OK, look, we get it: The French are “progressive” when it comes to sex. After all, sex is just sex, and marriage is just marriage, and never the two shall meet.
The scandals never stop in France. The last president, Francois Hollande, 59, was caught in an extra-marital affair with 41-year-old actress Julie Gayet. Then there was the “Ballets Roses” scandal, in which André Le Trocquer, the Socialist Speaker of the National Assembly, was caught holding orgies with underaged girls. And don’t even get us started on Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former French finance minister, who set new lows, even for France.
But France always rises above such pettiness. A “scandal”? Hardly. As Anne-Elisabeth Moutet wrote in The Telegraph, ” We would only apply the term if we were referring to a man who was maintaining three separate homes, complete with children, to the knowledge of several thousand people – which, indeed, President François Mitterrand did, Louis XIV-fashion.”
When Bill Clinton was found to have had an affair with an intern his daughter’s age – in the Oval Office, no less, and sometimes including a cigar (don’t ask) – the French pooh-poohed the whole affair. What does it matter, they said. He is a good leader, leave his sex life (and infidelity) out of it.
That’s why this latest “scandal” doesn’t appear to matter at all to the French. Emmanuel Macron, who by several projections is set to win the French presidency in two weeks, was just a 15-year-old student when his 40-year-old teacher seduced him – and the two are married today.
Yes, Macron, 39, is married to 64-year-old Brigitte Trogneux. The Daily Mail this week ran a story complete with a picture of Macron, at 15, kissing his 40-year-old teacher.
Speaking of the moment they first met, the glamorous grandmother of seven who could become France’s first lady, said: ‘He [Macron] came to audition for a part in the play and I watched him. I just found him incredible. He had such presence.’
She went on: ‘Without doubt he wasn’t like the others. He was always with the teachers. He simply wasn’t an adolescent.’
Footage of the obvious closeness between the middle aged drama teacher and the teenage future presidential favourite comes as a clip emerged of Miss Trogneux appearing to suggest her husband is good in bed.
A reporter asked her last year whether Macron is a good politician, to which she replies: ‘There’s isn’t an area I have found that he’s not good at…’
OK, again, gross. Too much info.
The Mail painted the whole sordid affair as a wonderful love story, despite the destruction of Trogneux’s family.
Then Brigitte Auziere, a married mother of three, she was supervising the drama club. Mr Macron, a literature lover who wanted to be a novelist, was a member.
He later moved to Paris for his last year of high school. At that time, he recalled, ‘we called each other all the time, we spent hours on the phone, hours and hours on the phone’.
For her part, Miss Trogneux recalled in a television documentary: ‘Little by little, he overcame all my resistances in an unbelievable way, with patience.’
She also said: ‘He wasn’t a teenager. He had a relationship of equals with other adults.’
She eventually moved to the French capital to join him, and divorced her husband. They have been together ever since.
Blech. And yet, Macron is poised to win the presidency. The most recent poll puts Macron in the lead against Marine le Pen, 61% to 39%, ForexCrunch reports.
Vive la France!