tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-225422212825921892024-03-13T15:53:57.113-07:00Tom Sancton's News & ViewsTom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.comBlogger189125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-59864536878378181042022-11-07T01:41:00.000-08:002022-11-07T01:41:04.222-08:00GOING HOME: Remembering Mike Duran, 1949-2022<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwv5r_2Vnrx5RwR_4r48m506ILmW2kLsgKCDeyRKNxhdW60JMII-HtMAZjJq9vrftIyg-17IGyIfxQoEOmGlD2YOEDqReQ8GCTGi6H5D4O_-DF78Q-ukHc6WlX3ioIYtElROgUPEPoEB6ES-dxHqJoZnb4aZeUQmFuaI33jAnWuh5qxlL0irVUZWs/s650/michael-duran-new-orleans-la-obituary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="361" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwv5r_2Vnrx5RwR_4r48m506ILmW2kLsgKCDeyRKNxhdW60JMII-HtMAZjJq9vrftIyg-17IGyIfxQoEOmGlD2YOEDqReQ8GCTGi6H5D4O_-DF78Q-ukHc6WlX3ioIYtElROgUPEPoEB6ES-dxHqJoZnb4aZeUQmFuaI33jAnWuh5qxlL0irVUZWs/s320/michael-duran-new-orleans-la-obituary.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>I first met Mike on a baseball field. We played together on a New Orleans youth team sponsored by Carrollton Refrigeration, whose name was emblazoned on the backs of our blue-and-white uniforms. We were champions of the 11-year-old league that year. Mike was a star. I was a bench warmer. We became best friends and stayed best friends over the next six decades. And baseball remained our shared passion. In a city that had no professional team, we had to find somebody else to root for. Naturally, we chose the Yankees.<br /><span> </span>The next year saw the legendary home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as they chased Babe Ruth’s record. Mike and I followed every game, clipped every newspaper article on the M&M twins and glued them in scrapbooks. It was a great bonding experience, though we were fiercely competitive about who had the best book. We also tri ed to emulate our heroes by playing home run derby using a wiffle bat and, for some reason, a crumpled-up wad of aluminum foil as a ball. We usually played on Burdette Street, in front of Mike’s house, or in the driveway of my Aunt Pat’s house on Vincennes. Mike usually won—but not always. I can still hear the thwack of that yellow plastic bat connecting with the aluminum foil ball. (Years later my Aunt Pat found one of our balls in the gutter of her garage, blocking the downspout.)<br /> <span> </span>When we were not playing baseball, we roamed the neighborhood on hot summer afternoons looking for interesting things to do. We terrorized birds with our Whammo sling shots and left quite a few dents in the stop signs along Fontainebleau Drive. We spent a lot of time in the air-conditioned oasis of Gravois’ Pharmacy on Carrollton and Walmsley, across from Lafayette School. We would read Superman and Batman comics from their newsstand and sip Barq’s root beers and Chocolate Soldiers. It was also at Gravois’ that we bought our first Duncan yo-yo’s and learned all the cool tricks that would become another object of our friendly competition: Walk-the-Dog, Around-the-World, Loop-the-Loop…<br /><span> </span>But the main attraction of Gravois’, besides the AC, was the baseball cards that we would buy by the dozen. We would eagerly tear open the packs, stuff the enclosed chewing gum into our bulging cheeks, and argue over who got the best cards: “I got Yogi Berra, that’s ten times better than your Bobby Richardson!” “Says who? I got Stan Musial and Rocky Colavito!” We both wound up with large collections—and yes, we both got Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris that year—but we stupidly played games with our cards, stand-up, knock-down, closies, that left them creased with rounded edges and made them worthless. Our most prized cards were spared that indignity but, as was often the case, our mothers eventually threw them out. (At least mine did, maybe Mike’s survived.) We were inseparable friends in those days, as close as any brothers, closer than some. I remember something Mike said back then that always stuck in my mind: “Maybe some day our kids will play together.”<br /><span> </span>Those years passed quickly. Mike and I went to different high schools, Jesuit for him, Ben Franklin for me. We would occasionally run into each other at dances or a local hamburger joint like College Inn or Bud’s Broiler, but as we advanced into our late teens we sort of drifted apart. And when time came to go off to college, our paths diverged more sharply: Mike, largely at his father’s urging, went to the Naval Academy, while I (at my father’s urging) went to Harvard. I remember a brief phone conversation with him just before we both left town. “Maybe we’ll meet at a football game,” he said. “Yeah, Mike, that would be great,” I replied. Neither of us probably realized at the time that a puny Ivy League team like Harvard would never find itself on the same field with the formidable Navy squad. I didn’t learn until many years later what a miserable time Mike had had at Anapolis, or that he had transferred to UNO and later attended the University of Maine, where he joined a rock band and lived in an unheated cabin while he earned a masters in English. Mike always did things his way. <br /><span> </span>After I went off to college, I lived away from New Orleans for the next few decades. During trips home to visit my parents, I would occasionally cross paths with Mike. I remember one time, maybe around 1980, I was waiting in line at a bank when somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see a tall guy in the uniform of a Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries employee. It was Mike. We hugged each other and I think I went to his place later and had dinner with him and his then wife. We did a lot of reminiscing and had a great time together, but I came away thinking it was strange, and kind of sad, that somebody as brilliant as Mike Duran had wound up as a game warden. The next time I ran into him, somewhere in the CBD, he was wearing an expensive suit and was working for one of the top law firms in the city. He had actually gone back to law school at a relatively mature age and earned two law degrees. That was the Mike I knew: he was a fighter who always managed to land on his feet.<br /><span> </span>Not long after that, Mike had to come to New York to take a deposition. I was working for Time magazine then and living in Westchester County, north the city. Mike had brought his little boy Chance along on the trip and they stayed with us a few nights. Chance and my son Julian fulfilled Mike’s childhood prophesy about our kids playing together one day. And of course, we all went to a Yankees game. Sitting in choice seats behind the Yanks’ dugout, I said to Mike, “Well, we finally made it to Yankee Stadium.” I don’t even remember who won the game. The important thing was that we were there together, in the house of Ruth, Mantle, and Maris, passing our passion for the Yanks on to our sons.<br /><span> </span>A decade or so went by before I saw Mike again. I was at the Maple Street Bookstore to do a reading from my memoir about growing up in New Orleans. Mike waited in line anonymously to get his copy signed. I didn’t know he was there until it was his turn. I looked up and saw that familiar grin (what a grin he had). I signed the book to “my oldest and best friend.” Then Mike plopped a package down on the table, a thick manuscript wrapped in kraft paper and tied with white twine. “Read it when you have time,” he said. <br /><span> </span>It was his own coming-of-age memoir, unpublished, but beautifully written. I figured in the childhood parts, which moved me greatly. He also wrote about his parents, Grace and Richard, Sr., whom I knew as a kid. And of course about baseball. But there were sides of Mike that I didn’t know about, like his passion for hunting and the great outdoors. And references to the pop music of the time, which he knew far better than me. And his love of literature. What mainly impressed me, though, was the quality of the writing. <br /><span> </span>Over the years, he shared with me many of his other writings, including two novels and a provocative essay on race. I didn’t like the race essay, though it was skillfully developed and argued. Mike and I did not see eye to eye on politics. We generally avoided the subject and tolerated our differences: I was his liberal friend and he was my right-wing buddy. I’ll admit it was hard for me to swallow the fact that he had voted for Trump (twice), but I’m sure he didn’t appreciate my votes for Hillary and Biden. The one consolation was the thought that our votes cancelled each other out.<br /><span> </span>As for his other writings, I offered suggestions and critiques that I think he found helpful. The last one, <i>Stigma</i>, was a novel about priestly pedophilia that he considered so provocative that he signed it anonymously as “Antoine Nusmun” when he got it published. But it was also a semi-autobiographical novel about the redemption and vindication of a Mike-like character. Apart from the sex offense (which he told me did not actually involve him), it was really a novel about the main character’s evolution from an angry, smartass youth—a self-described jerk—into a loving husband and father at peace with himself and the world. At Mike’s request, I gladly provided a word of praise for the back cover. I wish he had signed his own name and taken credit for his work, but he wanted to avoid any controversy over his scathing attack on the Church.<br /><span> </span>I note in passing that I was somewhat surprised by his apparent drift away from his strict Catholic roots towards an involvement with the Methodist church, thereby joining me as a Protestant (a status that he never actually acknowledged to me). Stigma contains a partial explanation for this shift: his view that the Catholics, or at least the Jesuits who were his teachers, had given short shrift to the message of faith and redemption preached by Saint Paul. For Mike remained profoundly religious, an intellectual deeply versed in philosophy, for whom the search for the fundamental truths mattered. <br /><span> </span>But baseball also mattered. In the later years of our friendship, Mike and I established a ritual: whenever I was in town, we would attend a baseball game together. New Orleans had a Triple-A team then, originally named the Zephyrs for the legendary roller coaster at the long-defunct Pontchartrain Beach amusement park. The Zephyrs had their own ballpark out on Airline Highway. Mike and I would meet at the ticket booth, both wearing our Yankee caps. At his insistence, we always got seats directly behind home plate, so he could see the pitches come in. “Got him on the changeup!” he would say, or “Trouble with the curve ball.” While we watched the game, we would gorge ourselves on hot dogs and beer and, since it was New Orleans, red beans and rice. And we would laugh, and talk, and reminisce, as our faces turned red with sunburn. Those were wonderful moments. But at some point, some idiot decided to change the team’s name to the “Baby Cakes.” It seemed to me that attendance fell off rapidly after that. Who wanted to root for a team with such a pathetic name? I’m not certain, but I think the name change had a lot to do with the team’s demise. At any rate, the franchise folded and that was the end of our ballpark ritual.<br /><span> </span>But we had another ritual: Thursday lunch at New Orleans Spirits and Seafood out by the lake. Thursdays because that was the day they served rabbit. I don’t know how many times we ate there, but it was always a joy. When the waitress asked if we wanted one or two pieces, one of us would say, “I didn’t drive all the way out here for one piece of rabbit!” Always two. With Barq’s root beer.<br /><span> </span>At one of our rabbit feasts, Mike let me listen to some music on his phone. It was one of his own compositions called “Opening Line,” about the quandary of a lone man in a cowboy bar eyeing a sexy lady but hesitating to make a move until she answers the question: “How do you identify?” I thought it was fabulous, typically Mike Duran with it’s no-bullshit takedown of political correctness and transgender culture. But it was also fabulous for another reason: Mike’s voice, deeper than his speaking voice, took on the Western accent and persona of a country singer. It reminded me of Johnny Cash, or maybe even Tom Waits. In any case, this was a real talent that I had been totally unaware of. At my request, he later send me a couple of CDs of tunes he had composed and recorded with his musically talented sons, Chase, Soren, and Mike, Jr. I was blown away by the inventiveness of the lyrics and the musical quality of the performances. As with his novel, I regretted that he had not signed his own name to his music, instead using the pseudonym of “Kirk Castle.” By any name, though, these recordings, like his writings, were important to Mike, something he wanted to stand as a “legacy.”<br /><span> </span>Which brings me to the sad part of this story. The idea of legacy goes with mortality, and in his last years, Mike was made painfully aware of his own. I knew he had battled prostate cancer decades earlier and assumed he had beat it. But in one of his emails, he told me it had returned and metastasized. At our last rabbit lunch in March, he was in a lot of pain. The silver hair that protruded from under his cloth cap had turned curly like mine, a result, he told me, of his chemotherapy. He said his doctor had given him up to a year to live. He hoped to make one last trip to Europe if he could, maybe we would meed in Paris. I asked him, “What’s your state of mind, Mike?” Without hesitating, he replied: “I have faith.” We shared a brotherly hug when we parted. I feared it was the last time I would see him.<br /><span> </span>But we kept in contact by email. The brilliant opening of the Yankees’ 2022 season gave us a subject of running commentary. I would send him articles from the New York Times (probably not his favorite newspaper) about Yankee victories and the seemingly unassailable lead they had in the AL East. He would send me pictures of Mickey Mantle and other legendary Yanks grabbed off the Internet. Of course we were fascinated by the new home run race: Aaron Judge’s pursuit of Maris’s record. (We never acknowledged the phony records of the steroid junkies in the National League.) We started out saying Judge’s performance didn’t have the magic of the M&M twins in 1961. But as his numbers climbed higher and higher, we both got into it and cheered him on. Meanwhile, our Yanks hit the skids after the All Star game. I conveyed my concern to Mike, and he replied, “Don’t worry, next week we go home.”<br /><span> </span>In my last email to Mike, I sent him a feature article about players’ relationships with their gloves. “Do you remember the smell of your first glove?” I wrote. He answered, “I do. And the saddle soap.” Then he gave me the shattering news that he was in hospice care surrounded by his wife and sons. I wrote one or two emails after that, but got no reply. By that time, I suppose he was heavily sedated and headed into that good night. <br /><span> </span>My heart lept in early September when I saw a message from Mike in my inbox. Turns out it was his wife Judy informing me that her beloved husband, my beloved friend and brother, had passed away. Though I was expecting the news, my eyes filled with tears and I couldn’t sleep that night. My mind was running and re-running the film of our long friendship. I was privileged to know Mike and be his friend from childhood into old age. He was in many ways a larger-than-life character, one of a kind. It’s hard to imagine a world in which he is no longer present. What consoles me is the knowledge of his own deep faith, and his remark, originally about the Yankees, but now about Mike’s own journey: “Don’t worry, we’re going home.” <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /> Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-18963362359563186282022-01-17T10:45:00.000-08:002022-01-17T10:45:59.252-08:00BIG TECH'S INFLUENCE? OUT OF THIS WORLD!<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><i>This guest posting by my old TIME colleague Don Morrison appeared this week in the Berkshire Eagle. <br /></i></span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTdMCn-o4fU3tm0-GOinZ5ocZ3ynlH9I-j8RntPRG5olzFsi4rZpMUuePykQPHhN7dYKKM8jBz0jEVgWRqsNxgLY7cwd7dhwjNsEnPcNVRQtvZfowuT76w9RlfIQkt47u3ECBf6evhfbT2-68nICYIvvfk5B76qoUmN5JrIXkk0WtS2BqId5IuzJU=s1184" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="1184" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTdMCn-o4fU3tm0-GOinZ5ocZ3ynlH9I-j8RntPRG5olzFsi4rZpMUuePykQPHhN7dYKKM8jBz0jEVgWRqsNxgLY7cwd7dhwjNsEnPcNVRQtvZfowuT76w9RlfIQkt47u3ECBf6evhfbT2-68nICYIvvfk5B76qoUmN5JrIXkk0WtS2BqId5IuzJU=w320-h134" width="320" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;">To train for their famous 1968 mission to the moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins spent time in the lunar-like deserts of the American west. </span></p><p></p><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One day, they ran into an elderly Native American man. He recognized them from TV – and asked them for a favor. “My tribe believes sacred spirits live on the moon,” he said. “Could you give them a message for us?” </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The astronauts agreed. So, the man had them memorize a phrase in his native language. When they asked him what it meant, he demurred: “It’s a secret between our tribe and the moon spirits.” </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What happened next was one of the most poignant skirmishes in the age-old war between past and future, natives and colonizers, tradition and technology. That conflict is a bit like the one we’re currently waging with the large tech companies. You know: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter and so on.</span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We let them into our lives, which they promised to make better. They did, sort of. But they also stole our privacy, poisoned our politics, wasted our time, degraded our human interactions and messed with the minds of our children. Meanwhile, these electronic pirates have made fortunes off our personal information and their skill in addicting us to their products and services. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In a rare show of bipartisan comity, our elected and appointed leaders seem to be awakening to the problem. Congress has held hours of hearings and introduced dozens of bills over the past year to protect us from these invaders. The measures would strengthen privacy protections and strip social media companies of their protection from legal liability for the harm they cause. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That latter privilege was accorded them by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. The loophole allows websites to be treated as “common carriers,” like a phone company routing calls obliviously, instead of as self-interested gatekeepers crafting algorithms to determine who sees what online – and selling microscopically targeted advertising to accompany that content. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To protect young people from such intrusive behavior, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey has introduced an update of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which he helped craft in 1998. The new version would spare kids from targeted advertising, stiffen security standards on electronic devices marketed to them and include a “eraser button” to eliminate kids’ personal info at will. <span style="color: #202122;"></span></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Another tool for taming Big Tech is anti-trust law. The House Judiciary Committee has finished work on six bills that would help prevent tech companies from using their monopoly power to maximize profits and smother competition. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Courts have become the latest anti-trust battleground. A federal judge last week allowed a Federal Trade Commission suit against Facebook to move forward. The FTC alleges that the company, which controls 70% of the daily social media market (98% among desktop users), has maintained its position by buying up potential rivals. Google, which has more than 80% of the market for internet search and 90% for Android app sales, is facing three anti-trust suits over its treatment of competitors. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Encouraging as those efforts may be, chances of success are slim. The tech industry now accounts for more than one-third of the total U.S. economy. Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google alone are worth more than $7 trillion, bigger than the gross domestic product of any country in the world, except the U.S and China. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That kind of money buys a lot of lawyers, lobbyists and, alas, politicians. Tech executives are among the biggest contributors to political campaigns and getting bigger. Not surprisingly, hardly any of the bills introduced in Congress are expected to be debated, let alone passed. Even the FTC suits are considered by many legal experts to be long shots, partly because of the defendants’ impressive array of top-drawer lawyers. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This mismatch in firepower reminds us of what happened to Native Americans when the white man first arrived on this continent, with his superior wealth and technology. The locals never had a chance. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The old geezer who confronted Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in the desert clearly knew his history. </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;">When the astronauts returned to their base that day, they searched for an expert who understood the m</span><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;">an's language. They finally found one and repeated the words they’d memorized. The translator burst out laughing. Then he told them the meaning of that message:</span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">"Don't believe a single word these white men tell you. They’ve come to steal your land.” </span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "New Times", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div class="yiv2989998923ydp7c5800e8yiv6465529259MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 14.266666412353516px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Donald Morrison is an Eagle columnist and co-chairman of the advisory board. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of The Berkshire Eagle. Used with permission of the author.