When it comes to sex and their presidents. Real](http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ondemand/rams/nh07220____2007.ram%22%3EReal) Audio clip from the BBC world service. The interview is about a biography of President Jacques Chirac.
Huevos con Papas y Col Rizada (Kale and eggs with potatoes):
http://corduroyorange.com/?p=48
I made this stuff more or less according to the recipe, and it was excellent. Normally I normally don’t dig recipes written by some dude who uses the word “healthful.”
Caj
Caj, this is exactly the kind of non-sequitur I have come to expect from people who play the concertina!
Well I think it would be refreshing to live in a country where nobody much got their knickers in a twist when a sitting president (Mitterand) was found to have maintained another family alongside his public one for decades.
Lots of other reasons not to live there mind you… 
I think I agree StevieJ. Separating an ability to govern from an ability to suit everyone’s personal moral code might be useful.
Here we run a risk of becoming controversial/political/all that jazz.
You often hear that this is due to Americans viewing their president as a sort of king as well as the public face of their country, and so they don’t want their president doing something they would consider shameful by America’s traditionally Puritanical standards. I think there’s some truth to that.
However, since moving to Canada and participating in both electoral systems (since I’m a dual citizen I can and do legally vote in both countries), I’m also struck by the fact that in the US you can vote directly for the president while in Canada and other countries with parliamentary systems you vote for a local representative of the party you support. If I want a Liberal prime minister I can’t vote for him or her directly; I have to vote for my local Liberal candidate, who’s usually someone I’ve never heard of and know nothing about. In the US I think people feel more directly connected to their president (“I voted for him,” or “I didn’t vote for him”) and therefore seem to hold him to higher standards.
How does it work in France? Do you vote directly for the president? How about the prime minister?
Tis true enough. I will repeat, with reserve, that those who used Lewinsky to attack Clinton were actually much more concerned with what he was doing in terms of foreign and domestic policy and other weighty matters. But Clinton wagged that finger and set himself up to be attacked on that basis.
I would prefer to live in a country that thought what Clinton did was worthy of note and censure. It’s not all relative, man. I find the acceptance of successful European men having wives and openly-known mistresses to be sexist and baffling. To me, the underlying message is that those MEN are powerful and somehow need the extra tail because they deserve it or something. I really don’t get it because it makes the wives look like dependents. And the offspring are being trained to perpetuate it.
Sorry for near rubber-room encroachment.
And yet in the BBC interviewer, the French journalist being interviewed remarked that there’s also a rich history of the wives of “successful European men” taking their own lovers.
Oh good. I feel better. 
Before this gets locked for being a blatantly Rubber Room thread, I would like to point out that the interviewer presented a very important fact, that we tend to equate the trustworthiness of a person privately as much as we do publicly. There are those who would point out that not all French people approve of the morals of their public figures. There are those who would point out that France’s history and reputation internationally is of being untrustworthy. If we agree with this outlook, should we be surprised if we see this reflected in their leaders?
djm
What, no cheese?
So can you name a country that has proven itself to be trustworthy?
Isn’t the American system directly modelled on the French?
Since its the Americans who b!tch about the French the most, you can see the dichotomy (hypocrisy?).
djm
I’m staying out of this one, other than to mention that I asked myself the same question as Steve when I read the post. Watch out for those cultural filters. To use another example, check out the Black Legend. The totality of it is incredible.