Last night I listened to songs tagged “French” on Last.fm, trying to kill, with one stone, two albatrosses: the expansion of my musical tastes and the acquisition of French language skills. I heard some alarming French hip-hop. I heard a token Edith Piaf ballad followed by the avante-garde stylings of Brigitte Fontaine. I learned that Daft Punk was French. Then…
“Mr. P, come quick! It’s Carla Bruni!”
“WHERE?” Mr. P cried, racing into the bedroom. I pointed at the Last.fm widget playing Carla Bruni singing “Le plus beau du quartier” (which translates to something like the best-looking man in the neighborhood) and Mr. P looked amused but disappointed.
Carla Bruni is, of course, France’s newest First Lady, a 40 year-old former supermodel-turned-singer who regularly poises for ‘artistic’ nude photographs and has dated Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton. I expected Nicolas Sarkozy to do a lot of devisive things when he assumed office, but to divorce his wife and marry Carla Bruni seemed as probable as him invading Germany.
France takes pride in its view of sex as one of life’s basic pleasures. When I ribbed Mr. P about the Sarkozy-Bruni union, he initially defended Sarkozy for this reason and pointed to Carla Bruni’s vague ties to the art world. But then, like most French, Mr. P expressed bewilderment and disapproval for the actions of his President. Yes, Sarkozy deserves to have a personal life, but did he have to marry a supermodel so soon after his divorce? Not only does it hint of a world leader wasting his time and energy on his mid-life crisis, it has made him unseemly tabloid fodder.
And wow. What a crap singer Carla Bruni is. Like Belinda Carlisle without the passion.