</i></span></span></div>Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-35840651805400568862021-12-01T08:13:00.005-08:002021-12-02T06:28:39.074-08:00Copying Trump’s Playbook, Far-right Pundit Eric Zemmour Preaches Hate and Xenophobia in his Quest for the French Presidency<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #231f20;"><p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qABCRaIRrrU/YaebCJAqzrI/AAAAAAAABtc/nIGd5pBxvPwyerOkuB0QN6xpaYNc4mF3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Zemmour%2Bposter.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1441" data-original-width="2048" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qABCRaIRrrU/YaebCJAqzrI/AAAAAAAABtc/nIGd5pBxvPwyerOkuB0QN6xpaYNc4mF3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Zemmour%2Bposter.jpg" width="320" /></a></p>A media star with no political experience throws his hat into the ring and soars in the presidential polls. Hurling crude insults at his critics, bashing the elites, vilifying the press, and lavishing praise upon Russia, he rides a wave of populist anger, fear, and xenophobia as he promises to restore his demoralized country to its former glory. No wonder many pundits are calling<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Eric Zemmour</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>the French<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Donald Trump. </span></strong>Zemmour, 63, who has just announced his official candidacy, freely acknowledges Trump’s rise to power as a blueprint for his own potential run. He even modeled the cover of his latest book,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>France Has Not Said Its Final Word</em>, on Trump’s 2015 manifesto,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Great Again.</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Both men pose like patriotic saviors in front of their national flag. Both men have been<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span>accused of sexual misconduct</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #231f20;"> </span></span><span style="color: #231f20;">by multiple women. (Zemmour has declined to respond to the allegations.)</span></span><p></p><p style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;">Beyond the obvious similarities, however, the differences between Trump and Zemmour are substantial. Trump is an uncultivated vulgarian. Zemmour, in contrast, is an articulate, well-read intellectual whose speeches are peppered with literary and historical references. Trump succeeded by taking over the Republican Party; Zemmour, who belongs to no party, is scrambling to improvise a movement of his own. With his height, girth, and outlandish coiffure, Trump is physically imposing; Zemmour is balding, of modest stature and slight build, with a reedy voice—the kind of guy Trump would make fun of if he were in the opposing camp.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="paywall" style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #231f20;">Perhaps the main thing the two men share is their status as outsiders that no one took seriously until they began to get traction in national polls. In Zemmour’s case, the rise has been meteoric: Credited in June with a 5.5% share of the theoretical vote, he has more than tripled that margin and now has a serious chance of facing off </span><span>against President Emmanuel Macron in the</span><span style="color: #231f20;">runoff of France’s two-round election next April. Until recently, conventional wisdom had pointed to a replay of the 2017 matchup between Macron and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Marine Le Pen,</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>of the far-right anti-immigrant National Rally (R.N.) party, who has been trying to moderate her image. But by outflanking her on the radical right—and relentlessly insisting that “Marine can’t win”—Zemmour could lure a substantial number of Le Pen’s 2017 voters to his camp.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">Even before announcing his official candidacy on November 30—via a youtube video<span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration: none;"> </span>touting the past glories of France juxtaposed with sinister images of immigrants and terrorist attacks—Zemmour has been sucking up all the media oxygen. He is a constant feature in TV interviews and debates. His face is emblazoned on the covers of major magazines. Crisscrossing the country on a book tour-cum-campaign blitz, he has been drawing enthusiastic crowds at each stop—along with gaggles of sometimes violent demonstrators denouncing him as a fascist and racist. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span>Zemmour would deny both accusations, of course, but his words speak for themselves. His pronouncements and writings paint a bleak picture </span><span>of France in decline</span><span>: threatened by hordes of Muslim immigrants he contends are bent on turning the country into an Islamic republic—a process he calls the “great replacement,” the supplanting of France’s white population and its Christian culture by what he characterizes, in effect, as Muslim invaders. Declaring Islam in any form to be incompatible with democracy, he proposes to close French borders to further immigration and expel 2 million foreigners over his five-year term. He also wants to outlaw the wearing in public of the Muslim veil and ban the use of Muslim first names such as Mohammed in favor of “proper” French monikers like Pierre and Jacques. Once he curbs the foreign invasion, Zemmour promises to restore France to its past grandeur, invoking the legends of Joan of Arc, Napoleon, and Charles de Gaulle—a pantheon of French heroes he apparently intends to occupy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span>The French-born son of Jewish Berbers who immigrated from Algeria in 1952, Zemmour studied at Sciences Po and began his career as a journalist, radio commentator, and author of popular books expounding his acerbic views. For the past two years the fiery polemicist has been a star commentator on CNews, a right-wing TV network created </span><span>about four years ago </span><span>that is often compared to Murdoch’s Fox News. (Last September, he suspended his relationships with CNews and the conservative daily <i>Figaro</i> in order to comply with French watchdog rules concerning media access by political candidates.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;">With immigration as his main bugaboo, Zemmour voices a litany of racist, sexist, and otherwise extreme views that place him at the outer edge of France’s far right. Virulently anti-feminist and homophobic, contemptuous of all forms of political correctness, Zemmour favors a restoration of the death penalty, the lifting of highway speed limits, and curbs on what he calls the “counter powers”—meaning “judges, the media, the minorities.” He warns darkly of a looming civil war and has been sanctioned multiple times by French courts for inciting racial hatred.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: times; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="886" data-original-width="1328" height="165" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8N3Q1AwLbkk/YaecG3lFc2I/AAAAAAAABt4/KFJq3hdasZkAcUbLejOUUuSe7Hs8HUxlQCLcBGAsYHQ/w249-h165/cbec41a_5093809-01-06.jpg" width="249" /></span><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8N3Q1AwLbkk/YaecG3lFc2I/AAAAAAAABt4/KFJq3hdasZkAcUbLejOUUuSe7Hs8HUxlQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1328/cbec41a_5093809-01-06.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"></a><span style="font-family: times;"><span>Zemmour also has a penchant for Trump-style provocations. In a shocking gesture that drew widespread</span> criticism last month, he trained an unloaded sniper’s rifle on a group of journalists at a security event and jokingly ordered them to “get back.” When citizenship minister Marlène Schiappa called the act “horrifying,” Zemmour dismissed her as an “imbecile.” (A day later, the dangers of “unloaded” guns were tragically demonstrated by actor Alec Baldwin’s accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a New Mexico movie set.) At a tumultuous campaign stop in Marseilles on November 27, Zemmour was photographed shooting a finger at a female protester, a gesture widely denouced as “unpresidential.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">In foreign policy, Zemmour is an ultranationalist who wants to pull France out of NATO’s integrated command and forge a cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Aides say he values Washington as an ally but insists on being treated as an equal partner and seeks an “equilibrium” between the U.S. and the Russian state. Yet his rhetoric is often tinged with undisguised anti-Americanism. Speaking at a rally in Rouen in October, for example, he called the D-Day invasion “an occupation and colonization by the Americans.” While he does not call for an outright Frexit from the European Union, he wants to curtail the E.U.’s powers and reaffirm French sovereignty—hence his chumming up to Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with whom he met in September.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">Though he is himself a practicing Jew, Zemmour has been accused of antisemitism by prominent members of France’s Jewish community based on a series of troubling remarks and writings. Recently, he suggested that the families of the Jewish children who were murdered by an Islamist terrorist in 2012 were not good French citizens because their families had chosen to inter their remains in Israel. He has cast doubt on the innocence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer charged with pro-German espionage and ultimately acquitted in 1906. Most troubling is his revisionist claim that the Vichy government under Philippe Pétain actually protected French Jews during the Nazi occupation, whereas Vichy’s active role in rounding up and deporting Jews to Hitler’s death camps (on French trains) is well documented. Whatever his motivations, Zemmour’s dog whistles clearly appeal to those on the far right who are unhappy with Marine Le Pen’s rejection of the blatant antisemitism for which her father was notorious. Some have even seen Zemmour’s antisemitic pronoucements as a manifestation of the “self-hating Jew” syndrome famously analyzed by German philosopher Theodor Lessing in 1930.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">The most remarkable thing about the Zemmour phenomenon is that no one saw it coming. “It’s a spectacular rise,” says Frédéric Dabi, head of the IFOP polling institute. “In the history of the Fifth Republic, we have never seen someone who was not part of the political establishment gain this kind of momentum.” One explanation, says Dabi, is that Zemmour benefits from a leadership vacuum on the right. Marine Le Pen, after two failed attempts at the presidency, has lost much of her credibility, while her strategy of softening her message—she calls it <i>dédiabolisation</i>, or un-demonizing—has left many followers hungry for the kind of red meat that Zemmour doles out.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span>As a result, Zemmour has been eating Le Pen’s lunch. Since his appearance in the political arena, the R.N. leader has seen her poll </span><span>numbers drop sharply </span><span>and the two are now running neck-and-neck. At this early stage of the campaign, of course, there is no telling whether Le Pen or Zemmour—or another candidate—will make it to the runoff round. But for now the fiercest infighting pits these two right-wing rivals against each other. One bad sign for Marine: Her own father, the sulfurous party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, 93, says he will support his friend Zemmour if he retains his command in the polls. “Marine has abandoned her strongest positions,” he has noted, “and Eric is occupying that terrain.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;">Meanwhile, supporters of the right-center Republicans have still not recovered from the humiliating elimination of their champion, François Fillon, in the election five years ago. Divided by competing claimants, the Republicans will not settle on a candidate until their December 4 convention. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span>As for the left, also divided by internecine squabbles, no candidate appears to have a realistic chance of reaching the runoff round. “Fewer and fewer French voters identify with the left,” says IFOP’s Dabi. “The country’s values lie very much on the right today.” Some analysts even speak of an “extreme right-ization” of French opinion. Indeed, the combined poll numbers of Zemmour and Le Pen comprise more than one third of the French electorate. (At the same time, Zemmour has </span><span>the highest negatives of any potential candidate:</span><span>70% believe he lacks presidential stature, 57% say he worries them, and 71% think he gives France a bad image internationally.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;">If the political context gives Zemmour a tactical advantage, the main reason for his rise is that his message connects with a substantial segment of the population. “At a time when the French are fed up with the whole political class, Zemmour appears as a new man,” says Pascal Perrineau, a political analyst at Sciences Po. “He tells the French people a story, a national legend. It is outdated and reactionary, but he talks about the country and makes people dream.” He also stokes nationalist angst, far and wide—a key attribute he shares with Trump. “The French are worried. They are afraid of globalization. Zemmour tells them to refuse globalization and withdraw into their own national boundaries—cultural, economic, and political. He gives the French hope in an increasingly globalized world.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #231f20;">In fact, the French have plenty of reasons for angst these days—including, most recently, the sharp rise </span><span>of gasoline</span><span style="color: #231f20;"> and energy prices as well as the cost of living in general. “The real problem of average French citizens is that they arrive at the end of the month with less and less money,” says Jean-Yves Camus, head of the Observatory of Radical Politics. “But Zemmour bases his campaign on a single theme: immigration and national identity. And that corresponds to something that speaks to the French. According to a recent poll, 61% believe in Zemmour’s </span><span>great replacement theory.”</span><span style="color: #231f20;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #231f20;">In a country with about a 10% foreign population </span><span>and nearly 6 million M</span><span style="color: #231f20;">uslim residents, immigration is a concern across the political spectrum—especially in the wake of the multiple attacks by Islamist terrorists that France has suffered in recent years. “We mustn’t confuse Islam with Islamism,” says Camus. “Islamism is a reality in this country, a danger and a totalitarianism. Macron and the whole political class are right to fight against it. But Zemmour speaks of the cultural impossibility of assimilating Islam.” His plan for mass expulsions is unrealizable, Camus believes, since many Muslims have French or dual citizenship and cannot be legally deported. “We cannot return to the French social mix of 50 years ago. History is not a time machine.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;">With no party structure behind them, Zemmour’s supporters have been scrambling to put together a their campaign organization. His key advisor and political guru is Sarah Knafo, a 28-year-old graduate of the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, who oversees his campaign strategy. (A <i>Paris Match</i> cover photo of the two of them embracing in the Mediterranean surf recently prompted speculation that she was perhaps more than a political adviser to Zemmour, who is married with three children. Zemmour filed charges against the magazine for invasion of privacy but has refused to comment publicly on the nature of the relationship.) Volunteers have set up numerous pro-Zemmour websites and plastered thousands of “Zemmour President” posters across the country—many of which have been defaced by his detractors.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;">“We are putting together a party,” says Antoine Diers, spokesman for the Association des Amis d’Eric Zemmour, which is spearheading the effort. “We have already attracted a lot of supporters and are beginning to collect funds. The material part of the campaign is on track.” Asked how a candidate with no political experience and no party affiliations could expect to govern, Diers assures me that he has “no worry about the fact that Eric Zemmour, once elected, can field parliamentary candidates, win a majority, and form a government with political figures from the Republicans, R.N., and new actors.” In the eyes of some analysts, though, the movement is thus far hampered by a lack of seasoned campaign professionals and A-list defectors from other parties.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="paywall" style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;">Though Zemmour’s entourage insists he’s in it to win, some insiders believe his real goal is to shake up the political establishment and impose his ideas on the debate. “Zemmour seeks to destabilize rather than get elected,” says Science Po’s Perrineau. Others see a longer-range game plan. Says Jean-Yves Camus: “Eric Zemmour’s objective is not to be elected in 2022. It is simply to prepare the terrain for a great convergence of the center-right and far-right”—a convergence in which he could possibly play a leading role down the line.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="paywall" style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;">Even if Zemmour does make it to a runoff round against Macron, few experts give him a realistic chance of winning. Though Macron is not wildly popular these days, he has the advantage of incumbency and currently leads the field. Six months ahead of the election, most polls show the French president winning handily against either far-right challenger. But much can change in the meantime, and polls, of late, have been known to get it way wrong. For now, Eric Zemmour is the hottest act on France’s political stage and anyone who saw Donald Trump march to victory in 2016 would be unwise to count him out.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="paywall" style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="color: #231f20; font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p class="paywall" style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><i style="caret-color: rgb(35, 31, 32); color: #231f20; font-family: times;">This article originally appeared in slightly different form on the Vanity Fair website</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p>Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-8103850938110494602021-04-07T08:07:00.000-07:002021-04-07T08:07:11.368-07:00RENAME BEN FRANKLIN HIGH SCHOOL? WALTER ISAACSON'S THOUGHTS<p><br /></p><p><i>Walter Isaacson, acclaimed biographer of Benjamin Franklin (among many others), is my friend, former TIME Magazine colleague, and fellow New Orleanian. When I learned of the <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_8e91782c-8375-11eb-a2bb-0b75a91afa97.html" rel="nofollow">proposed renaming of my alma mater, Benjamin Franklin High School</a>, I reached out to Walter to seek his views as one of the world's top authorities on Franklin's life and works. He took the time to provide this thoughtful, measured, and informative reply.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_E8ps5JFScU/YG3IpP1qr-I/AAAAAAAABpg/vPoCS6HSmKMbuwpQ24lmCbGwkzYRVROGACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/51e4pdrIVKL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="330" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_E8ps5JFScU/YG3IpP1qr-I/AAAAAAAABpg/vPoCS6HSmKMbuwpQ24lmCbGwkzYRVROGACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/51e4pdrIVKL.jpg" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In 1787, Benjamin Franklin became the president of Pennsylvania's Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. He threw himself into the task, drawing up plans for providing employment for freed slaves, creating educational opportunities for young Black students in new and existing schools, presenting a pro-abolition petition to the first Congress, and publishing a scathing parody of arguments made in defense of slavery.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Franklin was then in his 80s and not in need of new endeavors, but he undertook the fight because, throughout his life, he kept a ledger of the mistakes he had made and how he had tried to rectify them. He thus serves as an inspiration for those of us who are not perfect but seek to achieve moral growth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> The greatest of his errors, he realized, was that as a printer in Philadelphia he had two or three enslaved men at various times working in his shop and he had allowed in his newspaper the advertising of slave sales and notices about runaways. He had also expressed opinions over the years that he realized were misguided and needed to be corrected.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> The Orleans Parish School Board is now considering renaming school facilities, including two named after Franklin, and has invited public comment. So as someone who once wrote a biography of him, I thought I would explain why I think that judging him based on the moral arc of his life and his quest for improvement would send the right message to students. People are not perfect. Our nation is not perfect. But we should celebrate those who realize that our nation has flaws, confront them honestly, and publicly take the lead in making themselves and our union more perfect. Students (and the rest of us) should be inspired by those who achieve moral growth. That is a basic goal of education.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Franklin's growth is very instructive, especially in this age when social media debates are waged with the fervor of people who believe they have never made a mistake. He was an apostle of self-improvement. Our civic life and politics would benefit, I think, by having a few more people who, like Franklin, wake up and realize that they have been wrong at times.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Up until the Revolution, the enslavement of Blacks was common in all thirteen colonies. It is the nation's original sin. Many founders, including Washington and Jefferson, never freed their slaves during their lifetimes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> As far as we can tell, the handful of enslaved people who worked at Franklin's print shop or for his wife after he went to England wandered off freely by the 1760s, with Franklin mentioning them fondly in his letters and making no known effort to keep them enslaved.