French president’s crass, melodramatic antics worthy of lesser mortals

Only the French could have an etiquette scandal. Let Americans get in a lather over peccadillos of state; the French are lamenting the state of propriety.

No one in the land of Napoleon is following the code. And it is putting the citoyens of this once luminous empire in a dark mood. They are less concerned about their president’s slamming-door farcical adventures in amour than they are about the blow to their amour-propre. They fret that their image is more Feydeau than Rousseau.

On this Saint-Valentin weekend, as people join un kiss flash mob at the Louvre, we face another Gallic paradox, like the one about red wine and foie gras keeping you thin. "The whole problem with this Hollande scandal is that he is not married," says Jean-Marie Rouart, the French novelist. "Had he been married, this affair would never have been revealed." He observed that, as an "elected monarch", the president has to maintain appearances. "In France, having a mistress is not considered cheating," he says. "We are not a puritanical country. France is Catholic. We accept sin and forgiveness."

It’s bad enough to hide under a helmet and dismiss your security and go incognito on an Italian scooter to have a tryst in an apartment that is a stone’s throw from the Élysée Palace and has some tenuous connection to the Corsican Mafia. But everyone here except François Hollande seems to agree: You do not install one mistress at the Élysée when you have another elsewhere. That is simply bad form.

Double standards
Why should the tabloids stick to the rule of the French press to ignore the private lives of presidents if Hollande breaks the rule of French presidents to lead an "exemplary" public life, which means having a real wife on whom to cheat?

Many now suspect the 59-year-old Hollande, aka the Living Marshmallow, allowed Mistress No 1, beautiful 48-year-old Paris Match writer Valerie Trierweiler, to play the role of first concubine to distract her from his affair with mistress No 2, gorgeous 41-year-old actress Julie Gayet. Gayet is a Socialist who worked on Hollande's campaign, making kittenish support videos and sporting an "I only date Super Heroes" T-shirt.

To assuage Trierweiler for being dubbed "a concubine" in the press, the Rottweiler – as she's known – got Élysée offices, a staff of four and a monthly budget of some €20,000. But that created some mal de mer among the French, even before the White House had to destroy all its invitations with Trierweiler's name when she squared off with her rival, went to the hospital with a case of "the blues" and was dumped by Hollande in a terse press "communique" two weeks before his visit to Washington.

“The concept of the first lady doesn’t exist in France, and even less the first mistress,” sniffed Olivier de Rohan, a vicomte and head of a foundation that protects French art. “The protocol in France is very strict . . . The wife of the president of the republic was always seated as the wife, never paraded as the first lady. I don’t care with whom Hollande sleeps. But the whole thing is totally ridiculous, the head of a great state exhibiting mistresses, one after the other.”

Or as one French journalist noted: “All this, in the place where de Gaulle was.”

Politics of seating
Over good wine and small portions across Paris, there was appalled discussion that Stephen Colbert, who had filleted Hollande's shenanigans on his show, was seated to the right of Michelle Obama at the state dinner, in the magic circle with the president where Trierweiler would have been, had she not been trundled off to the love guillotine.

“In France, it would be extremely rude to do that,” Rohan said about Colbert. “The Americans have no protocol.”

Before the dinner, Colbert joked that if the first lady were just the last person you slept with, America’s would have been Monica Lewinsky in 1998. He later crowed about the significance of his placement. “I’m the first lady of France! Merci!” as he was showered with roses. His project, he said, would be “bringing Jean Valjean to justice.”

The nation that once worshipped Jerry Lewis was flummoxed by this "terrible faux pas", as it was dubbed. Even though Colbert shares a name with a top adviser to Louis XIV, many harbour dark suspicions that he's Irish. They wondered how a late-night comic outranked Christine Lagarde, a possible contender to succeed Hollande? Why were more French luminaries not invited? Why did Mary J Blige sing for Hollande Ne Me Quitte Pas , a famous Jacques Brel chanson begging a lover not to leave?

Did Michelle, Le Point snarked, think she was providing Colbert with "fresh material" for another searing sketch? The French have spent centuries making fun of us for our puritanism, and now they feel the unbearable sting of our mockery, as our press and comedians chortle at a mediocre politician caught up in a melodrama with all the erotic charge of week-old Camembert. Maybe that's why the French got so swept up in the ridiculous but glamorous rumour about Barack Obama and Beyonc?

All those French expressions we siphon because English isn’t nuanced enough – finesse, etiquette, savoir faire, rendezvous, je ne sais quoi, comme il faut – Hollande flouted. In the minds of many here, the French president is a loser because he’s so unrefined he might as well be American.