Did Condi pave the way for Ségolène?

The contortion skills of the European press are amazing. They’re more than willing to call Condoleeza Rice a “Warrior Princess” and imply that she's an Aunt Jemima-like servant of the president, but are calling Royal a “Socialist in Stelletos” and gyrating unbelievable, even though one can hardly detect if she has a platform at all.

Ségo, as we call her in France, is a different, altogether more seductive creature than the dumpy hausfrau Angela Merkel, the new German Chancellor. This is a woman who wouldn't look out of place on a catwalk despite what she lacks in stature (she's just 5 foot 2) and has been dubbed the ''Socialist in Stilettos'' and ''Madame Charisma''.

When I met her recently in her office at the National Assembly in Paris, she was, inevitably, running late. It gave me a chance to snoop. On a round table in the centre of the room there was a notepad, a pen - and lip- gloss.

Fake. A total creation of a press so lazy to know what they’ll write about in the next year, that they need to create it. It’s just like the 4 unctuous “Jersey Girls”, the leftist agitators who use the seeming infallibility of being 9-11 widows to put them above criticism or discussion in order to rail at conservatives. They are such an apparent fabrication of the press that it reeks. In New Jersey, most people hate the term “Jersey Girl.” The cranky foursome clearly didn’t come up with it – some insulated Manahattanite did in order to put on them what people west of Ohio might find to be a charming spin on them.
Their only purpose for the press is to give them a vehicle to opine and provide them insurance against having to argue their own idea – the goal was to make arguing with anything they say have all the appeal of a child molester - a sexist move if there ever was one, since it's hard for a man to be a bereved widow and mother, and would never garner the same sort of attention. Let's hop back to the other side of the pond:

There is something undeniably sexy about a woman in power and Ségolène embodies it. We may not agree with President Mitterand's assertion that Margaret Thatcher had ''the mouth of Marilyn Monroe'' but some of her cabinet were certainly in thrall to her.

Actually they weren't inthralled by her lips, but by what came from them. They were inspired by the depth of Thatcher’s intellect and courage, possibly even a bit scared of it. A fact a pandering writer even in the Telegraph would happily jettison.
By saying that anyone is ‘using sex’, they must mean being a female – merely another number in the genetic lottery which is only a issue for SOME people between the very narrow class-theory bookends of Euro-thought. A leader needs leadership charisma, not lip-gloss. If there is any of that rare leadership ability to be found in Royal, the press isn’t capable of finding it because of the inescapable cultural clamp of being typically European narrow-minded cultural “successes” as they like to define their own social set. It somehow validated calling Merkel a "dumpy hausfrau".

The sexism – the real sexism – and rank hatefulness and hypocrisy is palpable for a nation and continent that will evangelize and browbeat anyone they can force to listen with lectures about even handed treatment, human rights, and any other social vanity lingering in the bottom of their rocks-glasses.

If any Arab leader were to take a “President Royal” seriously, it would only be for the experience they have with the seriousness of Secretary of State Rice who treats their wife-beating instincts for what they are – another hangup that's keeping them from getting beyond the 9th century in many ways, just as Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Ghandi handled their challenges. The conceit of using a term like "dumpy hausfrau" is a cheap and vicious smear that's beneath contempt because it isn't critque, but rather abuse.

Should Royal, or Bachelet for that matter, avoid similar treatment she would owe it to the real leaders who are women, not the social movements in the least. The big lie is any claim that the Marxist dominated feminist movement can make to the success of those that really broke through a glass ceiling - the conservatives. The fuse is lit!