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> What helped awaken him to the evils of slavery was one of his philanthropic endeavors. He became active in an organization that established schools for Black children. After visiting the Philadelphia school in 1763, he wrote a reflective letter about his previous prejudices: "I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the Black race than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children. You will wonder perhaps that I should ever doubt it, and I will not undertake to justify all my prejudices."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Even many ardent abolitionists at the time held the racist view that Blacks were intellectual inferior to whites, but Franklin was an early advocate for the enlightened view that Black underachievement was the result of their having been enslaved and denied good education.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Franklin became increasingly outspoken against slavery in the 1770s. In a piece he wrote for the London Chronicle, he decried, using language stronger than almost any other founder, the "constant butchery of the human species by this pestilent detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men." He wrote in a similar vein to his friend the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush. "I hope in time that the friends to liberty and humanity will get the better of a practice that has so long disgraced our nation and religion."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> After Franklin became president of the abolition society in 1787, he took on the argument that it was not practical to free hundreds of thousands of adult slaves into a society for which they were not prepared. He drew up detailed proposals "for improving the condition of free blacks" by securing apprenticeships that would teach them skills, creating new schools, getting young Blacks to attend the existing schools, and creating a committee to find jobs for freed slaves.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> On behalf of the abolition society, Franklin presented a petition to Congress in February 1790. "Mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness," it declared. The duty of Congress was to secure "the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States," and this should be done "without distinction of color." Therefore Congress should grant "liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Franklin's petition was rejected by James Madison and other founders, and he was roundly denounced by the defenders of slavery, most notably Congressman James Jackson of Georgia, who declared that the Bible had sanctioned slavery and, without it, there would be no one to do the hard and hot work on plantations. It was the perfect setup for Franklin's last great essay, written less than a month before he died. He wrote it as a parody in the form of a purported speech given by an official in Algiers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> The parody speech attacked a petition asking for an end to the practice of capturing and enslaving European Christians to work in Algeria. "If we forbear to make slaves of their people, who in this hot climate are to cultivate our lands? " the speech declared, and then it proceeded to mirror the arguments Congressman Jackson had made in favor of enslaving Africans.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Franklin was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, businessman, and practical thinker. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and clean-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He founded schools for both whites and blacks, laid out plans for integrating schools, and at his death was the president of an abolitionist society. He wasn't perfect. But that's why his life has a lot to teach us. He was capable of moral growth. So are we all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> —Walter Isaacson (used with permission)</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><br /></span></p>Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-2033896082638363752021-04-05T02:54:00.001-07:002021-04-05T07:58:17.853-07:00REMEMBERING JAMES ATLAS (1949-2019)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><i><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></i></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><i><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></i></i></p><i><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><div class="separator"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-56KCvY9hNEk/YGrU3k3P9xI/AAAAAAAABpQ/XaEVWXwRJUg6GqkP7A5xQapdUczVRk6RQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/merlin_54826654_f867447d-18b6-4732-8f97-79667a733d67-superJumbo.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-56KCvY9hNEk/YGrU3k3P9xI/AAAAAAAABpQ/XaEVWXwRJUg6GqkP7A5xQapdUczVRk6RQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/merlin_54826654_f867447d-18b6-4732-8f97-79667a733d67-superJumbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Poet, critic, biographer, and book publisher, Jim Atlas was also a classmate of mine and a lifelong friend. This account of our last meeting serves as a reminiscence and a personal tribute to a noble soul who will be missed by his many friends and admirers. </span></i><o:p></o:p><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR">March 4, 2019. Jim Atlas begged off our luncheon date at the Harvard Club, saying in an email that he was “REALLY sick.” He invited me to come to his apartment for a visit instead. As for future lunches, he said, “There will be other times—I hope.” That sounded ominous. I assumed something had happened since we made the lunch appointment a month earlier, perhaps a stroke? I had had lunch with him a year earlier and he seemed fine—aging but quite functional. I quickly emailed back that I would stop by in the afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> Atlas lived in a posh building on E. 77th, across from the Natural history museum. I had never been inside his apartment, but I knew where he lived because I had walked him back to his door after a lunch at a nearby restaurant some time in the 1980s. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>There is a story behind that lunch. Two stories in fact. The original lunch date was a total bust. I had asked him to meet me at the Harvard Club. On the appointed day, I was working in my office at TIME when I got phone message from Atlas—this was in the pre-smartphone era. “Where are you? I’ve been here for half an hour. Forget about lunch. I’m leaving now.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>I called his home number to make amends. “Jim, it’s Tom. Are you still speaking to me?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“Just barely.” He sounded pissed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“Jim, I’m so sorry. I was writing a story and it completely slipped my mind.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Silence on the other end. Jim was a susceptible soul and I had doubly offended him: first by missing the lunch, second by telling him it had “slipped my mind”—tantamount to saying he wasn’t important enough for me to remember our date. I invited him to lunch the next day. Same time same place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>After some hesitation he said okay.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>I thought things were back on track, but I got a phone call from him a half hour later. “Look, I’ve thought it over and I’m not coming. I’m still too angry. I was really looking forward to it, I even put on a suit and tie, but I wouldn’t enjoy it now. Let’s just forget about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>I apologized again, but there was no way to talk him into reconsidering. I had hurt his pride and that wound would take time to heal. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>A few weeks later, I called him again and invited him to lunch. He reluctantly agreed and suggested a place close to his apartment. “Just don’t be late this time,” he grumbled before hanging up. An unnecessary proviso under the circumstances. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Except that stuff happens. I was off work that day, so I took my usual commuter train from Westchester County and caught a cab at Grand Central. The cab was a big mistake. Crosstown traffic, as usual, was bumper to bumper. When we finally got to Central Park West, there was road work going on and we advanced at a snail’s pace. My gut churned as I watched the minutes tick by. No cell phones in those days, so no way to call or text Jim. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>I finally arrived at the restaurant 20 minutes late. No Atlas. The hostess told me he had drunk a white wine while he waited for me, then discovered he had let his wallet at home. He had gone back to get it. Fiasco!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>When he walked in the door five minutes later and spotted me at the bar, he nearly turned on his heels and walked out. “Jim,” I said, “so sorry, man. I was stuck in a cab. There was road work, unbelievable traffic. Let’s just have lunch and move on.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“Okay,” he said. “But you’re paying.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Once we were seated, he looked me in the eyes and said, “We both have to do something, Tom. I have to work on my thin skin, and you have to work on your punctuality.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>With that, the incident, the double incident, was behind us. We had a pleasant lunch, lubricated by a couple of glasses of Chardonnay, and I walked him back to his apartment building a couple of blocks away. His son William dashed out of the door and Jim scooped him up in his arms with a big smile. He felt good. I felt good. Peace had descended upon us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>We kept in touch off and on over the years. I would make a point to lunch with him when I was in New York—usually at the Harvard Club. We met at Oxford in 2002 at the centennial celebration of the Rhodes Scholarships. Bill and Hillary Clinton were there. Jim waylaid Clinton in the garden of Holywell Manor to introduce himself as the editor of the Penguin Lives series. Jim thought it would be his only chance to talk to the Big Guy, not realizing that when Bill Clinton gets to glad handing, he stays till the last dog dies. Bill and Hillary talked to everybody under the reception tent that day. Like all of us, Jim was charmed and proud to call him one of our own. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>When I was teaching at Tulane in 2007-2008, I invited Jim down to New Orleans to give a talk on his Saul Bellow biography and meet with my creative writing class. Someone asked him what made for a good memoir. He said, “A good story and a voice you can trust.” That always stuck in my mind, and I think one thing that endeared me to Jim was that he was a voice, in fact, a person, I could trust. And I guess that was reciprocal, since he trusted me enough to invite me into his personal space at a time when he was, well, not at his best.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>I felt some trepidation as the doorman announced my arrival and sent me up to the 16thfloor. What kind of shape would I find Jim in? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Atlas greeted me at his door with a grin and a handshake that morphed into a bear hug. He looked so small and frail in his baggy blue jeans and loose white shirt. His thinning hair was gray, his body bent slightly to one side. He shuffled slowly but refrained from using the brand new walker—the fancy kind with hand brakes and a folding seat—that stood by the door. “I have a cane, too,” he said, “but I try not to rely on it too much.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span>I thought back to the first time I met Atlas in the fall of 1967—an astounding 52 years earlier. It was an organizational meeting of a new freshman magazine, the Harvard Yard Journal. The gathering was held at somebody’s dorm room in Thayer Hall, just across the Yard from Massachusetts Hall, where I had just taken up residence a few days earlier. In a group of giddy, overachieving freshmen eager to impress one another, Atlas stood out. He had a thick head of curly black hair, round horn-rimmed glasses, knee-high leather boots, and a silk kerchief wrapped around his neck Isadora Duncan-style. When I introduced myself to him, he gave me a lopsided snaggle-toothed grin (he later got his teeth straightened) and remarked, “You’re looking very literary tonight.” I didn’t look the least literary, except that my wooly hair was getting long and I was pathetically trying to grow a beard, though my sparse whiskers formed little more than a pale fuzz at that point. But it didn’t matter what <i>I</i> looked like. Atlas’s point was that it was important to look literary. And he did. As Oscar Wilde put it, “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered.” <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>But Atlas was no mere poseur. At that early age, he had read an astounding number of books, was knowledgeable about poetry and literary criticism, and was already a hard-working, gifted writer. He was elected to the editorial board of the Advocate, Harvard’s prestigious poetry journal, went on to win a Rhodes Scholarship and launch an impressive career as an editor, critic, biographer, and book publisher. Now, at the cusp of 70, he could look back on his career with some satisfaction, in spite of the doubts, regrets, and disappointments that were also part of his baggage. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“Philip Roth liked to quote something Joe Louis said: ‘I did the best I could with the talent I had.’ That’s all I can say.” The reference to Roth was not random. Atlas had just finished writing an account about his relationship with Roth, a work that would go directly into audiobook form. He was disappointed by the sales of his last published work, The Shadow in the Garden, a memoir about his career as a biographer. “People who read it thought well of it, but almost nobody reviewed it.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“I know you want to know what happened to me,” he said suddenly. “A few years ago, I had a bad lung infection. Then they found out that I have congestive heart failure. Then it was one thing after another. Now I have the gout.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>I tried to reassure him on that front. “I’ve had attacks of gout for years, but I just take medicine for it and it goes away. It’s not a huge deal. But it hurts like hell when it hits you.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR">As a result of his various ailments, Jim was very frail, reluctant to go out of the house lest he fall, which he had done several times. He had a stationary bicycle and physical trainer who came several times a week to his apartment. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>We did a lot of reminiscing about Harvard and Oxford days. I recalled that time he and I met for drinks at the Harvard Club of New York the night before we all sailed to England on the QE II. On that occasion we had discussed, among other things, the unsettling experience of watching our parents age. “It’s like we’re all on this great conveyor belt leading to the edge of a cliff,” I said, “and we are pushing them.” Jim took another sip of his Grey Goose martini—a favorite drink in those days, though he later gave up alcohol entirely. “When my time comes, nobody has to push me,” he said with a malicious grin—“I’ll go!” Of course, at that age—we were both 22—nobody really believes he will ever fall off the cliff.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Neither of us had an orthodox Oxford experience. Because he arrived at Oxford with his then girlfriend, Atlas didn’t want to live in student digs at New College, preferring grander lodgings in the Randolph Hotel. The cost of that must have been considerable, so I assume he had family money behind him. Problem was his enormous steamer trunk was too big for the stairwell, so he had to unpack the contents piece by piece and shuttle them upstairs to his room. As for his studies, he worked with Richard Ellman on biography but seems to have done little else and left without taking a degree. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>My own Oxford experience was, shall we say, skewed by my passion for jazz. Atlas remembered a raucous drive he took to London with me practicing the clarinet in the back seat. I was on the way to playing a gig with an English band in a pub on Drury Lane. The clarinet eventually took me to Paris to play an all-night concert with a French band. I fell in love with Paris, and was soon contriving to spend weekends, holidays, and even parts of the school term there, playing with local bands, learning to drink calvados, and enjoying female company. I eventually came to my senses, completed my thesis and took a history doctorate. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“Why did you apply for a Rhodes?” I asked Atlas at one point.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“Why? Because that’s what you did. It was the next step up the ladder. In New York, there was a whole auditorium full of candidates. It was never about actually studying at Oxford. It was for the prestige.” Still, he considered his Oxford experience life changing because it launched his career as a biographer. His passion for biography inspired his own books on Delmore Schwartz and Saul Bellow, and his tenure as editor of the Penguin Lives series. He later launched his own imprint, Atlas Books, specialized in short, readable biographies by a coterie of distinguished authors. His list was impressive, though he quipped that, from the financial point of view, “the term book business is an oxymoron.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>In addition to his editorial talents, Jim was a fine journalist and critic, serving as a staff writer for TIME(where he preceded me by several months) and the <i>New Yorker,</i> and an editor of the <i>New York Times Magazine.</i> He also found time to write a highly autobiographical novel, <i>The Great Pretender</i> (1986), that deals with his Harvard and Oxford years. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>We talked about our kids. His daughter Molly is a literary agent, son William works in TV and film in L.A. I told him about my son Julian, who now works—as Jim and I had done—as a magazine editor in New York. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>He showed me his office, a pleasant space with glass-fronted bookshelves, a couch, and a work desk topped by a computer. It is well lit by a tall window that looks out on 77thstreet. Despite his health challenges, he still worked in his office every day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>“You wanna know what I’m working on now?” he said, leading me back to the living room.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“Tell me.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“A book about suicide.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>I hesitated.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“Don’t worry, it’s not a how-to book. And I’m not going to do it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“Well, it <i>is</i> a fascinating subject.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>Indeed, there was much to say about taking control of the end of life. But Jim didn’t elaborate. Instead, he pointed out the window to 77thStreet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“That’s where they make up the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade,” he says, with some enthusiasm. “It’s amazing. The balloons come up as high as the 10thfloor. We used to have a party every year so friends could watch. We don’t do it any more. Too many security hassles, and too exhausting for us. My kids took it over and had their own party for a few years, but now they’re gone their separate ways.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“It’s a great apartment,” I said, gazing down at 77thStreet and the brown stones of Natural History Museum across the street.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“It is,” Jim replied. “We wouldn’t dream of moving anyplace else now. We’ve been here 30 years. We’ll stay here till they carry us out.” He managed a sardonic chuckle.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>I sensed Jim was tiring. I got up to take my leave and he walked me to the door. He held out his hand, but I give him a parting hug instead. “Let’s stay in touch, Jim. Can I call you on the phone some times?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>“Yes, I’d like that. Call me.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>I didn’t call. I didn’t write. A few months after our last encounter I thought of sending him an email to find our how he was doing. Then I saw his obit in the <i>New York Times</i>. He died on September 5, 2019, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as a result of the “escalation of a chronic lung condition.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"><span> <span> </span></span>Jim, old friend, noble writer and thinker, delightful purveyor of wit and wisdom, I will never have lunch with you again. But I shall miss you. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span lang="FR">*****<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span lang="FR">Reprinted from <i>The American Oxonian,</i> Spring 2021<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span lang="FR">©2021 by Thomas A. Sancton<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18.399999618530273px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span lang="FR"> </span></p></div>Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-66674340036269558212021-03-01T07:52:00.038-08:002021-03-02T06:23:15.377-08:00France's Ex-President Gets Jail Time for Corruption: Beware Donald Trump!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--vm97CsVWw8/YD0MxZmXHTI/AAAAAAAABoQ/H6EWxAKLgnozC1-DJUB730WNhxxa-S2vwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1328/f6e0f5c_gfm111-france-politics-sarkozy-verdict-0301-11.