PALIN'S FRENCH NIGHTMARE

If Sarah becomes VP, she better take a course in International Relations.

From The Times
September 5, 2008
Le tout Paris asks pregnant Rachida Dati: 'Who's the daddy?

Rachida Dati has announced that she is pregnant, confirming rumours circulating
Read Charles Bremner's Paris blog
France has a new game. It’s called “cherchez le père”, and the object is to guess which man is responsible for the pregnancy of Rachida Dati, 42, Justice Minister and unmarried glamourpuss of President Sarkozy’s Cabinet.

Since Ms Dati confirmed on Wednesday that she was expecting her first baby and refused to identify her partner, the names of millionaires, politicians and television personalities have gone forth and multiplied, with rumours swirling on the internet and around the water cooler.

Speculation has been feverish since the minister returned from holiday last month and made no attempt to hide her blooming figure. She added to the sense of mystery this week when she said: “My private life is complicated and I am keeping it off-limits to the media. I will not say anything about it.”
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Ms Dati, a Sarko protegée and symbol of the Cabinet’s ethnic diversity, has had a meteoric rise from the immigrant estates to the corridors of power. She has fuelled the fascination by posing for fashion shots for magazines – although she has said that she regrets a shoot in a luxurious hotel for Paris Match last year. The pictures, in which she wore fishnet stockings and high-heeled boots, appalled judges’ unions as an act of frivolity at a time when she was cutting hundreds of jobs in her ministry. Her high-handed ways have not endeared her to the court system either.

The French media, which has built Ms Dati up as a star, has taken its default position of considering the private lives of politicians taboo – even condemning the blogosphere for changing the rules of the game. The main evening news on TF1, the biggest television channel, failed to mention the matter, even though it had been a favourite topic on the internet all day.

A number of names have been put forward as the father, many enticing, if a little improbable. One – José Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister and friend of Mr Sarkozy – even took the extraordinary step of denying that he was the mystery lover, after a Moroccan news website named him. “In relation to the rumours that have appeared in certain areas of the media linking José MarÍa Aznar with the pregnancy of Rachida Dati, we would like to state the following: the claims are totally and utterly false,” said a statement from Mr Aznar’s office.

Not high on the list of suspects, but in circulation all the same, is Mr Sarkozy himself. For several months before he married Carla Bruni in February, his presidential consort was Ms Dati, who accompanied him on official events including a state banquet at the White House. Her devotion to him is such that it led to her estrangement from Cécilia Ciganer, the last Mrs Sarkozy and her once close friend. According to biographers, Mr Sarkozy’s marriage reportedly left Ms Dati downcast because it distanced her from her hero and mentor.

Over the past year Ms Dati has been linked to two millionaires: Henri Proglio, boss of Veolia Environment, and Dominique Desseigne, chief of the Barrière casino and hotel chain. Ms Dati is said to have broken up with Mr Proglio in the middle of last winter. Another rumoured name is a popular television host and producer known as Arthur.

On the whole, Ms Dati’s pregnancy has been well received. She is seen as a remarkably strong-willed woman who had led a hard life. She said yesterday that a child was the one big thing missing in her life and implied that she had been trying unsuccessfully for years to have one. She plans to work on and keep her job as long as possible, she told Le Point magazine.

Commentators are praising France’s civilised attitude to the Dati baby, comparing it
with the fuss puritanical “Anglo-Saxon” countries make over out-of-wedlock births. Such tolerance, however, is relatively recent: Yvonne de Gaulle, wife of the late Charles de Gaulle, refused to allow divorced women into the Elysée Palace when she was première dame in the Sixties.

— In the 1980s the media were silent on the subject of President Mitterrand’s secret second household, complete with mistress and illegitimate daughter, who were being kept at great state expense. Times have changed, but disdain for the tittle-tattle associated with the “Anglo-Saxon” press remains
— French politics and media have long made a distinction between public and private life. “News ends at the bedroom door,” says Le Canard Enchaîné, the weekly that hunts down political scandal
— Celebrities and politicians continue to win damages for breach of strict privacy laws. This year Laurence Ferrari, the TV news presenter, won £14,000 in damages against publications that said last autumn she was dating Nicolas Sarkozy
— Mr Sarkozy’s arrival in office has eroded the old taboo because the President has made such a public display of his family life. He showed off Cécilia, his former wife, and suffered from the media coverage when she walked out on him. He then boasted that he was having a serious relationship with Carla Bruni, the supermodel he eventually married in February
— Renaud Revel, a commentator with France-Inter radio, said on his blog: “The German or Anglo-Saxon press would have X-rayed Rachida Dati’s pregnancy, to the point of producing the father’s ID papers and his DNA. The French media are kept at a distance. The father has been known to the newsrooms for weeks. But not a line, not a name . . . not the slightest allusion has appeared”