Deals with the devil

by Neil Thomas
November 27th, 2009

Poor Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

She is satirised (for her modelling, her nude portrait posing and celeb friends) in The Simpsons in an episode called The Devil Wears Nada, featuring as a character who throws herself at Homer saying “I want to make love, right now”.

The Elysee Palace seems unconcerned – offering a Gallic shrug to The Simpsons’ weakness for lampooning the French, a trend that began during the Iraq invasion with Bart’s reference to “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

But now comes news that Carla has been asked to appear in a Woody Allen film AND has recorded a duet of The Beatles’ And I Love Her with Harry Connick JR for his new album.

We shouldn’t knock this, perhaps.

How do other political leaders or their wives/partners match up to Carla’s challenging standard of cultural exposure?

Perhaps Cherie Blair, after her infamous morning-after-the-election-doorstep-look, could have appeared in The Postman Alway Rings Once and Makes a Run for It and maybe The East German born Angela Merkel could have starred singing ‘hey you with the stasi in your eyes’ to her husband in The Postman Always Rings Twice and Very Loudly in the Middle of the Night. Oh, and the new EU president could sing with Roger Daltry in a reformed The Who, or more accurately The EU?

Cultural jealousy?