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="886" data-original-width="1328" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--vm97CsVWw8/YD0MxZmXHTI/AAAAAAAABoQ/H6EWxAKLgnozC1-DJUB730WNhxxa-S2vwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/f6e0f5c_gfm111-france-politics-sarkozy-verdict-0301-11.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Cambria;">As Donald Trump basks in the adulation of his conservative minions and talks about a political comeback in 2024, he should take note of what just happened in France: a special court today (March 1) sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to three years in prison—two years suspended, and one year hard time—after convicting him of corruption in the “affaire des écoutes,” or wiretap affair.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Cambria; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span> </span>The case goes back to 2014, when Sarkozy and his lawyer carried out a series of telephone conversations with a French judicial official, Gilbert Azibert. The subject of their discussions: the ex-president wanted Azibert to provide information about an investigation into Sarkozy’s role in another case, the so-called “Bettencourt affair” (about which more later). In exchange, Sarkozy, though his lawyer, promised to help Azibert win a cushy judicial post in Monaco.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The discussions were carried on via a supposedly secret cellphone account in the name of “Paul Bismuth”(a.k.a. Sarkozy himself). Unbeknownst to the former president, however, police had obtained a warrant to wiretap the “Bismuth” phone line in connection with still another case involving suspected illegal contributions to Sarkozy’s campaign fund by former Libyan dictator Mouammar Kadhafi. While probing the Kadhafi case, investigators stumbled on the tit-for-tat discussions between Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and Gilbert Azibert. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Though the deal never came to fruition—Azibert did not perform the services Sarkozy requested, and did not get the Monaco appointment that Sarkozy had dangled—the court ruled that the discussions constituted corruption and convicted all three men. Sarkozy, Herzog, and Azibert were all sentenced to three years with two suspended. All three men have filed appeals.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Sarkozy thus becomes the second former French president to be convicted by a criminal court after Jacques Chirac, who in 2011 was found guilty of diverting funds and abuse of confidence during his time as mayor of Paris. Chirac, who died in 2019, received a two-year suspended sentence. Thus Sarkozy may well become the first ex-president of France to actually do hard time. If that sentence holds up upon appeal, Sarkozy may work out an arrangement to spend his carceral year confined to his domicile with an electronic bracelet rather than behind bars. Whatever the outcome of the appeal, he still must face trial in two other cases: the Kadhafi affair, and a separate case involving 2012 campaign spending violations. Thus a political comeback seems highly unlikely for the 66-year-old conservative. Perhaps his fate can serve as a lesson and a precedent for how democracies deal with corrupt former leaders. Beware Donald Trump: the prosecutor cometh. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Now about the Bettencourt Affair, which was at the origin of the wiretap case. That concerns a messy suit revolving around the world’s then richest woman, L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. Bettencourt had lavished gifts worth hundreds of millions (yes millions) of dollars to her much younger protégé, French artist/photographer François-Marie Banier. The largesse flowed for some twenty years until Liliane’s daughter Françoise sued Banier for elder abuse in 2009. The investigation turned up information about illegal contributions to Sarkozy’s campaign by the Bettencourt family. The information Sarkozy sought from Gilbert Azibert in exchange for a Monaco appointment was related to that investigation. (Sarkozy was actually indicted in the Bettencourt case, but the charges were dropped in 2015.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">I happen to know a lot about the Bettencourt case, having written a long article on it for Vanity Fair in 2010 and a book, “The Bettencourt Affair,” which came out in 2017. </p>Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-41208922031879515792020-04-12T10:52:00.000-07:002020-04-12T10:52:08.910-07:00THE BIRDS OF AUDUBON <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bgmVfqF7c7c/XpNSFVPno5I/AAAAAAAABio/Zy01bx57Pv48qV_-gyZUNJ8ltwODJWbSACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/_DSC1517.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bgmVfqF7c7c/XpNSFVPno5I/AAAAAAAABio/Zy01bx57Pv48qV_-gyZUNJ8ltwODJWbSACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/_DSC1517.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Osprey taking flight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dEzsI52C5Vc/XpNSWPnvOMI/AAAAAAAABjA/2GYJX1pIJDU586KgKBpBGEIn5heaJE1dwCEwYBhgLKs4DAMBZVoAjYK30FBPy3St309v1WCWXrFguWXIvbL37WaDnT1FODvSygRGS6H3g4akedQ__r1sVhNmv_ATpmqVGSMX1tW5b7URYWisCJ19tEDAeM52gYL9rIQmeK2aSOm5q1R7h6CL1aU2ibga04orcdXUJsIcaEnUXv35cx15rWUTiWq6kMbCKe_t_jMuwqxLWvt4kTXkh3vWq-d_pRrO8NGox2K0r_3ntOHSfHMWCRxjXd-bjzuRRufC4vuoT-UMQN0Tv-Ej8-RcvwWYjO7-9iEQe88zsIP6KIfGvTusW3vaHX8bq6QAR35W-sNVA3yL9w0oCGXvYKq3msC179ECBB03mASs3xTtnV4ARLar0WrUryQ0Buz8dsC1hntUF-yQ0oaJbgVEDh-Tldd4vsUl5oDfd22Oaqv6MfesjJnQp7zfmTPKL1b4xny7BNFXUGhHMRhGkgetCHLdCBtKW3ol2t2vg6Xz-2b3QvqAR8oNruiob4BM7Cb7WUXiBZPfrY6hEoDQrVNxIHYwWM1ldxopfhgcCU9N-OYs2n2K1NkRLVHE4L8331wmS6RIWgnCLnjab3EHIAw0yq8FNXX41Bnv3VeeOrkp2DZl9tel62h4TMK2qzfQF/s1600/_DSC2441.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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Our daily walks in Audubon Park are a welcome break in the lockdown routine. As we stroll along the lagoon, Sylvaine photographs the birds we encounter there. (Sometimes I sit on a bench and practice my clarinet while she shoots.) There are far fewer species in the park today than there were some years ago when Sylviane photographed dozens of different varieties for her book <i>Some Birds...</i>But we still get some surprises.<br />
The other day, we spotted a large bird perched atop the bare branches of a dead tree. It was on the other side of the lagoon at some distance from us. Looking through her telephoto lens, Sylvaine thought at first that it might be a bald eagle—a rarity in these parts—but the coloring was different. The bald eagle has a white head and a dark brown breast. This bird, which looked like an eagle with its curved beak and impressive talons, had a<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dEzsI52C5Vc/XpNSWPnvOMI/AAAAAAAABjA/2GYJX1pIJDUbTDZoeyGspmck-Wxd8JpXQCEwYBhgLKs4DAMBZVoA9IwerE5eJt9xr102_jDyAJlPwBnduFSjh5-h6Zuzj_pdITJX4s8HRrQ9BNE_d9wRMrnkODUR87qKh5if2Qwh6KdAZrW8roVNryWlNrXI103INAnQOvs3QBpT4XVtRtx0nCmbmMCBM9fTEm-d0VRz2z6jHtDJGXv-9rxSTnZKEhMijBAN2pvc68sgZXH9LJ7Kd_Y46sXyJ7RWvvHmRafrTNWy3fNqoqmXnU-Iq7fHRIUpuWHd9e8Tf-sLqZnUqKbnBzGvGY37IjDfsUlW-DzD5gjHdxHsIFPNHGhYDN1fPknCH3ue5nF5WqZwn2aubc0IvS9-fWLwnX6zrYlQPDzspNDyQ8w57gwdg6MmoEAtM36ezYXZc8EXaSO7qZTpdLUjzOTd0HkX-JfwA85yIusALmdx4KKB2KTHsjsC9kULzbJqPGsiT9_xbFgbPG7bm6fBUKeRexw1QWCD2khOivJpDS3IzHh7_dDsXYPNgpJsbCD93uYbP2K5weZ25mLGMn0dRjQNooJ1BqfuBxwKu5so2lwz6-8o4VSXFpUmY3-RQhbPsVTG7ZNRDpGUV0HybhD07W7g15T_jvAIC6chA2lGygJ_eFrV6ipl2MNOrzfQF/s1600/_DSC2441.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="637" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dEzsI52C5Vc/XpNSWPnvOMI/AAAAAAAABjA/2GYJX1pIJDUbTDZoeyGspmck-Wxd8JpXQCEwYBhgLKs4DAMBZVoA9IwerE5eJt9xr102_jDyAJlPwBnduFSjh5-h6Zuzj_pdITJX4s8HRrQ9BNE_d9wRMrnkODUR87qKh5if2Qwh6KdAZrW8roVNryWlNrXI103INAnQOvs3QBpT4XVtRtx0nCmbmMCBM9fTEm-d0VRz2z6jHtDJGXv-9rxSTnZKEhMijBAN2pvc68sgZXH9LJ7Kd_Y46sXyJ7RWvvHmRafrTNWy3fNqoqmXnU-Iq7fHRIUpuWHd9e8Tf-sLqZnUqKbnBzGvGY37IjDfsUlW-DzD5gjHdxHsIFPNHGhYDN1fPknCH3ue5nF5WqZwn2aubc0IvS9-fWLwnX6zrYlQPDzspNDyQ8w57gwdg6MmoEAtM36ezYXZc8EXaSO7qZTpdLUjzOTd0HkX-JfwA85yIusALmdx4KKB2KTHsjsC9kULzbJqPGsiT9_xbFgbPG7bm6fBUKeRexw1QWCD2khOivJpDS3IzHh7_dDsXYPNgpJsbCD93uYbP2K5weZ25mLGMn0dRjQNooJ1BqfuBxwKu5so2lwz6-8o4VSXFpUmY3-RQhbPsVTG7ZNRDpGUV0HybhD07W7g15T_jvAIC6chA2lGygJ_eFrV6ipl2MNOrzfQF/s200/_DSC2441.jpg" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anhinga</td></tr>
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white breast. After a check on the internet, we identified it as an Osprey, also a rarity. We spotted it a few more times, closer up, which allowed Sylvaine to get some nice pictures, including one of this impressive bird in full flight.<br />
Other recent spottings include an anhinga, formerly plentiful at Audubon but now almost vanished, and a couple of blue herons and snowy egrets. Not to mention blue jays and cardinals. Two days ago, we had a real treat: four baby mallard ducklings swimming around, fighting and playing on the water near the bank. Hadn't seen any babies for a few years: sad to say the turtles get them when they're that small. Yesterday, didn't see the ducklings anywhere. I hope they haven't become turtle food!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vfNPALXNk4c/XpNSaGQuyYI/AAAAAAAABjE/PBp4kBZ4tFM1teyY3IF6raSF-MTaecu-gCEwYBhgLKs4DAMBZVoC7JnUIBxwA5JdsfRIub0TJnIQ3U4SH6wv_pCc49oI77wr1GtyYEyH5G4RInPKXJtbMXCY1HWZnNCXefQCa5e9KhveVL6jVhaMrjrviJCdPclLQgne502EtEhuqux8srzJjf8d8YQ_PRlrk9Lo9WjbgdnuKOvFBOoGaVCp4CMBZvNEvJ36N9b8rzYlsyoHxy1qIyeXw-yHzeD_0f9b9X0b9XE0LVCFRAorvZG3hu_RGdYksPsBkyNxDDMaU714G0D2ipPnLzmOQ-UmNz8-ljChLWIDQk-fSqCt0YsttrGeORCJNiQCKl0kapKlfu9N6GkEqvbn6CKX6J6L_kXkUNLgXZDYIxLFHy8O1R5FA7wTDNNXLzifva7BfnVoKQPDk15sSOb9TQJV--vRqc23gb5pmfoGkRcB3PtX-hA4k9nVef5jMRXLFcfks7mTilQGq1TWIi6eLwRoQV0PskWvaNIlgQ0ftPCHM0gtXD03EtsCm6-MRSdAUfNZ1_rkw2nAhrs4EWCDb20qja5mlcHQAnO24Fkas9HGq6bExR8aAuniv8wgSTlbb2d87xttgCjS54X5YHc9wjhwGh0gDqG62KeedcR_QhNBAkXqyMJutzfQF/s1600/duckling-audubon%2Bpark%2Bapril%2B2020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="850" height="476" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vfNPALXNk4c/XpNSaGQuyYI/AAAAAAAABjE/PBp4kBZ4tFM1teyY3IF6raSF-MTaecu-gCEwYBhgLKs4DAMBZVoC7JnUIBxwA5JdsfRIub0TJnIQ3U4SH6wv_pCc49oI77wr1GtyYEyH5G4RInPKXJtbMXCY1HWZnNCXefQCa5e9KhveVL6jVhaMrjrviJCdPclLQgne502EtEhuqux8srzJjf8d8YQ_PRlrk9Lo9WjbgdnuKOvFBOoGaVCp4CMBZvNEvJ36N9b8rzYlsyoHxy1qIyeXw-yHzeD_0f9b9X0b9XE0LVCFRAorvZG3hu_RGdYksPsBkyNxDDMaU714G0D2ipPnLzmOQ-UmNz8-ljChLWIDQk-fSqCt0YsttrGeORCJNiQCKl0kapKlfu9N6GkEqvbn6CKX6J6L_kXkUNLgXZDYIxLFHy8O1R5FA7wTDNNXLzifva7BfnVoKQPDk15sSOb9TQJV--vRqc23gb5pmfoGkRcB3PtX-hA4k9nVef5jMRXLFcfks7mTilQGq1TWIi6eLwRoQV0PskWvaNIlgQ0ftPCHM0gtXD03EtsCm6-MRSdAUfNZ1_rkw2nAhrs4EWCDb20qja5mlcHQAnO24Fkas9HGq6bExR8aAuniv8wgSTlbb2d87xttgCjS54X5YHc9wjhwGh0gDqG62KeedcR_QhNBAkXqyMJutzfQF/s640/duckling-audubon%2Bpark%2Bapril%2B2020.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mallard duckling</td></tr>
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-88165050366119772782020-03-23T09:08:00.001-07:002021-12-06T04:21:33.268-08:00GET YOUR GUN!<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LByrGPHt8BQ/XnjefT06kBI/AAAAAAAABiI/SwjPNPHjg00go9_bd197MXcSxWraR-juwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LByrGPHt8BQ/XnjefT06kBI/AAAAAAAABiI/SwjPNPHjg00go9_bd197MXcSxWraR-juwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" /></a></div>
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It all started when the magpies invaded my garden. Not only was their metallic croak nerve-grating, but they soon homed in on my bird feeders and frightened away the much smaller chickadees, redbreasts, and sparrows that had gorged on the seeds throughout the winter. Then a flock of pigeons took up residence on the roof of my garage and started snooping and clucking around the feeders. Even though they were too big and clumsy to perch on them, they would waddle on the ground and peck at the spillings. Like the magpies, they made the neighborhood less attractive to the smaller birds. Whenever I saw these bullies through my kitchen window, I would rap on the pane or open the door and clap my hands to frighten them away. Sometimes it scared them off, but often as not they would flutter away briefly and return. I tried throwing pebbles in their direction, but my aim was erratic and the feathered beasts were not impressed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Then an idea took shape in my mind: I would solve the problem with an air rifle. I had no intention of killing the intruders. I would just pop them in the tail feathers or wings. They would soon realize my garden was an inhospitable environment and move on to somebody else’s garden. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to get my hands on a BB gun. This was just before Christmas. When my wife asked me what I wanted as a gift this year, I said I wanted a pump-action air rifle. She thought I was joking. I explained that it was not really about the gun, it was about chasing away magpies and pigeons. She found the idea ridiculous, but I persisted. And the more I talked about it, the more I realized it was about the gun. I wanted that object—trigger, stock, barrel and all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was a strange desire on the part of a staunch opponent of America’s gun culture. I have unfriended people on Facebook for posting photos of themselves posing with their arsenals. Parkland, Las Vegas, Sandy Brook, and all the other countless gun massacres sent chills up my spine and filled me with anger at the feckless politicians who do nothing to control the spread of deadly weapons. Yet here I was desiring, even craving, an object that had the size, shape, and feel of a real rifle. Was I wavering on the gun question?<o:p></o:p></div>
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No. The more I thought about it, the more I realized my fixation was something whose deepest roots went back to my childhood. When I was about 10, my father bought me a pump-action Daisy air rifle. I don’t know why he chose that particular gift—he wasn’t a hunter or sportsman and, in fact, I never saw him shoot or even hold a gun. He hadn’t even been in the army, excluded from the draft by a heart murmur. Maybe I begged him for it, wanting to play cowboys and Indians or something. Or wanting to be like my Mississipi cousins who actually had .22 rifles and went hunting. Whatever the reason, I got the gun and I fell in love with it. I loved the smell of oil on metal, the feel of the imitation wood grain stock on my cheek, the adjustable crosshairs on the telescopic sight, the sound of BB’s rolling around in their chamber, and the thwunk when I squeezed the trigger. Most of all, I loved hitting targets—coke bottles propped up on driftwood logs along the levee, paper targets nailed to tree trunks, matchsticks glued to the sides of cardboard boxes. And I was good at it. I could actually split matchsticks at 20 feet. My father was impressed. “If we ever have a shooting war again,” he told me, “you’ll make a hell of an infantryman.” Those words made me proud. That gun was part of a father-son bond, and a source of paternal approbation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Though I was never into hunting, I must confess there were times when I shot at birds while wandering through the woods. I once killed a sparrow perched on a tree branch. It fell at my feet with its little head bleeding and its wings flapping helplessly. Then it lay still. I felt terrible and buried it in the sandy ground under a pile of leaves. Another time I shot at a pigeon on a neighbor’s rooftop. Hit in the head, it reeled over and fell down the chimney. The neighbor found it in her fireplace the next day and called an exterminator to remove it. I don’t think I actually intended to kill that pigeon, but I was remorseful—and fearful that my parents would suspect me of doing the deed. (If they did, then never let on.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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Those are the only birds I remember killing. But I did do other dumb things with my air rifle, mainly egged on by friends. From the balcony of my parents’ home, a schoolmate and I traded potshots at a corner streetlight until we finally chipped through the glass globe and hit the lightbulb inside. It sparked briefly then went dark. Our momentary triumph was tinged with fear of being charged with destroying public property. We immediately hid the rifle under my bed and retired to the TV room to provide an alibi. Another night, we shot at the side of my father’s corrugated iron garage as someone was passing on the sidewalk. It made a loud whack and the pedestrian skeedaddled. Stupid kids. And lucky: what if the victim of our practical joke was packing a real gun and shot back at us? In a crime-ridden city like New Orleans, that was not a far-fetched scenario. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I eventually grew out of my gun infatuation as I grew older and my interest shifted to learning the clarinet and playing Beatle tunes on my guitar. By the time I went off to college, my Daisy pump-action was a distant memory. I have no idea what happened to that gun. There was no sign of it when I cleared out my parents’ home many decades later. In fact, I never even thought of it again—until the magpies and pigeons in my garden suddenly brought it back to mind. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For a time, I was dead bent on getting another BB gun. Seriously. I even visited the quaint old shop of an arms dealer in my town of Saint Germain-en-Lay, 10 miles west of Paris. I had observed it for years without ever going inside. It was a tiny storefront with a green wooden door and a window full of lethal-looking shotguns and enormous hunting knives with jagged blades. Inside the cramped interior, dusty display cases held row after row of rifles of various sizes and shapes. Behind the counter sat an elderly man who eyed me with suspicion, or perhaps contempt at my manifest ignorance of firearms. When I asked about BB guns, he exchanged amused glances with another white-haired man, apparently a customer. He pointed to a display case containing half a dozen guns. “Those are all air rifles,” he said. “They start at 250 euros”—close to $300. I said I was really looking for something in the 50 euro range. The two men laughed. “For 50 euros, cher monsieur, maybe you can get a cap gun, but not here!” <o:p></o:p></div>
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It turned out his air rifles shot lead pellets, not BBs, and they were used by competitive target shooters. “What do you want an air rifle for?” asked the man behind the counter. “Just to shoot at pigeons in my garden and scare them off,” I replied. He guffawed again and shook his head. “Monsieur, this is illegal—and dangerous. I will not sell you a rifle for such a use.” I left the shop enlightened, if somewhat humiliated. Back home, I found a whole line of Daisy air rifles on the Internet at prices starting around $35. I considered ordering one, but suddenly realized I didn’t want it any more. Had I finally grown up?<o:p></o:p></div>
Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-39298552158216483342020-03-22T20:00:00.000-07:002020-03-22T20:00:04.849-07:00SYLVAINE'S VIRTUAL ART SHOW<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With the cancellation (or postponement) or Sylvaine Sancton's April show at New Orleans's Academy Gallery, we have decided to offer a virtual show on Facebook. We will post various works that would have been in the show, plus some videos of Sylvaine talking about her work. This will be available on my FB page, <span id="goog_949493417"></span><span id="goog_949493418"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/tom.sancton">https://www.facebook.com/tom.sancton</a>. Over the next few days, we will be posting selected works from the show. Hope you enjoy them, and feel free to comment.<br />
The image featured on the poster is from a series called "Choices." They are acrylics and raw pigment on linen canvas. Here is a link to an interview in which Sylvaine talks about this series, how it came about, how it was executed, and what it means to her:<br />
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-79486710806545392282020-03-21T08:41:00.000-07:002020-03-21T08:41:50.500-07:00IN SEARCH OF JEREMY GOOSE<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_d0O4gjJBTM/XnY07NbYvzI/AAAAAAAABhU/bXTsf-ewV7IAb3HpPhp4oPdjkorYHHnjACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Jeremy%2BGoose%2Bcover%2Blo%2Bres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1558" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_d0O4gjJBTM/XnY07NbYvzI/AAAAAAAABhU/bXTsf-ewV7IAb3HpPhp4oPdjkorYHHnjACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Jeremy%2BGoose%2Bcover%2Blo%2Bres.jpg" width="311" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jeremy on the cover of Sylvaine's new book</td></tr>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In these times of confinement and social distancing, one source of recreation left to us is walking in the park. Fortunately, for Sylvaine and me, New Orleans's Audubon Park is nearby. The park is special to both of us. I am told I took my first steps there as a baby. As a lad, I climbed Monkey Hill and even rode my bike down it at the risk of breaking my neck. As a teenager, I enjoyed some steamy moments with girlfriends while parked by the lagoon (in those days you could still drive in the park.) But for Sylvaine, the park is maybe even more special because this is the place where she started photographing birds and wildlife, which provided the material for two books, </span><i style="font-family: Cambria;">Some </i><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><i>Birds</i></span><i style="font-family: Cambria;"> </i><span style="font-family: Cambria;">(Pelican, 2013) and <i>The Adventures of Jeremy Goose </i>(UL Press, 2020).</span></o:p></div>
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These days, she brings her Canon along on our morning walks. She has focused particularly on a fascinating odd couple: a male swan and a female goose that are inseparable and even seem to dance waltzes together on the water. The other day she photographed a rare Osprey high up in a dead tree overlooking the lagoon. Maybe another book will emerge from these impromptu sessions. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But we have been struck by what is no longer present by the Audubon Park lagoon. Of the dozens of species Sylvaine photographed and described in Some Birds—egrets, herons, coots, wood ducks, gribes, anhingas, cormorants—only a few remain, mostly mallards, crows, and one pair of whistling ducks. The biggest shock, however, is the apparent departure of the flock of white geese that were the subject of her most recent book, Jeremy Goose. Where could they have gone? Had they died? Had they migrated? had they been taken somewhere else by the park authorities? For years, on our annual visits, we had seen them, with Jeremy immediately recognizable by the birthmark-like spots on his head and wings. We had watched him grow literally from the egg stage to young adulthood, which formed the "first person" narrative of the book. Now Jeremy and his extended family were gone. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0U_Wib79kSM/XnY1DWrvB5I/AAAAAAAABhY/JRRWFxvK7f8orvw6-j5XIjw2cJTRQS2WQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/%2522Jeremy%2522-ciy%2Bpark%2B20%2Bmarch%2B2020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0U_Wib79kSM/XnY1DWrvB5I/AAAAAAAABhY/JRRWFxvK7f8orvw6-j5XIjw2cJTRQS2WQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/%2522Jeremy%2522-ciy%2Bpark%2B20%2Bmarch%2B2020.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Jeremy" in City Park, March 2020</td></tr>
