That too, but it's not really the point. All the Anglophone reporters on this--except in the Daily Mail, the only rag that's vile, low, and slimy enough to come right out with it and thus (for once) the only paper worth reading--are deliberately missing the point.
They're making this sound arcane, complex, incomprehensible, and basically unimportant--or important only because this guy's a psycho and a thug who should never have been anywhere *near* the (what's the English for "cosmic oda?"), and the coverup's been worse than the crime.
But basically, in 2018, that's your standard "roll-your-eyes, click on a better scandal" story. Reporters aren't explaining what this is *really* about and why the country's transfixed because it's just beneath their dignity--and supposedly it should not matter.
But "it should not matter" doesn't mean "it *does* not matter." "We don't know if it's true" doesn't mean "everyone in France believes it's untrue." What people in France are really thinking matters a lot--even if it's not true (and I bet it is, I mean: come on.)
So they should report it even if it's skanky, unsuitable for print in a family paper, wildly politically incorrect, and just a rumor. Because let's face it: France--middle-aged French women, especially--was totally cool with the old Macron.
France was totally ready for a president who got it on with his high school drama teacher when he was underage and she was a married woman 25 years his senior with three kids. That, you see, was a *victory* for women and for France.
One may argue perhaps that France should not have been quite so ready for that: Perhaps taboos against molesting your students, betraying your husband, and breaking up your family exist for good reasons. But that's by the by: Basically, France thought it was cool.
And middle-aged women, particularly, found the story spiritually refreshing. (I swear to you, since he was elected, drageurs who are to shave haven't given it a rest: You say, "Écoutez-moi bien, jeune homme, ne me tutoyez jamais encore et surtout ne m'appelez pas 'Mademoiselle,"
"je suis assez vieille d'être ta mère," in your most frigid voice (pun intended)-- words that once scattered them like pigeons--but since the election, they just look at you, right in the eyes, and say: "C'est débile, ça. Brigitte Macron."
So his victory was a victory for women everywhere with a taste for le fruit vert. France was ready. But France was *not* ready for a closeted gay president with a geriatric beard, it just wasn't, especially not one who insists he's Jupiter.
So I get it why respectable journalists don't want to touch it, but it's just dumb to leave this story to Murdoch and Sputnik, because it *is* significant--to the world--that all of France is now looking at these photos and thinking, "Ah ouais." google.fr/search?q=macro…:
It shouldn't matter, but this is the real world. France has an ancient monarchical reflex, and they're now looking over and over again at photos of the Roi de Jupiter staring moistly into the eyes of a freak who gets his jollies by dressing up like one of the Village People--
--and going totally Marquis de Sade, while Brigitte sort of disappears into the background. One you see it, you can't unsee it. Whether or not it *is* way less important than, say, sinking the Rainbow Warrior was, it is inevitable it will affect public sentiment:
Humanity's just that way. And thus this is disastrous, far more so than the Rainbow Warrior, because Macron is France's last, best hope of entering the 21st century, and Europe's best hope of not returning to the 20th .
So journalists who care about actually informing their readers--as opposed to leaving them thinking that Sputnik is the only place to find the truth--need to explain this. And Macron needs to face it head on, so to speak:
My suggestion would be that he kill Benalla with his bare hands, then declare that he caught him in flagrante with Brigitte: "Any real man would have done the same." Risky, but it just might work.
Pretending this isn't happening won't.
Pretending this isn't happening won't.
