Something I found out while looking up other stuff. The new President of France....

[PassingFair]

Francois Hollande, used to be the partner of the FABULOUS
Segolene Royal, the Socialist Party's 2007 candidate for President.



They have four children together.

Seems that he wasn't much help in her campaign (he was the "head"
of the Socialist Party at the time, whatever THAT means),
and she gave him the boot DURING that campaign.

He had apparently taken up with a journalist, whom I suspect is the
lovely woman he calls his companion now:

Valérie Trierweiler:



I stumbled over this information while looking up images of Valerie, because I LOVE her hair cut and
wanted pictures to take to my hair stylist.

Hollande doesn't look like much of a ladies man, but then, I guess you never can tell.

I'm such a fan of Segolene that this tarnishes the the thrill I felt when Hollande
won the election.

Oh well, Viva La France!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. So does that make him a great lover like Mitterand?

I remember Francois Mitterand's funeral. The widow and the mistress were both there, and nobody even commented.

Over here it would be a major scandal, worthy of impeachment and removal from office, as we know.

And as far as the man's looks, he looks animated. The lights are on and somebody's home, as the saying goes. Sparkle, brains, wit, personality, are what makes people attractive, not their physical features necessarily.

[PassingFair]

2. He looks earnest, and that's attractive.

I'd like to know why he didn't get behind Segolene in '07 though.

Sounds like professional jealousy, but then, who knows?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Yeah, "Earnest" is a good word.

But hey, I've been chasing men they now call "nerds" since I hit college in the 1970s. Smart ones. Ever since the days of mainframe computers the size of a room and punch cards.

[iverglas]

4. "whatever THAT means"?

Seriously, I just had to comment on that. We out here in other countries do sometimes organize ourselves differently from how it's done in the US. France has a presidential-parliamentary system, while the US has a presidential-congressional system. They're different. France has a President (head of state) and a Prime Minister (head of government).

Many of us other countries have systems where our political parties have "heads" of one kind or another.

In Canada and the UK, the party "leaders" are elected by party members, and will become Prime Minister if they win their own seat in the House of Commons and their party achieves a majority of seats, in an election.

In France, the President appoints the Prime Minister (as the reigning monarch, the nominal head of state, technically does in Canada and the UK) from the party with a majority in the National Assembly, whose confidence the PM must have (as is the case in Canada and the UK, for instance). France differs from Canada and the UK in that First Secretary is an internal party position and does not automatically make the incumbent the party's nominee for PM (or President).

Hollande was the First Secretary of the Socialist Party at the time of the 2007 election in which Royal ran for President.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Secretary_of_the_French_Socialist_Party

The First Secretary of the Socialist Party is the most senior politician within the Socialist Party in France.

First Secretaries have been President (Mitterand) and Prime Ministers. The current First Secretary, Martine Aubry, is one of the people considered to be a possible Prime Minister under Hollande (as far as I know it is not yet decided).


As for Ségolène Royal and François Hollande:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18008296

Francois Hollande and the journalist Valerie Trierweiler have been together since 2005; openly so since 2007, when Mr Hollande's relationship with fellow Socialist Segolene Royal was publicly ended.

Royal ran in the 2007 election. Apparently, she asked Hollande to move out just before the election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9gol%C3%A8ne_Royal#Personal_life

They'd been together since the 70s, some 30 years, and their last child was born in 1993. It isn't unusual for long-time partners to split, although one partner having an affair is not my favourite way of doing it, no question.

As for Trierweiler, the BBC report suggests there are no problems on the feminism front.

"She is someone who has always worked, who's come from nowhere, who's done everything for herself. I understand her point of view, but it's going to be very hard to keep doing that and be First Lady."

One thing she should understand well, given her background at Paris Match, are the demands of the celebrity press - though a recent contretemps with her own employer suggests there could still be tensions to come.

When the magazine published a large and favourable photo-story about her on 8 March (International Women's Rights Day), she tweeted: "Bravo to the sexism of Paris-Match."

We watched Hollande's victory speech in French on TV5. Too bad CNN cut away before he got to the good stuff -- all about France's mission of spreading its values of liberty, equality, fraternity (and secularism) around the globe. A lot of people in the US might have been quite surprised to hear that anyone else might have such high regard for themselves and their own values and not understand that they are supposed to be spreading USAmerican values around.