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This morning, we decided to change our usual pattern and walked in City Park instead. On the banks of the lagoon, just across from the Peristyle, we spotted a flock of white geese lounging in the sun. Could that be Jeremy's family? Not likely, since they were not great flyers, and this was a long way from Audubon. But as we approached, we noticed one male, quite big, that had Jeremy's telltale markings on his head and wing. Could that actually be Jeremy? We're not 100% sure, but I would like to think so.</div>
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One encouraging thing about out visit to City Park was that many of the bird species that have vanished from Audubon are to be found here, including egrets, coots, cormorants, pelicans and anhingas. Maybe they found this park more congenial. Who knows? The encouraging thing is that, contrary to one of my theories, they have not been chased from the region by global warming—at least not yet. In any case, Sylvaine and I will continue to visit City Park, with special attention to "Jeremy." Maybe he will remember Sylvaine and give her some sign. After all, she made him a star.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Even in these times of lockdowns and store closings, Sylvaine's books can be ordered on line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">JEREMY: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/qkrld2h"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">https://tinyurl.com/qkrld2h</span></a> or: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/uraxzy8"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">https://tinyurl.com/uraxzy8</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">SOME BIRDS: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/wtqz6c3"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">https://tinyurl.com/wtqz6c3</span></a></span></div>
Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-12427578343612880982020-03-18T14:25:00.000-07:002020-03-18T14:27:28.579-07:00SYLVAINE SANCTON'S NEW CHILDREN'S BOOK<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0_8Q5j9s35w/XnKPoHL48XI/AAAAAAAABf4/Q-OtqMRr26wufpn41Ky3jLLcvXa2ntPaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Jeremy%2BGoose%2Bcover%2Blo%2Bres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1237" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0_8Q5j9s35w/XnKPoHL48XI/AAAAAAAABf4/Q-OtqMRr26wufpn41Ky3jLLcvXa2ntPaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Jeremy%2BGoose%2Bcover%2Blo%2Bres.jpg" width="246" /></a><br />
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Among the casualties of COVID-19 was my wife Sylvaine's reading/signing of her new children's photo book, "The Adventures of Jeremy Goose." The event was scheduled for March 28 at Octavia Books in New Orleans, but the store managers and the author agreed that this was not the time for a public gathering, even around so charming a character as Jeremy. This morning, Sylvaine stopped in at Octavia Books to sign copies of the book, so future customers can still get an autographed edition even though the event is cancelled. It's also available on the UL site (UL.com), as well as the Octavia Books site (octaviabooks.com), Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc. In these stressful times of confinement, it is a soothing and entertaining book for cooped-up kids (and their parents).<br />
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Here is the description from the back cover:<br />
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<i>Among the moss-draped oaks of New Orleans’s Audubon Park lives young Jeremy Goose. After he hatches from an egg, he learns to walk, eat grass, swim, cross the road, and get along with other animals, all under the watchful eyes of his Mom and Dad. On the banks of the park’s lagoon, Jeremy and his family live with their neighbors, including a squirrel, a snake, and a bad-mannered nutria. Jeremy is a thoughtful and sensitive little goose who sometimes gets into trouble but always feels the love of his family. Through Jeremy’s voice, young readers learn about family, responsibility, having fun, and growing up.</i>Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0New Orleans, LA, USA29.951065799999991 -90.071532329.511172299999991 -90.7169793 30.390959299999992 -89.4260853tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-63748016989087818812018-12-12T01:59:00.000-08:002018-12-12T02:01:14.726-08:00FRENCH UNREST<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 25pt;">Can Macron Survive His Nation’s Rage?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: large;">As France is roiled by the violence, momentum, and expanding demands of the <i>gilets jaunes,</i>the nation’s princely president may be facing a one-term reign.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="color: #535353; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10pt; text-decoration: none;"><a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/contributor/tom-sancton?intcid=inline_amp">TOM SANCTON</a> </span></span><span style="color: #535353; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10pt;">DECEMBER 11, 2018 6:57 PM</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "helvetica light";">Graffiti with the inscription “Macron resignation” is seen in Aimargues on December 11, 2018. </span><span style="color: #535353; font-family: "helvetica light";">By Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Burning cars. Flaming barricades. Police vans and armored vehicles. Clouds of tear gas. The images of Paris flickering across TV screens and smartphones around the world might give the impression that France is once again on the verge of a revolution. Things have not gone that far—yet—but for the past four weeks, the country has been in the grips of an explosion of anger by hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women fed up with high taxes, low salaries, and, especially, the autocratic governing style of President <b>Emmanuel Macron,</b>who seemed very much in control when I interviewed him this past March for a <i>Vanity Fair </i><a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/emmanuel-macron-opens-up-about-iran-and-his-new-pal-in-the-west-wing-trump?intcid=inline_amp"><span style="color: #e7001c; text-decoration: none;">profile</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">When he won election in May 2017, at the age of 39, Macron was hailed as a young innovator who had promised to modernize the French economy, restore competitiveness, and break with a widely discredited status quo. Now, just 19 months later, his presidency is seriously challenged by an ad-hoc popular movement known as the <i>gilets jaunes,</i>or yellow vests, for the roadside security pullovers they have adopted as a uniform. What began in October as a protest against a gasoline-tax hike has since snowballed into an amorphous, largely leaderless force pushing a smorgasbord of more than 40 demands ranging from across-the-board salary increases and better public services to the dissolution of the National Assembly and the resignation of Monsieur Macron.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Almost from the beginning of his time in the Élysée, Macron, a former investment banker who had never run for public office, was widely perceived as a “president of the rich” because of the tax breaks he gave to French companies and the affluent classes, and especially for his suppression of a long-standing wealth tax, the so-called I.S.F. His top-down approach to governing—“Jupiterian” in his own words—was seen by many as anti-democratic, even as his language sometimes denoted a contempt for <i>la France d’en bas</i>—those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. To make matters worse, Macron was seen as an arrogant product of a Parisian elite that was out of touch with and indifferent to the plight of those in the provinces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">And that’s where the trouble began, out in the economically depressed rural areas and smaller towns where most people are obliged to use their cars to get to work. Angered by the steady rise in gasoline prices, especially an eco tax that had been scheduled to increase in January, groups of protesters began to coalesce via social-media links. By the end of October, yellow-vest squads were sporadically blocking roads and intersections around the country to demand the cancellation of the eco tax, emboldened by polls showing widespread public support. On Saturday, November 17, and for the three successive Saturdays, yellow vests converged on the capital for supposedly peaceful demonstrations that degenerated into violence when radical right- and left-wing groups seized the occasion to smash store windows and attack public monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe. Police responded with tear gas, stun grenades, and water cannon, arresting more than 4,500 for acts of vandalism and aggression.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Prime Minister <b>Édouard Philippe’s</b>attempts to negotiate with the yellow vests went nowhere, since the largely unstructured grassroots movement had no recognized leaders. On December 5, the government finally announced the cancellation of the planned eco-tax hike. Two weeks earlier, that might have satisfied the protesters, but by this time their demands had proliferated, with increasingly strident chants of <i>Macron, démission!</i>—Macron, resign.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">On Monday, after a roughly four-hour consultation with union, political, and business leaders, Macron himself faced the nation in a solemn 13-minute address meant to calm the protests and assuage the nation. His face drawn by fatigue, with a visible stubble on his sunken cheeks, he declared a “state of economic and social emergency.” While calling for an end to the “inadmissible violence,” he voiced sympathy for the “distress” of lower wage earners, and offered a rare mea culpa for having “hurt some of you with my words.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Specifically, Macron offered a set of concessions, including a €100 (about $114) increase in the monthly minimum wage; year-end bonuses to private-sector employees; reduced Social Security taxes on monthly pensions under €2,000 (around $2,264); and the suppression of taxes on overtime pay. But he explicitly ruled out reinstating the I.S.F. wealth tax, a key yellow-vest demand. Government officials estimated the cost of these measures could reach as high as €10 billion (approximately $11.3 billion), and it remained to be seen how they would be funded. Beyond those material incentives, the president called for a national debate on the reorganization of the government, more democratic voting procedures, improved public services, and even the volatile questions of immigration and national identity, a key issue for the French right.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Across the country, the protesters generally greeted Macron’s speech with <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/12/10/01016-20181210ARTFIG00344-annonces-de-macron-des-mesurettes-pour-les-uns-un-debut-de-comprehension-pour-les-autres.php"><span style="color: #e7001c; text-decoration: none;">skepticism and contempt</span></a>. <b>Benjamin Cauchy,</b>founder of a group called the Free Yellow Vests, mocked the president’s proposals as “mini-measures,” saying his refusal to restore the wealth tax proves that he is “the president of the rich.” <b>Christophe Torrent,</b>another activist, called the offers “largely insufficient,” and demanded a referendum on the group’s demands. Others in the movement found Macron insincere and rejected his offers as “too little, too late.” Overwhelmingly, they called for a fifth round of Paris protests this Saturday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">While Macron vowed to “stay the course” on his ambitious plans to reform the French economy, his main focus going forward will be to shore up his waning support in France, where his poll ratings hover in the low 20s. Macron’s political weakness at home also dampens his hopes of emerging as the European Union’s key leader once Germany’s <b>Angela Merkel </b>leaves power.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Despite the negative response from the yellow vests, there are signs that Macron’s speech may have helped him with the public at large: according to an <a href="https://www.lci.fr/politique/sondage-opinionway-lci-une-majorite-de-francais-soutiennent-les-gilets-jaunes-mais-souhaitent-l-arret-du-mouvement-2107121.html"><span style="color: #e7001c; text-decoration: none;">OpinionWay poll</span></a>, 49 percent found his speech convincing, with approval of his specific measures ranging from 60 percent to 78 percent. Most important for the president, 54 percent want the protests to end. That probably won’t prevent the yellow vests from converging on Paris this Saturday, but it does offer hope that the unrest might settle down by Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">That said, it is difficult to imagine how Macron will survive this over the long haul. The president’s outright resignation seems unlikely: he was solidly elected to a five-year term and his party, La République en Marche (Republic on the Move), holds an overwhelming parliamentary majority until at least 2022. But Macron’s aura of invulnerability has been shattered. From the beginning, he defiantly vowed that, unlike previous leaders, he would never capitulate to street protests in the pursuit of his reforms. Indeed, he coolly rammed through a revision of the labor code and a restructuring of the national railroad in the face of widespread strikes. This time, he blinked, and his ability to put through unpopular reforms is much diminished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Meanwhile, the populist far-right National Front, recently renamed National Rally, is poised to make big gains in next spring’s European Parliament elections. Its leader, <b>Marine Le Pen, </b>defeated by Macron in 2017, will be itching for a presidential rematch in 2022. Though Macron may well survive in office until then, the real danger is that France might eventually go the way of Italy, Hungary, and Austria in embracing a right-wing populist regime. <b>Steve Bannon </b>must be licking his lips.<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">© 2018. Reprinted from Vanity Fair</span></span></div>
Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-55626904383375976012018-03-20T21:01:00.001-07:002018-03-20T21:01:15.778-07:00BOOK EVENT MARCH 25!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm appearing at a book event this Sunday, March 25, alongside fellow authors Mitch Landrieu, Martha Boone, and Jeffrey Round. Place: the Presbytere, Jackson Square, New Orleans.<br />
Time: 1:30-4:30.<br />
It's also my birthday, so there's cake and champagne! Should be fun. It's free, but RSVP so they'll have enough food to feed the multitudes.Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-49741947634127297442018-01-28T07:15:00.000-08:002018-04-23T19:04:22.403-07:00TOM SANCTON PERFORMANCES APRIL-MAY 2018<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QyziTE96kHo/VqUW_SKWdHI/AAAAAAAABQw/MxKUGeHyVEg/s1600/homephoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QyziTE96kHo/VqUW_SKWdHI/AAAAAAAABQw/MxKUGeHyVEg/s320/homephoto.jpg" width="213" /></a><br />
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<b>April 25: </b>Palm Court Jazz Cafe, 1206 Decatur Street, New Orleans. With Lars Edegran band featuring Topsy Chapman, 8 p.m. - 11p.m.<br />
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<b>April 26: </b>Palm Court Jazz Cafe, 1206 Decatur Street, New Orleans. With Clive Wilson Serenaders featuring Butch Thompson. 8 p.m. - 11p.m.<br />
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<b>April 27: </b>Jazzfest, Economy Hall Tent, with Clive Wilson's Serenaders featuring Butch Thompson. Time TBA.<br />
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<b>April 29: </b>Preservation Hall, 726 St. Peter Street, with the Wendell Brunious Jazz Band. 7-10 p.m.<br />
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<b>May 4: </b>Brennan’s on Royal Street, with the Seva Venet trio.<br />
4-7pm.<br />
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<b>May 6: </b>Jazzfest, Economy Hall Tent, with New Orleans Legacy Band. 1:40-2:40 p.m.<br />
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<b>May 8: </b>Palm Court Jazz Cafe, 1296 Decatur St., with Lars Edegran All Stars, 7-10 p.m.<br />
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<b>May 12: </b>Palm Court Jazz Cafe, 1296 Decatur St., with Lars Edegran All Stars, 7-10 p.m.<br />
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<b>May 13: </b>Preservation Hall, 726 St. Peter Street, with the Wendell Brunious Jazz Band. 7-10 p.m.<br />
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-1629172076935754942017-12-15T07:27:00.000-08:002017-12-15T07:27:43.388-08:00INTERVIEW IN ART+DESIGN DECEMBER ISSUE<h2 style="text-align: center;">
Artful Author</h2>
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<span style="font-size: small;">By Laurie Fisher<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="mso-font-width: 85%;"><b>AUTHOR TOM SANCTON UNPACKS
ONE OF THE GREATEST SCANDALS IN MODERN MEMORY</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k7riedBHssw/WjPnYTyuuGI/AAAAAAAABbU/ZX3hB-bvPicoW-OaqUH1wPgsR1t-BeByQCLcBGAs/s1600/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k7riedBHssw/WjPnYTyuuGI/AAAAAAAABbU/ZX3hB-bvPicoW-OaqUH1wPgsR1t-BeByQCLcBGAs/s200/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" width="131" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-font-width: 85%;">THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR is a multi-</span></i><i style="text-align: center;">generational
family saga thatl has unfolded piecemeal in international newspapers and
magazines over the past decade. The
story revolves around a mother, the late French billionaire heiress lo
the L’Oréal cosmetics fortune Liliane Bellencourt; the mother’s much
younger male companion, artist François-Marie Banier; and
Bttlencourt’s disgruntled daughter, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, who set the
drama in motion with a lawsuit contending that Banier
had sweet-talked his way into huge chunks of the family fortune. It’s a complex,
winding scandal involving Nazi collaborators, snooping butlers, corrupt
politicians, at least three suicides, and tons of money. Thankfully Tom
Sancton, New Orleans native, naturalized French citizen, and former Paris
Bureau Chief for TIME, has firmed up this soapy saga with extensive research
and interviews in his terrific new book, </i><span style="text-align: center;">THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR: THE WORLD’S RICHEST WOMAN AND THE SCANDAL THAT
ROCKED PARIS (DUTTON). </span><i style="text-align: center;">Here, we ask
Sancton about the particulars.</i></div>
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<br />LAURIE FISHER: You include an excerpt from F Scott Fitzgerald at the beginning of your book: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." How do you think the conflicts between Bettencourt, Banier, and Bettencourt-Meyers would have played out if such a vast amount of money were not involved?<br /><br />TOM SANCTON: It's hard to imagine a scenario involving these characters that does not revolve around the immense Bettencourt fortune. Without it, I don't think Liliane would have had an important position in society—she had no particular talents or skills. I doubt that Banier would have been attracted to her because the thing that jump started their friendship was her decision to finance his artistic career. As for Françoise, she seems not to have been comfortable growing up in an ultra-wealthy milieu. As a mature woman Françoise became obsessed with protecting the family fortune when she felt it was threatened by Banier. That's what triggered her suit and gave birth to the whole Bettencourt affair.<br /><br />IF: Regardless of wealth or status, we all experience the inherent stress of complex relationships. What do you think the average person could learn from how the wealthy and influential handle this common human experience?<br /><br />TS: Wealth was a complicating factor in these relationships, but I think the fundamental problems were not limited to the rich. The main thing the average person can take away from all this is that honesty and frankness are essential in all successful relationships. Liliane's problems with her daughter, going back to Françoise's teen years, could have been eased with some straight talk between them. As for Liliane and Banier, they talked constantly and exchanged thousands of letters over the years. I'm not sure how much frankness was involved—based on the correspondence there was a lot of coquetry. Still they managed to keep their intense relationship going for a quarter-century That says something about the value of communication.<br /><br />LF: You have described it as"Dallas Downton Abbey, and House of Cards rolled into one." Would you please consider a screenplay for The Bettencourt Affair? It would be the next big thing everyone is binge-watching!<br /><br />TS: Funny you should mention that. I wouldn't attempt a screenplay myself because I'm not a screenwriter. But my agent is shopping around the idea of a movie or TV series and there are actually a couple of nibbles Stay tuned…<br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-55963013489500258222017-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:002017-11-21T08:25:10.933-08:00AMERICAN LIBRARY OF PARIS PRESENTATION<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ENibeth9zxo/WhRNF9PUxTI/AAAAAAAABao/ahUKE9bLVNcCXqA43jfSAp1Yh0rOuLD1QCLcBGAs/s1600/TAS%2Bat%2BAm%2BLibrary%2Bby%2BCDickey.15nov2017%2Bcropped.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1598" data-original-width="1600" height="198" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ENibeth9zxo/WhRNF9PUxTI/AAAAAAAABao/ahUKE9bLVNcCXqA43jfSAp1Yh0rOuLD1QCLcBGAs/s200/TAS%2Bat%2BAm%2BLibrary%2Bby%2BCDickey.15nov2017%2Bcropped.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy Christopher S. Dickey</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On November 15, 2017, I had the honor and privilege of presenting my book <i>The Bettencourt Affair</i> at the American library of Paris. The turnout was good, about 50 book lovers, including Chris Dickey, former Newsweek Bureau Chief in Paris while I was TIME's Bureau Chief. Our old institutional rivalry notwithstanding, we have been good friends for many years. (Chris threatened to heckle me before the program started, but instead snapped this picture to immortalize the occasion.)<br />
