There's something that bothers me about the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (aka DSK), the French head of the International Monetary Fund, who is being investigated over whether a romantic affair may have led to him abusing his power. This raises the bigger issue of the possible conflict of interest involving the marriages of French politicians and journalists. DSK's wife, Anne Sinclair, is one of France's best-known journalists, and she has been writing a weekly column from Washington on life in the US.
Did she, however, mention her husband's affair in her article for the Journal du Dimanche, which ran three pages on the IMF scandal today? No, she did not. She did, however, mention it in her blog, in which she says that "this one night stand is now behind us." Should she not have been more up front about her relationship with DSK in the pages of the newspaper? Or should she be writing at all from Washington for risk of compromising her journalistic integrity while married to the head of the IMF? Surely there is a case to answer.
But then, in France, this does not seem to be much of an issue. The journalist Christine Ockrent continues to hold a top job in French television despite her partner, Bernard Kouchner, being the foreign minister. Beatrice Schonberg, who was a presenter with France's second channel and the wife of ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo, has now left her post, however. Outside politics, there is the case of French journalist Estelle Denis and her boyfriend the France football coach Raymond Domenech who asked her to marry him, live on TV, after his team was knocked out of Euro 2008. Embarrassing, no?
At first sight it does seem a shame that DSK couldn't keep it in his trousers long enough to prepare a tilt at the presidential elections in 2012 but that's a long way off and in any case French electors couldn't give a fig about politicians' private lives, and rightly so. Men in positions of power have to beat women off with sticks. It's understandable that they sometimes grow tired of resisting.
Posted by: Hugo | Monday, 20 October 2008 at 02:05 PM
Can I belive the sexist comment from Hugo, this is about a superior potentially exploiting his position over someone who is inferior in the business hierachy.
Allegedly DSK has a reputation in french political circles as a bit of a flirt (Jean Quatremer of the french left wing newspaper Liberation warned of this) and a man of his intelligence should have taken note of what happened to Paul Wolfowitz.
Posted by: grace | Monday, 20 October 2008 at 07:25 PM
And these are only the wives. Let's not forget the mistresses.
Sarkozy and Anne Fulda of Le Figaro
François Hollande and Valérie Trierweiler of Paris Match and Direct 8 (where she covered PS affairs)
Jacques Chirac and Elisabeth Friederich (AFP), when Chirac was mayor of Paris
François Baroin and Marie Drücker (France 3)
And for the ladies' team, Ségolène was also rumoured to be enjoying Ugandan discussions with a journalist.
Posted by: Eursoc | Tuesday, 21 October 2008 at 09:18 AM
If you look at Ms. Sinclair's blog, she's totally in the tank for the Obamessiah. More than totally: truly madly deeply. In love. So much so you don't even have to be francophone to tune into that. It's an embarrassment.
I'd guess that DSK, kind of dumpy and long in the tooth, was maybe feeling wounded and more than a little jealous of this phenomenally elegant man and thought it was high time to get on a bit of Hongroise nooky.
Posted by: Hanoi Paris Hilton | Wednesday, 04 March 2009 at 01:52 AM