(AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Earlier today as I sat on the back deck of my house enjoying the warm New Hampshire weather and a Diet Coke, I thought I detected a sudden chill, a darkening of the cottony white puffs of cumulus floating above me, a foreboding tremor of the earth upon which my lounge chair rested.
No, it wasn’t a terrorist attack on our beloved Lake Winnipesaukee, where I live. It was French President Sarkozy, who is summering here, raging raging raging against the dark and AP photographer Jim Cole and freelancer Vince DeWitt who had the nerve to be staking out the French Prez near a buoy after getting permission from the Marine Patrol.
According to the Union Leader story, Sarkozy was more than a little miffed about what he viewed as an invasion of his privacy. Enraged sounds like a better description. He actually picked up DeWitt’s camera — was he planning to throw it overboard? Clearly, the man was out of control, unused to the “up-close-and-personal” tradition of gotcha journalism practiced in the USA on pols and celebs.
“The president was very agitated, speaking French at a loud volume very rapidly,” DeWitt said. I bet.
Sarkozy is renting a summer home in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney, GOP presidential candidate also has a house. Most people pretend Mitt isn’t here (that’s how we Granite Staters treat most tourists from Massachusetts), but the president of France is another story indeed.
Many Americans still have fond memories of Freedom Fries and generally enjoy getting on the nerves of anyone French, just on principle. Plus, they are a little funny when upset. Somehow the French language seems more humorous than terrifying when used to express anger. The same thing said in German tends to evoke vivid images of death camps and barbed wire. I do tremble when accosted auf Deutsch. In French I just tend to giggle.
In any event, Sarkozy got angry, sounded funny yelling in French, threatened to throw a camera overboard, and generally just seemed very French.
After Cole and DeWitt promised to stop shooting photos for the day, Sarkozy calmed down, ate a few croissants, reboarded his boat and continued out onto the lake with his party, followed by a boat carrying U.S. Secret Service agents.
The French government in Paris had no immediate comment.
5 responses so far ↓
French president goes ballistic on New Hampshire lake. | Presidential Candidates Watch 2008 // August 6, 2007 at 3:32 am
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Nicolette Ladoulis // August 7, 2007 at 3:06 am
Well well, Sarkozy’s vacationing in the US with secret service help and my American kid, not allowed out of France because of the French father and the US state department–apparently went only to Brittany this summer. Double standards, double standards. They send people away to psychiatrists and take their children away for such raging behavior — in France and the US. But how quickly we all forget–there’s no change without anger. No respect if you can’t muster it up once in a while. Didn’t some of us dump tea in Boston harbor and wage a war against England with a little of it…We’d have better government in the US–maybe everywhere– if more people could get so angry about percieved injustice! I’m sorry that wasn’t a theme in your story. Vivre la France!
Rake Morgan // August 7, 2007 at 11:04 am
Rod, yes, it was unkind to say unfriendly things about the French. Maybe it is payback for the two weeks I spent in France before travelling to six other European countries. The French were the most stuck-up, rude, obnoxious people I met while spending a year in Europe. So, their president comes over here, threatens a photographer whose work I have admired in the local press, and basically acts like the stuck-up, rude, obnoxious French snobs I met all those years ago — well, I guess all that negativity just came pouring out. Plus, it was funny. Maybe the French don’t have a sense of humor, either.
a non-rake fan // August 7, 2007 at 3:54 pm
People (read Americans) need not wonder anymore as to why the rest of the world laughs at this country. You are a poor representative, boorish in fact. Do you really have nothing better to do than prpogate stupid sterotypes? Oh yeah, but it’s ok-it only the French…but you wouldn’t dare publish it if you were just referring to the Jews, the Blacks, the Mexicans, the Chinese…but maybe you would, who knows. “Payback?” What, for putting up with you? Yeah, every French person is a snob-better than a daft, rude and short-sighted American. Oops, my apologies for such a sweeping and ridiculous comment-because I actually know that’s a load of crap. Freedom of speech sucks sometimes.
Rake Morgan // August 7, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Your president behaved badly and was caught doing so. We have had some fun at his and your expense and now all the sensitive Frenchmen are upset. That’s too bad. There’s plenty to poke fun of at Americans — we do it ourselves and have a good laugh at our own president and cultural quirks. Just watch American news and TV! If the president of any other country stomed a photographer’s boat in bathing trunks, spewed obcenities in a foreign language, and threatened to throw a camera overboard, you bet we’d be making fun of him/her, too. You are so wrong: freedom of speech is awesome — and this is my microphone “Mr Non-Rake Fan.”