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The audience was knowledgable about the "affair," and asked excellent questions after sitting through my 45-minute talk and a short reading. On site book sales were handled by Shakespeare & Co., possibly the most famous bookstore in Paris. (Shakespeare's Sylvia Beach published Joyce's <i>Ulysses</i> when nobody else would touch it.) Library patron Leslie de Galbert, a fellow New Orleanian, hosted a reception afterward in her high-rise apartment with a breathtaking view of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. Leslie has been a Parisienne since the 1970s, but we had a great time comparing New Orleans memories over champagne and canapés. For those who missed the occasion, I can't do anything about the champagne, but here is a transcript of my talk if anyone is curious. (Not required reading by any means, and there will be no quiz):<br />
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<i><br /><br />Most of you are probably famiar with the Bettencourt Affair. For those who are not, it’s a French scandal involving the world’s richest woman, L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, her much younger gay protégé, François-Marie Banier, to whom she gave several hundred million euros over 20 years, and Liliane’s daughter Françoise, who in 2007 sued Banier for exploiting her elderly mother and thus launched a decade-long legal battle.</i><div>
<i><br />But I tried to tell a much broader story, not in 2007, but in 1870 with the Franco-Prussian war. Don’t worry, I only spent a page on that. But the story as I saw it was far more complex and richer than the legal battle. I called it “Dallas, Downton Abbey, and House of Cards rolled into one.”<br /><br /> In fact it is many intertwined stories that tell us a lot more about modern French history, society, business, and politics than an account of the litigation itself. It’s part corporate history; partly a story about the creation and transmission of one of the world’s biggest fortunes ; partly the saga of a remarkable family over three generations—a family marked by great achievements and haunted by dark secrets. It’s partly a Greek tragedy about a conflicted mother-daughter relationship and a family torn by jealousy and vengeance; partly a political intrigue that contributed to the downfall of a president. <br /><br />Most of all, it’s a story about people. From the beginning, what attracted me to this subject was not just the enormous amount of money involved but the intriguing characters at the heart of this drama and the interplay between them. With the characters as a centerpiece, I tried to construct my narrative in a novelistic way. It’s all factual and meticulously documented, but in the telling I tried to give it a novelistic feel, with character development, dialogue, description, scene-setting, a sense of place, applying the literary devices of fiction to a work of nonfiction—a technique that Truman Capote called the “nonfiction novel” when he published IN COLD BLOOD in 1966.<br /><br />So let's take a look at the main characters.There is, first of all, Eugène Schueller, the son of an Alsatian baker and a domestic servant, who became a chemist and invented the synthetic hair-dye that was the origin of L’Oréal. Schueller was a brilliant inventor and businessman, a Horatio Alger-like figure who started L’Oréal in a kitchen laboratory and built it into the world’s number one cosmetics firm.<br /><br /> Schueller was a workaholic who called himself the “6,000-hour man,” because he worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. But he had a serious flaw: a penchant for fascist ideology that led him to fund one of the most notorious far-right groups of the 1930s—La Cagoule—and, during the war, led him to actively collaborate with the Nazis. In his public speeches and radio chats, he called for a revolution to rid France of Republicanism, free-masonry and Jews. He openly praised Hitler’s “dynamism” and denounced what he called “the childish concepts of liberty, equality, and even fraternity.” <br /><br />Schueller’s collaboration went far beyond his rhetorical support for national socialism. He was an informant of Helmut Knochen, the notorious head of the SS security police in France, a key figure behind the deportations of Jews, and executions of thousands of resistance fighters and hostages. In one document I unearthed in the Archives Nationales, Schueller urged young Frenchmen to join the Légion des Volontaires Français, which fought on the eastern front alongside the Waffen-SS. <br /><br />Collaboration was also good for Schueller’s bottom line: L’Oréal’s sales quadrupled during the war, Schueller’s personal income increased tenfold, and a paint and varnish company he controlled, Valentine, sold as much of 90% of its wartime production to the German navy. <br /><br />Like many collaborators, Schueller was caught up in the net of the postwar purge, known as the épuration. He was indicted and investigated, but avoided conviction because of his money and contacts—including a General who swore that Schueller had financed the Resistance, and two young men who had belatedly joined the Resistance: future president François Mitterrand, and Schueller’s future son-in-law André Bettencourt. <br /><br />Schueller’s narrow escape did not prevent him in subsequent years from welcoming a number of ex-Nazi sympathizers into the ranks of L’Oréal. Among them was a notorious killer named Jacques Corrèze, who had fought with the Waffen-SS and swore allegiance to Hitler. Hired by Schueller in 1950, Corrèze went on to head L’Oréal’s U.S. subsidiary. Another postwar recruit was Jean Filliol, who had carried out more than a hundred assassinations and helped the Waffen-SS prepare their infamous 1944 massacre of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. <br /><br />Schueller was never seriously called to task for recycling these and other war criminals, though a spectacular exposé in 1991, years after the founder’s death, created a public relations disaster for L’Oréal and the Bettencourt family. <br /><br />Another central character in this saga is, of course, Schueller’s heir and only child. Born in 1922, Liliane lost her mother when she was five and grew up under the influence of her father’s domineering personality and manic work-ethic. One of her lawyers, Georges Kiejman, once told me: “You will never understand Liliane’s story unless you realize that she was the adored daughter of a father she adored.” Indeed, she was enamored of her father and lived and breathed L’Oréal business from childhood. <br /><br />But she was also a lonely girl, raised by an English nanny she did not like—and who eventually married the widowed Schueller. Liliane was packed off to a Catholic boarding school run by Dominican nuns. During her school vacations, she was forced by her father to work as an apprentice at L’Oréal, gluing labels on shampoo bottles and other low-level tasks. <br /><br />There was never any thought in Schueller’s mind that his daughter would one day run the company. He believed women belonged in the home, keeping house and raising families. When it came time for Liliane to marry, Schueller had a hand-picked candidate in mind: André Bettencourt, the young Vichy supporter-turned Resistance member who had vouched for him during the postwar investigation. <br /><br />Bettencourt was the son of a prominent provincial family from Normandy. His devoutly Catholic father was a lawyer, and his mother’s family had some aristocratic blood. André Bettencourt was tall, handsome, elegant in manner and speech. To Schueller, the nouveau-riche son of a baker and a domestic servant, Liliane’s marriage to Bettencourt would give her the social status he lacked. And André was more than willing to marry the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune.<br /><br />But Liliane long resisted André. When she was 20, she fell madly in love with the son of a Moroccan pasha; it was only after that affair broke off that she accepted to marry André on the rebound. And when they chose the ring, she said told the jeweler, “above all, not too tight.” She later told an interviewer, “I detest all the conventions of marriage.” In fact, theirs was a marriage of convenience, not of passion. André had an active private life that didn’t involve women. And Liliane also enjoyed her personal freedom. But it was Liliane who wore the pants and controlled the purse. It was her money that bought André’s handmade suits and Havana cigars and financed his political career. <br /><br /> <br />He held numerous, mostly low-level, cabinet positions after the war, but without his illicit political contributions, he never would have been invited to join a government. He was in fact a mediocre man, who quit school before the baccalaureat, somehow escaped military service in spite of the mobilisation générale, and throughout his long political career, did not leave his name on a single piece of legislation or political initiative. Nor, despite his high-sounding Vice-President’s title at L’Oréal, did he play an important role at the family firm. <br /><br />His one moment in the spotlight came in 1995, when Le Monde revealed that he had written anti-Semitic diatribes for a pro-German paper in 1941 and 42, before he switched sides and belatedly joined the Resistance. In disgrace, he resigned from L’Oréal and declined to run for re-election to the Senate. It was an inglorious end to an undistinguished career.<br /><br /> <br />Long before that, back in the 1980s, Liliane had gone through a deep depression. All her life she had been the “daughter of” or the “wife of,” but she felt unfulfilled in her personal life, bored with her marriage and dissatisfied with her daughter Françoise, with whom she had a fraught relationship. <br /><br />She occupied herself with L’Oréal meetings, social events and dinner parties, but in reality she was bored with her codified bourgeois existence and longed for something more exciting. As she told an interviewer for the magazine Egoiste in 1987, “I don’t like blandness, I like salt.” Salt came into her life in the person of François-Marie Banier, who had been assigned to photograph her on that occasion. <br /><br />Banier is a character out of a Balzac novel—a Rastignac or a Lucien de Rubempré—a relentless social climber intent on conquering le tout Paris. The battered child of a Hungarian immigrant father and an ego-centric French mother, he grew up seeking in others the affection and approval that were lacking in his family. After leaving home at age 16, he struck up intimate friendships with a succession of famous people, including Salvador Dalí, Louis Aragon, Vladimir Horowitz, YSL, François Mitterrand and many others. <br /><br />But he was no mere celebrity stalker. Charming, seductive, and physically beautiful in his youth, he attracted attention with his witty conversation and his precocious talents as a writer. Aragon even compared him to Stendahl and Turgeniev. The praise was certainly excessive, but Banier had in fact written three successful novels by age 25. A talented dilettante, he also took up painting and photography—which led him to that fateful photo session with Liliane Bettencourt in 1987.<br /><br />Banier immediately caught her attention that day. Unlike the fawning attitude most people adopted with the heiress, Banier began bossing her around. He didn’t like her hairdo, made her change her clothes, told her where to sit, how to pose. Instead of kicking him out, Liliane fell under his spell. It was the beginning of an intense 25-year relationship. Banier swept Liliane off her feet, taking her to the theater, art galleries, auction houses, introducing her to fascinating writers, artists and actors. As she put it “Banier made me live again.” <br /><br />So she repaid him the only way she knew how: with money, hundreds of millions, always couched in terms of art patronage. Banier certainly cajoled and manipulated Liliane and encouraged her largesse, but from the beginning, she made it clear that she acted willingly and knowingly to finance his art career. <br /><br />Liliane’s daughter Françoise, the other main character, of course looked on all this with a jaundiced eye. Less than a month after her father died in 2007, she sued Banier for abus de faiblesse and thus launched the famous legal battle that only ended last year. Françoise claimed to be protecting her ageing mother from Banier’s exploitation, but her motives were more complex. Liliane and Françoise had a terrible relationship. Liliane was elegant, social, passionately interested in the family business; Françoise was dowdy, withdrawn, more interested in her books and piano than the glittering social life of her parents. In Liliane’s eyes, her daughter just never lived up to her expectations. “Françoise was always one lap behind me,” she told one interviewer. <br /><br />It didn’t help matters when Françoise decided to marry the grandson of a rabbi who died at Auschwitz, and to raise her two sons as Jews. Some have seen this as an act of atonement for her grandfather’s anti-Semitism and wartime collaboration. But it did not sit well with her staunchly Catholic parents. When Banier came into the picture, Françoise was naturally jealous of this brash interloper who usurped her place in her mother’s affections. She called him a ghuru and a Rasputin. Though her suit officially targeted Banier, Liliane took it as a treacherous attack on her. And she never forgave Françoise. <br /><br />Those are the main protagonists, but there are dozens of secondary figures who are no less intriguing. In fact, Charles Dickens could not have invented a more interesting set of characters or a more convoluted plot. Among them was Olivier Metzner, the legendary criminal lawyer who filed the initial suit but wound up committing suicide before it was over; then there was Pascal Bonnefoy, the handsome butler who secretly recorded Liliane’s conversations with her advisers and broke the case wide open; and Claire Thibout, the accountant, who initially blew the whistle on Banier and wound up being investigated for false testimony; and let's not forget Patrice de Maistre, the smarmy financial adviser who sweet-talked Liliane out of € 12 million and famously begged her to buy him “the boat of his dreams.”<br /><br />The scandal spilled over into the political arena when Eric Woerth, President Sarkozy’s cabinet minister and campaign treasurer was indicted for collecting illegal donations from the Bettencourts—not to mention conflicts of interest involving a Legion d’Honneur decoration and a cushy job for his wife. <br /><br />Then there is Sarkozy himself, an endlessly fascinating character for his frenetic energy, ruthless ambition, and ethical lapses that embroiled him in a number of scandals. Prominent among them was the Bettencourt Affair. Early on, Sarkozy offered to mediate between mother and daughter. Then he allegedly urged the prosecutor Philippe Courroy, a personal friend, to quash the case. Finally, Sarkozy found himself under investigation for allegedly soliciting illegal campaign contributions from the Bettencourts.<br /><br />At the time, the affair did not bring down the president, but it was one of the scandals that contributed to his re-election defeat in 2012 and scuttled his comeback attempt last year. And he’s not done with it yet: in October, the Paris prosecutor ordered him to stand trial in the so-called wiretap affair, involving his attempts to obtain protected judicial information on the Bettencourt investigation. <br /><br />So those are some of the characters that give a novelistic flavor to this story. I’m not going to walk you through all the twists and turns of the 10-year legal battle—for that you have to read the book. But most of you probably know that outcome: at the appeal trial last year, Banier was convicted of abus de faiblesse and sentenced to four years in prison—but the sentence was entirely suspended, so no jail time. He was fined €375,000 euros—a pittance for him—but the €158 million in damages assessed at the original trial was rescinded. So Banier got off with a relative wrist tap. But at age 70, he is in many ways a broken man. He is a convicted felon, his reputation tarnished, his life tormented by the 10-year legal battle. <br /><br />Liliane’s last decade was also poisoned by the affair. Lost in the fog of Alzheimers, she finished her days under the guardianship of her daughter—exactly the fate she always dreaded. <br /><br />The big winner was Françoise. She not only won her suit against Banier, she also inherited her mother’s 33% share of L’Oréal, worth more than $45 billion at last count. And she recently got our from under a legal cloud of her own. For the past year, Françoise was under formal investigation for allegedly bribing her star witness. But in August the Paris prosecutor called for dropping the charges pending final judicial approval. So for all intents and purposes, the legal phase of the Bettencourt Affair is over.</i></div>
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<i><br />A lot of people have asked me how I first got interested in this subject and chose to do a book on it. Actually the subject chose me in a way. I was in France during the summer of 2010, at a time when the Bettencourt Affair exploded into the headlines. The butler’s tapes had just been leaked and the media were talking about Sarkozy’s involvement and calling it a French Watergate. I emailed Graydon Carter at VF and told him it would make a great piece. He said, “You’re right. Why don’t you do it?” I hadn’t intended to write it myself, but I said okay. In for a penny out for a pound. The piece came out in October 2010. <br /><br />Two months later, Françoise and Banier signed an agreement that supposedly put an end to the suit. But the pact unraveled and the investigation continued. When it finally went to trial in 2015, my literary agent read a piece about the affair in the NYT and thought it would make a great book for the US market. She called me and suggested I put together a proposal. Well I wasn’t at all sure it would appeal to US readers, but I said, Okay, why not. Again, in for a penny, out for a pound. My agent’s instincts were right: she eventually had six US publishers bidding on the book. We signed with Dutton in May 2015. I delivered the manuscript eighteen months later, and the rest is history as they say. <br /><br />There’s lots more to say about this multifaceted story, but I’d like to stop here to read a short section from the book. It’s from a chapter called “The Christmas Visitor," describing a dramatic confrontation between one of Liliane's financial advisers and François-Marie Banier...<br /> </i><br /> </div>
Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-88177410023352456522017-09-21T10:02:00.000-07:002017-09-21T10:02:22.196-07:00R.I.P. LILIANE BETTENCOURT, 1922-2017<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ycoSiE0WUIg/WcPvx_wyezI/AAAAAAAABaE/Ajmb1lX37JY3cwXUtK5AE_NBs-CcbdGwgCLcBGAs/s1600/3b2bf07_28879-1lmdwi9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="1068" height="133" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ycoSiE0WUIg/WcPvx_wyezI/AAAAAAAABaE/Ajmb1lX37JY3cwXUtK5AE_NBs-CcbdGwgCLcBGAs/s200/3b2bf07_28879-1lmdwi9.jpg" width="200" /></a>I just learned of the death today of L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, 94, the world's richest woman. According to her daughter, she "went peacefully." But the last 10 years of her life were anything but peaceful as she found herself at the center of an epic legal battle triggered by her daughter's 2007 suit against Liliane's protégé, artist François-Marie Banier, accused and eventually convicted of swindling the heiress out of part of her $40 billion fortune. A sad end to a long and eventful life. But also a liberation from the fog of Alzheimers and from the grip of her daughter's guardianship, which in effect held Liliane a prisoner in her gilded cage, forbidden to see even her closest friends. Proof, once again, that wealth does not guarantee happiness.Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-13328924093718525502017-08-27T07:44:00.000-07:002017-08-27T07:47:53.018-07:00THE WALL STREET JOURNAL REVIEWS "THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR"<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">ARTS </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; position: relative; top: -1.0pt;">| </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">BOOKS </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; position: relative; top: -1.0pt;">| </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">BOOKSHELF <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times";"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">How to Spend
a Billion Dollars </span></b></span></h2>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; font-weight: normal;"><i>‘There was a language I created
with her that was expressed through this money that she wanted to give me,’
Banier explained. Tobias Grey reviews ‘The Bettencourt Affair’ by Tom Sancton. </i></span></h3>
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<br />
<b>THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR</b><br />
By Tom Sancton: Dutton, 396 pages, $28<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yypI6JoRuCw/WaLWC8dP_rI/AAAAAAAABZQ/xxYY7OqXC8cKnvepwoFuVIypIvui4HmDACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-08-27%2Bat%2B4.15.32%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="718" height="270" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yypI6JoRuCw/WaLWC8dP_rI/AAAAAAAABZQ/xxYY7OqXC8cKnvepwoFuVIypIvui4HmDACLcBGAs/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-08-27%2Bat%2B4.15.32%2BPM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.800000190734863px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">François-Marie Banier and Liliane Bettencourt in 1992. SYGMA/GETTY IMAGES</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">By Tobias Grey.
