Verseilles, near Paris, had worked out Thursday, during lunch, the details of their separation.

For a country that supposedly got rid of their aristocracy and committed themselves to equality, France sure does seem to have a lot of presidential palaces and presidential residences (in former royal palaces).

For the first time, the former first lady must live in her apartment in the fifteenth arrondisement [district], added the magazine. Valérie Trierweiler left Sunday as a simple citizen for Bombay, on a humanitarian mission organized by the NGO Act Against Hunger.

Okay I'll spare you the rest. She's given a few interviews about turning the page and such, and she says she's eager to go to India on her anti-hunger tour as a simple citizen, rather than as a journalist (as when she first went to India) or the first lady (as on her second trip).

There's a certain kind of idiot who despises people he doesn't know based on stereotypes. He only knows these stereotypes because he's ignorant.

On the other hand, there's another kind of idiot who praises people he knows nothing about based on stereotypes. He, too, only knows these stereotypes, because he's ignorant.

I'm speaking of Bill Maher here. One of Bill Maher's stupidities consists of claiming all sorts of stupid shit about Europeans -- about whom he knows little, except that they're not Americans, and he hates Americans. So he claims, for example, that America could be a European country, but for the 100 million "stupid people" in America. He claims, apparently seriously, that Europe has very few "stupid people."

At any rate, Bill Maher will almost certainly make a crack about the elevated attitude of the French to this affair, and how they don't care about it, and how that's so awesome.

In fact, the French papers have had saturation coverage of this tawdry episode for three weeks. There is a video -- I tried to re-find it, but couldn't -- of Valèrie Trierweiler's car absolutely besieged by papparazzi, so crowded by photographers the car could not move, being strobed by dozens and dozens of camera-flashes as she was essentially held prisoner by celebrity photographers.

It was a mob scene. I think she was just driving to her apartment (for the first time in ages).

But Bill Maher doesn't know this, and so his ignorance will permit him to say all sorts of ridiculous things, like "This is the difference between Europeans and Americans, they don't care about things like this."

And his ignorant audience will applaud these things, because they're even more ignorant.

posted by Ace at 07:07 PM

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