America has a love-hate relationship with France. We love the garlic-eaters for supporting the rebels at Yorktown. We hate them for stealing Jerry Lewis. We love them for French Fries. We hate the frogs for not allowing US F-16s fly over France to bomb Libya. No one under the GW Bush regime ever said, “Lafayette, we are here.” French Fries were Freedom Fries. They were more fattening under that name, but this is a new government in the USA. Obama is reaching out to old allies and few are older than France, although not the Italian-born wife of the French president, who had once said, “Love lasts a long time, but burning desire — two to three weeks.”
The ex-model seems to have abandoned this belief judging from her sangfroid greeting of President #44. Not the traditional two misses on the cheeks like that her husband offered to Michele Obama, but a mere handshake and then she kept her distance at Strasbourg’s majestic 18th-century Rohan Palace, where the NATO leaders are meeting to celebrate the alliance’s 60th anniversary.
Maybe Obama is not Mdme. President’s type.
Tant pis.
There’ll be other state dinners in the future.
A chat behind closed doors, for Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is no Monica Lewinsky.