Updated Aug. 24, 2017 7:29 p.m. ET</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">The affair involved a prominent
French family at war with itself. It featured collusion between private
business interests and powerful politicians. Two people connected with the
affair committed suicide; several reputations were ruined. As Tom Sancton,
former Paris bureau chief for Time magazine, described the saga, it was
“Dallas, Downton Abbey and House of Cards rolled into one.” In the case of “The
Bettencourt Affair”—Mr. Sancton’s chronicle of the nearly decade- long legal
drama surrounding the family behind the L’Oréal empire— the hype is justified.
The story centers on how an aging and ailing Liliane Bettencourt, the
cosmetics-company heiress, gifted a billion dollars’ worth of artwork, real
estate, cash, and life-insurance policies to portrait photographer
François-Marie Banier. The matter came to public attention when Ms.
Bettencourt’s daughter filed suit against Mr. Banier for allegedly swindling
her enfeebled mother out of a fortune. Over the years that followed, Mr.
Sancton covered the episode’s many twists and turns closely for Vanity Fair
magazine, and the book that has emerged from his reporting on the case is
surely the definitive account.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">One of the book’s recurring
questions is what moved Ms. Bettencourt —according to Forbes, the world’s
richest woman, worth nearly $40 billion—to such generosity toward the eccentric
Mr. Banier. Their relationship was not sexual: Mr. Banier is gay. According to
Mr. Sancton, however, the bond between the friends was nonetheless deep. An
only child, hearing-impaired, distant from her only daughter, and locked in a
marriage drained of passion, Ms. Bettencourt felt she led a life starved of
affection, excitement and beauty. She also lacked the sort of soulful
connection she had enjoyed with her beloved father, Eugène Schueller—the
ambitious son of a baker who founded L’Oréal in 1909 and built an immense
fortune from scratch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">In 1987, Mr. Banier—who has a
history of befriending older women— first began cultivating his friendship with
Liliane and her husband, politician André Bettencourt. “She gave me the
possibility of doing things I could never have done without her,” Mr. Banier has
said. “There was a language I created with her that was expressed through this
money that she wanted to give me.” Mr. Banier’s “crazy” streak reminded Ms.
Bettencourt of her father; she was also, Mr. Sancton reports, flattered by Mr.
Banier’s attentions, “and delighted to be introduced into his glittering world
of artistic and cultural connections.” Ms. Bettencourt and Mr. Banier’s
platonic love affair continued unabated for some 25 years. Many have wondered
why the heiress’s husband never intervened. But the couple’s lavish lifestyle,
as well as his own political career, were financed by his wife’s vast wealth,
and he maintained it was her right to do whatever she pleased with her own
money. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eH0rs_ZZbCE/WaLW_QtF5jI/AAAAAAAABZU/W-7o4wXQ0zYSYBqPUChWBaTLIxpKZAh1wCLcBGAs/s1600/Betetencourt%2BCover-3D-WSJ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="931" data-original-width="719" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eH0rs_ZZbCE/WaLW_QtF5jI/AAAAAAAABZU/W-7o4wXQ0zYSYBqPUChWBaTLIxpKZAh1wCLcBGAs/s320/Betetencourt%2BCover-3D-WSJ.jpg" width="247" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Things finally came to a head in
November 2007, not long after André Bettencourt’s death, when a family employee
told the Bettencourts’ daughter, Françoise Meyers, that she had overheard Mr.
Banier trying to persuade Ms. Bettencourt to legally adopt him as a son. A
month later, Françoise filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Banier for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abus de faiblesse </i>(abuse of weakness) of
her mother. The accusations and evidence surfaced (and re-surfaced) during the
court drama that followed provide some of the most explosive details in Mr.
Sancton’s reporting. At many points, these revelations implicate French
government officials, widening the scandal’s reach. For example, Mr.
Bettencourt’s personal valet, Pascal Bonnefoy, made secret recordings of the
Bettencourt family’s business dealings, which allegedly included illegal
financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful 2007 presidential campaign. The affair
also dredged up Eugène Schueller’s unsavory wartime history, which included
ties to the Nazis and significant involvement with the French fascist group La
Cagoule. During the épuration that followed the collapse of the Vichy regime,
Schueller was spared imprisonment and the loss of his company thanks in large
part to the interventions of François Mitterrand, the longest-serving president
of France. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">While Mr. Sancton deserves credit
for the depth of his investigation— he interviewed some 60 people, including
lawyers, politicians, celebrities, and servants—the Bettencourt affair is
treacherous territory, even for a veteran journalist. Mr. Sancton’s account is
a bit too taken with idle gossip. Mr. Sancton also seems at times to have
fallen under the charming spell of Mr. Banier, noting that, “despite his media
image as a dandy and jet-setter, he is in fact an obsessed workaholic and a
serious artist.” (Exactly when this “workaholic” found time for the daily
expenditures funded by Ms. Bettencourt— which the Meyers’s lawyers assessed at
roughly $30,000—is not explained.) Mr. Sancton’s account also suffers from the
silence of Ms. Meyer and Ms. Bettencourt, both of whom turned down his requests
for interviews. Ms. Bettencourt is now 94 and reportedly afflicted by
Alzheimer’s disease, so it is likely that her last words on the subject will be
those issued in January 2012. Questioned by a French judge about whether Mr.
Banier abused her, she said: “Surely a bit, but I don’t care . . . . I accept
the consequences of my mistakes.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Perhaps the greatest of those
mistakes was to shatter the convention whereby France’s super-rich are expected
to keep a very low profile. “For certain French people, gaining money is worse
than pedophilia,” says one attorney involved in the case. Liliane Bettencourt’s
largesse brought this taboo topic into the open in spectacular fashion. Readers
curious to see where that dangerous foray led will have to find the rest in Mr.
Sancton’s riveting, if somewhat tawdry, telling. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">**********</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 48px;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
To buy THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR:</div>
</div>
<div style="text-indent: 48px;">
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101984473?tag=randohouseinc37451-20">AMAZON</a></div>
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<div style="text-indent: 48px;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bettencourt-affair-tom-sancton/1125098283;jsessionid=01E5F61250F2DB57F353EF1CF1CB0C1D.prodny_store02-atgap08?ean=9781101984475">BARNES & NOBLE</a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"></span></div>
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-70641477518095793842017-08-26T08:48:00.000-07:002017-08-26T08:48:43.603-07:0020 YEARS AFTER DIANA'S DEATH, THE PAPARAZZI CONTINUE TO STALK<div class="MsoNormal">
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Plus ça change! </h2>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<i>Despite the uproar following Diana’s death,
France’s paparazzi continue to stalk the rich and famous</i></h2>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
By Tom Sancton</div>
<div>
Paris, August 26, 2017</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MLD1VuXgj8g/WaGSMZyhHHI/AAAAAAAABYg/KKlk1x-mptg_PsNTOuXLYvrSWobRZhwGgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/XVM363181c0-89a7-11e7-8e6f-d9a52f727f3c-805x453.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MLD1VuXgj8g/WaGSMZyhHHI/AAAAAAAABYg/KKlk1x-mptg_PsNTOuXLYvrSWobRZhwGgCK4BGAYYCw/s320/XVM363181c0-89a7-11e7-8e6f-d9a52f727f3c-805x453.jpg" width="320" /></a>No one can forget the night of August 31, 1997. Pursued at
high speed by a relentless pack of paparazzi, the black Mercedes bearing
Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed struck the 13<sup>th</sup> pillar of
Paris’s Alma tunnel and crashed into a concrete wall. Fayed was killed
instantly. Diana, despite a heroic effort to save her life, died on the
operating table four hours later. Blame focused immediately on the paparazzi
who had chased the couple on motorcycles then crawled all over their smashed
vehicle snapping photos and jostling one another for position. Ten
photojournalists were arrested that night and later charged with manslaughter
and failing to aid persons in danger.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But another
factor soon emerged:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an autopsy of the Mercedes’s
deceased driver, Ritz Hotel security chief Henri Paul, revealed that he was
drunk and under the influence of prescription drugs at the time of the
crash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If that fact relieved the
photographers of the legal responsibility for the accident—all charges against
them were eventually dropped—it did little to change the public perception that
these camera-slinging cowboys had hounded the Princess to her death. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Despite
widespread calls to rein in the reckless methods of the paparazzi, little has
changed in the intervening 20 years. The French celebrity press—magazines like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paris Match, Voici, Gala, </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">VSD</i>—continue to thrive on stolen images
of the rich and famous, and daredevil photographers keep shooting them. “The
paparazzi calmed down for six months after the accident, then they started back
up again,” says Alain Toucas, Diana’s former lawyer, who currently represents
the royal family of Monaco. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We hoped
the situation would improve, but in fact it’s gotten worse.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Even before the death of the
Princess, France had one of the Europe’s strongest laws against invasion of
privacy. The French civil code states that “everyone has a right to respect of
their private life” and accords to each individual the right to control his or
her own image. The problem is that the celebrity magazines continue to publish
paparazzi photos and, when they are sued, simply pay the fines and make up for
the cost through boosted sales. Though the law is strict on paper, it has
little deterrent effect. “I continue to pursue all those who violate the
private lives of my clients,” says Toucas. “But our efforts have little
success. We receive minimal damage payments, but we have failed to put an end
to these abuses.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Bruno Mouron, one of France’s
best-known paparazzi, agrees that the celebrity stalking continues unabated but
laments that the business has changed since he started working in the 1970s.
For one thing, it is nowhere as lucrative as it was in the pre-Diana days when
a single photo could fetch six figures. “The prices are ten percent of what
they were 20 years ago,” he says. “Now you’re lucky if you can get $5,000 for a
photo.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Mouron attributes that precipitous
drop to a number of causes. “With Instagram and Smartphones, everyone can be a
paparazzi. Celebrity photos are all over the Internet.” Another factor is that
the so-called “people” magazines increasingly organize their own photo shoots,
often with the express or tacit cooperation of the subject. Then there is the
precarious state of print journalism in general: more and more publications are
closing down and there is less money to spend on photos and reporting. Finally
there is the competition of young, hungry photojournalists attracted by the
adventure and willing to work cheap. “You don’t need a diploma to be a
photographer,” Mouron grumbles. “With today’s digital cameras, the photos take
themselves.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Mouron waxes nostalgic about the
old days. “It used to be a princely profession,” he says. “Travel, grand
hotels, fancy restaurants. To photograph celebrities, we had to go to the same
places they did. Now it’s a profession for bums—kids riding around on motor scooters
and eating fast food. If I was 20 years old today, I’d never choose this
profession. It no longer makes one dream.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Alain Toucas is unmoved by such complaints:
“Maybe it is less lucrative for the paparazzi—that’s not my problem—but it is
just as bothersome to the people they stalk. And I am afraid that, one day, we
will be confronted by another tragedy like Diana’s.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
***************</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">Tom Sancton and Scott MacLeod's 1998 bestseller is now available in an updated 20th anniversary edition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PeLZiY1bR9Y/WaGUL07AU4I/AAAAAAAABYs/MPbYN6n7hOo4Df4ZuprmuwXhtOGtOpm8gCLcBGAs/s1600/0405_Princess%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1068" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PeLZiY1bR9Y/WaGUL07AU4I/AAAAAAAABYs/MPbYN6n7hOo4Df4ZuprmuwXhtOGtOpm8gCLcBGAs/s200/0405_Princess%2B2.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>“Sancton and MacLeod…serve as textbook models of methodical
reporting.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span>—Lisa
Schwarzbaum, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Entertainment Weekly<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>“A solid piece of work…Every eyewitness is
interviewed; every lead followed up; every theory is explored.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>—Roy
Greenslade, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The definitive book on those final moments, days, hours,
minutes and seconds of Diana’s life.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>—Cindy
Adams, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Post<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“[The authors] have done more in-depth reporting on this
than just about anyone else.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>—Anderson
Cooper, CNN<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
TO BUY DEATH OF A PRINCESS:</div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Death-Princess-Behind-Dianas-Tragic-ebook/dp/B071NKJ51B/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1495210429&sr=8-7&keywords=death+of+a+princess">AMAZON</a></div>
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<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1231915067">iTUNES</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-of-a-princess-tom-sancton/1126311610;jsessionid=85DABDD1D9394B686E47D9D8F1833181.prodny_store02-atgap03?ean=9781524742485">BARNES & NOBLE</a></div>
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-6669604415514013142017-08-25T05:31:00.000-07:002017-08-27T07:46:54.338-07:00NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF "BETTENCOURT" <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EwlJwdxfCUk/WaAXl4NKshI/AAAAAAAABYM/K8YNd_Ik-oE_cfMXkzJ47JSv62EC8zP-ACLcBGAs/s1600/Bettencourt%2Bcover%2B3D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_0PSZw_lh6g/WaAXNxhU2FI/AAAAAAAABYI/hUkOIilwlkI9EeKhO8vpjL9oYtdJIw6cACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-08-25%2Bat%2B9.06.53%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="134" data-original-width="522" height="51" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_0PSZw_lh6g/WaAXNxhU2FI/AAAAAAAABYI/hUkOIilwlkI9EeKhO8vpjL9oYtdJIw6cACLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-08-25%2Bat%2B9.06.53%2BAM.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10.5pt;">BOOKS <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 29.0pt;">‘The Bettencourt Affair,’ a Buffet for Scandal Aficionados<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Books of The Times <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.0pt;">By </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.0pt;">JANET MASLIN </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10.5pt;">AUG. 23, 2017</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EwlJwdxfCUk/WaAXl4NKshI/AAAAAAAABYM/K8YNd_Ik-oE_cfMXkzJ47JSv62EC8zP-ACLcBGAs/s1600/Bettencourt%2Bcover%2B3D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="356" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EwlJwdxfCUk/WaAXl4NKshI/AAAAAAAABYM/K8YNd_Ik-oE_cfMXkzJ47JSv62EC8zP-ACLcBGAs/s320/Bettencourt%2Bcover%2B3D.jpg" width="204" /></a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><b>THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR: The World’s Richest Woman and the Scandal
That Rocked Paris</b> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">By Tom Sancton </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">396 pages. Dutton. $28. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">The labyrinthine mess known as the Bettencourt affair has been
the stuff of scandal aficionado dreams. It has turned up repeatedly in Vanity
Fair, which would have had to make it up if it hadn’t happened. Here is Liliane
Bettencourt, the L’Oréal cosmetics heiress and richest woman in Europe,
surrounded by the onetime “Golden Boy of Paris,” eavesdropping servants,
bilkers of every stripe, vicious family warfare, fabulous ostentation, alleged
Nazis in the family tree and political corruption at France’s highest levels.
