NOTE TO CONDI- WASH HAND.
Posted on 09/03/2006 10:12:33 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Mitterrand and Chirac may have shared lover
A BOOK about the sex lives of French politicians claims that President Jacques Chirac and François Mitterrand, his socialist predecessor, had a lover in common, writes Matthew Campbell.
The woman is not named but the claim is raising eyebrows in France where journalists have, until recently, tended to accept an unspoken rule against delving into the private affairs of the ruling elite.
The book, Sexus Politicus, catalogues decades of seduction and adultery by French leaders of all political persuasions. From Napoleon and Josephine to Félix Faure, the president who died in 1899 during a sex act with his mistress, French leaders have been renowned for their romantic appetite — a tradition that the book, published last week, says continues.
“Almost all French male politicians are compulsive womanisers,” claims Christophe Dubois, one of its authors.
He claims that Chirac and his predecessors Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing juggled the conflicting responsibilities of statesmanship, family and numerous lovers with nonchalant ease, partly thanks to a media that looked the other way. “There was a type of competition between Chirac and Mitterrand to see who could have more lovers,” said Dubois. “I don’t know who took the podium but it was a close thing.”
He went on: “This is an area that no one has explored before. It was a taboo. We’ve broken this taboo.”
The book claims that Mitterrand slept with the same women as some close aides, his driver and, on one occasion, Chirac. It emerged in a recent court case that he became so obsessed with Carole Bouquet, the actress, that he ordered her telephone to be tapped so that he could read transcripts of her conversations.
In his heyday, Chirac, whose extramarital exploits have previously been chronicled in some detail by a former chauffeur, was described as insatiable when it came to entertaining mistresses.
When he was mayor of Paris in the 1980s and 1990s he was nicknamed “Three minutes, shower included” by female employees at the town hall.
As president, he has often disappeared from the Elysée Palace for amorous late-night meetings. He has taken some of his lovers on trips overseas.
On the night that Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, Bernadette, the French first lady, had to ask his chauffeur: “Do you know where my husband is tonight?” The book describes the sighting of an ex-minister at a swingers’ club, the attempted suicide of a discarded political mistress and the cruel dumping of another woman by a politician who is expected to run in the presidential election next year.
In France, the public seems not to begrudge its politicians their peccadilloes. When Mitterrand revealed, shortly before his death, that he had an illegitimate daughter, the news was greeted with a collective shrug.
Things might change if Ségolène Royal, the socialist frontrunner in the presidential campaign, should win the election next year.
“What is tolerated for men would never be tolerated for women politicians,” said Dubois. “They would immediately be discredited if they went around having affairs.”
Talk about sloppy seconds.
Was it Paris Hilton??
XXX-42 gives them the official thumb-up.
First black and French president of U.S.A.:)
Unbelievably, sick!
Frankly, I'm surprised that the shared lover was female.
I'm surprised the lover was *human* and not a sheep or something.
Same here. I started reading the article expecting it to a homosexual.
"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." ---Mark Twain
This is where they lost me.
"now you big tough Arab boys just behave and we French will keep you peaceful....here, have a bite of my baguette"
Romantic? I would've used another word for it.
Who are they kidding? The French don't bathe...
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