Meanwhile, the world. Le Figaro newspaper was given a sneak preview of Comme si de rien n'était (As if Nothing Happened), the first album of Carla Bruni, the new wife of the French President Sarkozy (they say Sar-ko-ZEE — cooler, no?). In this record the President’s wife “playfully (mocks) her reputation as a man-eater.
She sings: "I am a child. Despite my forty years. Despite my thirty lovers. A child." No kidding. Mlle. Bruni-Sarkozy has dated in the past Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Donald Trump, and Kevin Costner. She once infamously claimed to find monogamy "boring." Although this does not apply to American politicians. Or British ones, come to think of it.
This same article said that French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex," (“terminal ennui”) according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives. Yeah, but what about the Italians, Mlle. Bruni-SarkoZEE?
"I am a tamer [of men], a cat, an Italian," she told Le Figaro last year.
"I am faithful... to myself. I am monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and polyandry [its female equivalent]."
According to Figaro, Women now have more than twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s, according to the study by the French Aids research agency, which is backed by the government.
"Are women just like men?" asked Le Nouvel Observateur Tuesday, which released extracts of the Study on Sexuality in France, a 600-page tome that brings together 12,000 in-depth interviews with people of all ages conducted during 2005-06. And everybody told the truth because everybody tells the truth about sex. Even to themselves.
One of the biggest changes in recent years, according to the report, was that male and female sexual behavior had become increasingly similar.
This is new? “You’ve Got that Thing,” Cole Porter wrote about 75 years ago or so.
The proportion of French women who claim to have had only one partner has dropped from 68 per cent in 1970, to 43 per cent in 1992 and 34 per cent in 2006. A woman's average number of partners has risen from under two in 1970 to over five today, while a man's has remained the same for four decades, almost 13.
Meanwhile back to Carla-baby: The Figaro account related that at the same time, Mlle B-S reinforced old stereotypes that link status and virility, by reportedly declaring: "I want a man with nuclear power."
Is this girl writing your SPAM? N’est-ce pas?
This same report observed that some things never change. For example: Despite the changes in female behaviour men found it easier than women to disassociate sex from love. The research suggested this was due to nurture rather than nature. The study said: "Young women are still educated to consider their entrance into sexuality as a sentimental-relationship experience." And Bride Magazine.
Don’t ask me why I got into this. When I was in London I realized that a certain part of the world is obsessed with Mlle. Sarkozy. As if she were the new sitting duck for the tabloid tycoons.
Footnote to history: I was on the 86th Crosstown on the morning in New York after Bobby Kennedy was murdered in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was a sweltering morning. I was on my way to the office (working for the stock brokerage of Harris Upham) when I noticed the headline on the Daily News that someone on the bus was reading. My eyes kept returning to the front page as if I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
Bobby Kennedy was a far more controversial figure than his older brother, the slain president. When he left the Johnson Adminstration (where it was said the two men hated each other) to run for Senate in New York, he was called a carpetbagger. Just like someone else you know. There was also a lot of resentment at his winning although his supporters were diehard and not unlike the supporters of Obama – as contrasted to the impassioned supporters of his older brother, JFK who was a new national item when he ran for President. Bobby Kennedy was going to save us.
He had come into race only after Eugene McCarthy’s primary win in New Hampshire demonstrated that President Johnson was dead meat. This move was controversial and did not endear him to a large number of the electorate. However, the tousel-haired fellow with that sporty looking wife and that raft of children (and very rich father) had charisma. He walked with kings and had the common touch. He quoted the poets. G.B. Shaw’s words came into play. Americans are deeply affected by the Irish and the Jewish and it is no accident. Opposing kinship.
Somehow coincidence or otherwise had removed the three most impressively inspiring American public figures in that decade, and with it some might argue that it destroyed the Common Sense of its peoples.
“Conspiracy” is a negative word in today’s American parlance. It is also the word of Shakespeare who didn’t care about American parlance built an entire career around. The Kennedy Assassinations both John and Robert are rife with “conspiracy theories.” There are those who say: I don’t believe it, and therefore it is not true. Then there are those who say, I don’t know. And then there are those, like me, who say: A conspiracy only takes more than one. And envy of power plagues us at our own risk.
This is a long way to get to explain how today’s Guest Diary is by Peter Evans, a British journalist and author who published “Nemesis” two or three years ago, about the involvement that Aristotle Onassis had in the assassination of that Passionate Beacon of Hope, Robert F. Kennedy. And many other things and other people who live on that side of the coin. |
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