Monday, May 25, 2009

Hey look, he's just like you and me...

President Sarkozy has been busy lately, running the country, serving his people, and apparently, updating his Facebook page. His new profile photo shows him tanned and casually dressed; the only thing missing is the sign of an out-stretched arm giving away the fact that the photo was actually taken by himself.

There is, however, a link to a video made by the French magazine, Femme Actuelle, which shows him waltzing in during an interview by the magazine with his wife, Carla Bruni. He chats (in a slightly flirtatious way) with the group of women, sits on the arm of a chair next to his wife, kisses her, talks about how he has just showered after exercising and then throws in the fact that he has just met with the Iraqi president.

The whole thing feels slightly embarrassing to me, not only because it all feels a little staged, but also because I guess I'm a little old school in that I like to see my world leaders doing some sort of leadership kind of thing, not hanging out with people and chatting.

I know it's the world we live in now. Politicians feel the need to communicate with their people by every means possible. As a registered member of Democrats Abroad, I regularly get emails from President Obama 'himself', which always feels a little surreal when I see them in my inbox.

This is where Facebook gets a little weird for me. Love seeing people and what they're up to in general, not so keen though on reading that they are eating an orange and it's the best orange they've ever eaten. But after the initial befriending of someone, this is what Facebook boils down to; knowing the minutiae of other people's lives. Is it really the appropriate venue to read about what our world leaders are 'up to'?

Just one of the rather long list of things that annoyed me about Sarah Palin's whole campaign was how she was always referred to as 'a regular gal', just like you and me. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want myself anywhere near the red phone, let alone the red button. I don't want to think that just any Joe Schmo can be involved in running the world. I don't want to know they've just been for a run, are possibly a little sore, maybe need to cut back their carb intake, or anything other than what they are doing about sorting out the plethora of hugely important problems facing the world.

Next thing you know we'll be watching former world leaders enter the Big Brother house...


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! I hadn't seen that. Yeah, pretty darn homey. Carla seems to be so in love. Who cleans up the dog hair from the expensive carpets?

Michel said...

WTF!?! Obama doesn't write to me! And I'm working for his stupid government!

This is an outrage!

Unknown said...

There's something about Sarkozy in this video that gives me the eebie-jeebies. Yes, doesn't he have anything better to do? And can't he chat more effectively, if he's going to crash the party? Or is that degree of fawning enough to scramble his circuits?

Having said all that, I suppose it's an improvement on showing up for a G8 press conference drunk.