Free Republic

French first Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has admitted being "instinctively Left-wing" and having a problem with "conservatives" despite her husband's Right wing politics, in a frank newspaper interview. The Italian supermodel turned singer expressed relief that her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, had toned down his "bling-bling" love of chunky watches and Ray-Ban sunglasses in favour of her "more austere tastes." She also admitted organising dinners with artists to "cultivate" her husband, a TV-addict whose musical tastes stop at Elvis Presley and his French equivalent, Johnny Hallyday. "Perhaps I can help him to enable him to better communicate on the things that...

The French are different from you and me. Yes, they have Sarkozy. And they have Carla. And they have “the Carla effect,” as it’s known in Paris. If an American first lady, or would-be first lady, described herself as a “tamer of men” and had a “man-eating” past filled with naked pictures, Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, sultry prone CD covers, breaking up marriages, bragging that she believes in polygamy and polyandry rather than monogamy, and having a son with a married philosopher whose father she had had an affair with, it would take more than an appearance on “The...

At the Parisian dinner party where their heady, whirlwind courtship commenced at breakneck speed, Nicolas Sarkozy sat transfixed, listening to Carla Bruni strumming away on her guitar. The 53-year-old French President, dressed in a sober dark business suit and tie, tapped his fingers enthusiastically on the table and shouted "bravo" at the end of every one of the Italian supermodel-turned-singer's soulful songs. He had already bluntly told the glamorous society wife who was hosting the intimate soiree: "I don't want to be impolite, but I have to turn my back on you", before focusing all his attention on long-limbed, blue-eyed...

He is a lieutenant so loyal that President Nicolas Sarkozy personally rewarded him with the party’s nomination for mayor of the affluent Paris suburb that Mr. Sarkozy himself long governed. But now, David Martinon, the president’s spokesman, has abruptly withdrawn from the race. And it was the president’s own son Jean who forced him out. “The conditions are no longer in place for me to lead the municipal campaign in Neuilly,” Mr. Martinon told reporters on Monday. “I am pulling out.” Adding to the intrigue, Mr. Martinon said that he submitted his resignation as spokesman — but that Mr. Sarkozy...

French newspapers on Monday splashed photos of President Nicolas Sarkozy with singer and former supermodel Carla Bruni, fuelling speculation of romance just two months after the president's divorce. Sarkozy, 53, and Bruni, 39, were snapped together at the Disneyland theme park near Paris on Saturday. They made little apparent attempt to hide the fact that they were there together, though none of the photos showed them any closer than shoulder-to-shoulder. The Elysee Palace would not comment to AFP on the pictures. But L'Express magazine editor Christophe Barbier told French television that Bruni -- whose past boyfriends include rock stars Mick...