Celebrities, artists, estates, jewels, sailboats and one private island dot the
perimeter of her story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">The intrigue and implications that
arose from Bettencourt’s relationship with a younger man created a publicity
nightmare for nearly a decade. Coincidentally or not, L’Oréal’s business has
improved during that period of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">“The Bettencourt Affair” is a
chronicle by the journalist Tom Sancton, who </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">covered the story </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">for Vanity
Fair. Sancton is no </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Dominick Dunne</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">, who would have found the beating heart of
this thing, if there was one. (Questionable.) He’s more the type to call it
“‘Dallas,’ ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘House of Cards’ rolled into one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">So Sancton lacks a gift for dish.
But he is an excellent straight-up reporter, and he has dug deeply into the
many, many elements that complicate this story. One lawyer involved even needs
a lawyer by the time it’s over. This book gives him the space to go beyond the
Bettencourt-for-Beginners version, which is this: To the ultimate dismay of
Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, her only child, Liliane Bettencourt became
infatuated with François-Marie Banier, a man 25 years her junior. Banier had
been a pretty, skilled charmer of older people since he was the teenage darling
of Salvador Dalí.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Over time, Bettencourt expressed
her affection by giving her platonic friend upward of a billion dollars’ worth
of assets. She made him the beneficiary of four separate life insurance
policies. Bettencourt-Meyers cried foul when she learned that her mother
planned to adopt Banier and make him an heir. At that point, the once-discreet
family lawyered up and went very public, with Bettencourt’s competence
questioned and Banier accused of “abuse of weakness” in a 2007 lawsuit. The
mother-daughter loathing, a long-held secret, came out in the open. “The mother
massacred the daughter, then the daughter massacred the mother,” one of the
many lawyers in this multidefendant story told Sancton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">From the butler who spent one year
secretly taping how Bettencourt was manipulated to the daughter’s efforts to
make witnesses her friends, there’s a lot to pursue here. One of the most
interesting parts of Sancton’s book is its history of L’Oréal, which began as
the first French company to produce hair dye that did not contain lead. The
formula was invented by Bettencourt’s father, Eugène Schueller, who also had
gifts for manufacturing and marketing. In 1909, he founded the French Company
of Inoffensive Hair Dyes (the translations here can be wonderful), which he
soon renamed L’Oréal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Later came the buildup to World
War II, and a part of the family’s history that lay buried for years. L’Oréal’s
sales nearly quadrupled during the war, and Schueller was involved with a
company that sold paint and varnish — which were more necessary in Germany than
in occupied France. (“No tank rolls without paint,” Sancton writes.)
Schueller’s Vichy-friendly politics and alleged collaboration would come back
to bite L’Oréal decades later. Bettencourt’s husband, André, wrote expressly
pro-Nazi articles before joining the resistance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">In Sancton’s telling, there are no
sympathetic figures in this family. Bettencourt’s only appeal for others
appears to be her money, and she seems to have been an ice-cold parent. As to
how she could sound, here she is in a 1987 interview: “A rich woman, the term
itself is disagreeable. It’s an ugly word. I prefer fortune.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">The book’s portrait of Banier is
much more confusing. Nothing about his self-justifying has much credence.
According to him, Bettencourt first began sponsoring him when she visited his
apartment and said: “François-Marie, you need more space. You like fine things;
me too. I have the means to suit your tastes.” She then bought him the first of
assorted apartments that would be followed by a laundry list of other
valuables, including an island in the Seychelles that he claimed to disdain —
and that she forgot about as her mind grew foggier. He says he accepted all
this only to make her happy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">For most of the book, Sancton
makes Banier sound like a pure social climber. But suddenly, near the end, he
begins to celebrate the man’s protean talents. Banier has appeared in films by
Eric Rohmer and Robert Bresson. He has written a number of novels and published
many photography books, though most were sponsored by L’Oréal. He was a skilled
celebrity photographer who knew everybody who was anybody, and is certainly
good at dropping their names. “Princess Caroline told me this is the most
beautiful house in the South of France,” he told Sancton, when the author
visited him in Provence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Sancton’s account leaves Banier in
2016, through with his ordeal and not too much the worse for wear. He was
sentenced to four years in prison, but got out of serving any time in a
follow-up judgment. He likes fame, though he insists otherwise. This book may
give him another shot at it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: #9a9a9a; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10.5pt;">A version of this review appears
in print on August 24, 2017, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the
headline: A Scandal Buffet For Aficionados. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10.5pt;">© 2017 The New York Times Company</span>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
To buy THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101984473?tag=randohouseinc37451-20">AMAZON</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bettencourt-affair-tom-sancton/1125098283;jsessionid=01E5F61250F2DB57F353EF1CF1CB0C1D.prodny_store02-atgap08?ean=9781101984475">BARNES & NOBLE</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101984475?aff=penguinrandom">INDIE BOUND</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10.5pt;"></span><br />
<div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<a href="http://www.octaviabooks.com/book/9781101984475">OCTAVIA BOOKS-NEW ORLEANS</a></div>
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-3556405451264481012017-08-12T07:56:00.000-07:002017-08-25T05:33:50.041-07:00NPR REVIEW OF THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sj8nBdvdoMk/WY8T_HpzJDI/AAAAAAAABXY/XBEsw5yP1IA7T4hGgUxksFDhX-y0bs3RACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-08-12%2Bat%2B4.37.16%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GlVAtT1RrYs/WY8UkfNSaDI/AAAAAAAABXg/u0G8_3KH1f03j50eO4W-MVUb3VuXCgESACLcBGAs/s1600/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></a>
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<i>One of my favorite reviews so far! NPR's Nina Martyris really did her homework and really "got" it. </i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i></i></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></b></i></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>A former Time Paris bureau chief, Tom Sancton is perfectly placed to document this extraordinary story and the haute Parisian power milieu in which it is embedded. </i></span></b></div>
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By Nina Martyris<br />
August 12, 2017<br />
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Liliane Bettencourt, the beautiful heiress to the L'Oréal cosmetics empire and richest <br />
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woman in the world, had everything. But she was also bored stiff. Enter François- Marie Banier, a handsome, talented, brazen, witty, gay novelist and photographer, an aesthete known to have a way with older women. <br />
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Emotionally and fiscally, their interests dovetailed: Banier opened up the stimulating art world to Bettencourt by escorting her to galleries, introducing her to his bohemian friends, reading aloud to her from Stendhal's Charterhouse, and being thrillingly irreverent in denouncing the giant Monet in her mansion as "hideous." Entranced, she lavished him with money and gifts, including paintings by Picasso and Matisse, apartments, and millions in life-insurance policies. For 25 years, Bettencourt played the generous Galatea to Banier's Pygmalion, with the total of her largesse teetering to an incredible one billion euros. <br />
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In 2007, Bettencourt's only child, her daughter Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, filed a criminal suit against Banier for abus de faiblesse (abuse of weakness), claiming that this "Rasputin" had ruthlessly exploited her then 84-year-old mother's oncoming dementia. Meyers, a quiet woman described by a friend as "an austere Carmelite nun," says her hand was forced when an eavesdropping chambermaid told her she had heard Banier asking to be adopted by Bettencourt. <br />
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The scandal, which electrified France for a decade, came to be known as the Bettencourt Affair. <br />
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The Bettencourt Affair is also the title of Tom Sancton's riveting page-turner chronicling this sweeping Tolstoyan saga. What started as a deeply personal mother- daughter drama spiraled into a colossal political scandal — L'Oréal is, after all, one of France's corporate crown jewels — that consumed and destroyed the presidency of "bling bling" Nicolas Sarkozy. In an unforeseen twist, secret tape recordings made by the Bettencourt butler – who hated Banier – revealed damaging conversations about illegal donations in the tens of thousands made by the Bettencourts to Sarkozy's campaign. As the scandal billowed and the Bettencourts' secret Swiss bank accounts and influence peddling came to light, detractors dug up the company's ugly past: how its founder, Bettencourt's father, had prospered under Nazi occupation, and how Bettencourt's husband André had authored several virulent anti-Semitic articles during the war.
As Sancton dryly observes, "There was no dye that could hide the family's dark roots." <br />
<br />
A former Time Paris bureau chief, Sancton is perfectly placed to document this extraordinary story and the haute Parisian power milieu in which it is embedded. In gripping but unsensational prose, he brings the debacle alive in its many dimensions, recreating not merely the lurid courtroom drama, but capturing "the ineffable sadness at its heart." He has an unerring journalistic eye for the telling vignette, evident in moments like Bettencourt happily showing off her tango footwork at a pastry salon in Buenos Aires, where she had travelled to visit an exhibition of Banier's work. Yes, she had bankrolled the exhibition, but in that carefree tango moment, she was a long way from the airless corporate world of L'Oreal. "I don't like blandness," she said in a rare interview. "I like salt." Banier was that salt. <br />
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Judiciously, Sancton doesn't take sides, restricting himself to perceptive observations about the Freudian motivations driving the dramatis personae of this family battle. Bettencourt comes across as a willful and lonely billionaire, but Sancton takes care to point out that profligate though her gift-giving might seem, she was, at least in the initial years of the friendship, hardly a batty old woman being preyed on by a sophisticated wolf. She had taken care to guard the family legacy by setting up a trust whereby her daughter and grandsons would receive almost all her L'Oréal stock upon her death. The rest of her money, she said fiercely, was hers to do with as she pleased. <br />
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Sancton describes Meyers as the awkward, studious, homebody daughter (she has written books on the Bible and Greek mythology) who has a frosty relationship with her mother and resents the dynamic interloper Banier. Of the three, she is the most inscrutable. Banier, whom Sancton interviews at length, is as brash and magnetic as "a character out of a Balzac novel." The child of an abusive father and utterly indifferent mother, he has spent his whole adult life forming deep and needy relationships with famous people like Salvador Dali, Vladimir Horowitz and Johnny Depp. <br />
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Today, Bettencourt, 94, is in the grips of Alzheimer's. Banier, found guilty, continues to work but is a "broken and wounded man." Meyers emerged victorious but faces serious charges of bribing a witness. In any case, as Sancton points out, years of mud-slinging, bitterness and airing of tawdry political secrets has ensured there are no winners. The Bettencourt affair has effectively made nonsense of the family's cherished motto, "live happy, live hidden."<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GlVAtT1RrYs/WY8UkfNSaDI/AAAAAAAABXg/u0G8_3KH1f03j50eO4W-MVUb3VuXCgESACLcBGAs/s1600/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="424" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GlVAtT1RrYs/WY8UkfNSaDI/AAAAAAAABXg/u0G8_3KH1f03j50eO4W-MVUb3VuXCgESACLcBGAs/s200/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
<div>
To buy:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101984473?tag=randohouseinc37451-20">AMAZON</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bettencourt-affair-tom-sancton/1125098283;jsessionid=01E5F61250F2DB57F353EF1CF1CB0C1D.prodny_store02-atgap08?ean=9781101984475">BARNES & NOBLE</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101984475?aff=penguinrandom">INDIE BOUND</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.octaviabooks.com/book/9781101984475">OCTAVIA BOOKS-NEW ORLEANS</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-39417857423174526302017-08-11T08:22:00.000-07:002017-08-11T08:22:45.260-07:00INTERVIEW ON PARIS-EXPAT.COMParis maven Terrance Gelenter recently interviewed me for his popular literary/cultural blog <a href="http://paris-expat.com/index.php/paris-books/interviews-authors/694-tom-sancton-the-bettencourt-affair?highlight=WyJ0b20iLCJ0b20ncyIsInNhbmN0b24iLCJ0b20gc2FuY3RvbiJd&utm_source=+August+11%2C+2017&utm_campaign=The+Paris+Interview%3A+Tom+Sancton%3A+The+Bettencourt+Affair&utm_medium=email">paris-expat.com</a>:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p> <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYVuNhBhpvI/WY3Br-aoRKI/AAAAAAAABVw/26PZkROrvZQSt2EsfvdDPqq3_YeMsjd9gCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/paris%2Binterview%2Bhearer.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYVuNhBhpvI/WY3Br-aoRKI/AAAAAAAABVw/26PZkROrvZQSt2EsfvdDPqq3_YeMsjd9gCK4BGAYYCw/s400/paris%2Binterview%2Bhearer.jpg" width="400" /></a></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TG:
Discuss the origins of L’Orèal and Eugene Schueller <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eugène Schueller at the helm of his yacht</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TS: Eugène Schueller, son of a baker and a domestic
servant, was kind of a Horatio Alger figure who transcended his humble roots to
attain a position of enormous wealth and power in France. Armed with a degree
in chemistry, in invented a synthetic hair dye that gave birth to L’Oréal in
1909. The company prospered, expanded overseas, and eventually became the
world’s number one cosmetics group. In addition to his brilliance as a chemist
and entrepreneur, though, Schueller nursed far-right political views and
financed one of the most notorious pro-fascist movements, La Cagoule, in the
1930s. He continued to support pro-German groups during Word War II, and actively
collaborated with the Nazi occupiers. His wealth and connections allowed him to
escape conviction in the post-war “épuration” trials, but as I document in my
book, Schueller was not just an economic collaborator but a political supporter
and informant of German security officials. After the war, he recruited a
number of French collaborators and Nazi sympathizers into the ranks of L’Oréal,
a fact that caused the company great embarrassment with it was revealed in the
1990s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TG:
What is the significance of L’Orèal and other marquee brands to France’s image
and economy? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tr1sqy4GKbc/WY3D2NVPI-I/AAAAAAAABWU/sTWrq6GLFD02vcnMSpmNugorKd-6ReeiwCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/LOREAL_0036958_ORI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tr1sqy4GKbc/WY3D2NVPI-I/AAAAAAAABWU/sTWrq6GLFD02vcnMSpmNugorKd-6ReeiwCK4BGAYYCw/s200/LOREAL_0036958_ORI.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TS: L’Oréal is considered a “fleuron” of French
industry—that is, a kind of flagship company that is </span><span style="font-family: "times";">important not just
economically but also in terms of national prestige. L’Oréal is not only a
major employer and tax contributor, but an emblem of France’s image as a fount
of luxury, elegance, refinement, and glamour. This is also true of the big
couture houses—YSL, Chanel, Dior, Cardin—and purveyors of luxury goods like
LVMH. But L’Oréal’s position as the world’s number one cosmetics firm gives it
an especially lofty status as a symbol of French prestige.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TG:
You explore several issues in your book that need to be explained to American
audiences.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">•
French political campaign financing and the way that politicians circumvent it<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">•
French inheritance laws and the legal system that applies-no trial by jury <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TS: French laws governing political financing are much
more restrictive than U.S. laws. In the U.S, the existence of PACs and the Citizens
United decision means, in effect, that there are no real limits on political
funding. This is why the U.S. has the most expensive political campaigns in the
world, and why major donors like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers have an
obscenely disproportionate weight in our electoral system. In France,
individual contributions to political campaigns are currently limited to €7,500
($8,800) per candidate per election, and companies are forbidden to make
political donations. To circumvent these limits, French parties and politicians
have historically resorted to a variety of illegal methods, including kickbacks
on public works contracts, channeling money through cutout companies, and
undeclared cash payments by donors like André Bettencourt. Bettencourt was a well-known
and much solicited source of illegal political financing, which explains why he
was given numerous cabinet positions over the years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">As for the French inheritance laws, they are still
rooted in the Napoleonic Code. French law requires parents to leave an
incompressible proportion of their estate to their children. In the case of an
only child like Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, that portion is 50%. The
remainder of the estate, known as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quotité
disponible, </i>may be left to anyone. In fact, Liliane Bettencourt had already
bequeathed 92% of her estate to her daughter in 1992, so there was no legal
barrier to her giving the rest to François-Marie Banier if she so chose. The
daughter’s legal challenge was not based on inheritance laws but on her claim
that Banier had taken advantage of Liliane’s declining mental powers. The suit
was tried before a panel of three judges, since jury trials are only used in
the case of violent crimes in France.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TG:
Discuss the young Liliane, her marriage to André Bettencourt, her relationship
with her daughter Françoise Bettencourt Myers and ultimately her relationship
with François-Marie Banier. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nsAAXnJ59Ks/WY3IyAb5dBI/AAAAAAAABXM/6fPhJVPpdzsY1ui6HHSLTsmKrDSqrToQwCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Liliane%252C%2BAndre%252C%2BFrancoise.%2B1988.getty.475760324.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nsAAXnJ59Ks/WY3IyAb5dBI/AAAAAAAABXM/6fPhJVPpdzsY1ui6HHSLTsmKrDSqrToQwCK4BGAYYCw/s320/Liliane%252C%2BAndre%252C%2BFrancoise.%2B1988.getty.475760324.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liliane, André, Françoise, 1988</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TS: Liliane’s mother died when she was five. She was
raised by her father, Eugène Schueller, whom she idolized almost to the point
of obsession. In 1950, she married André Bettencourt, scion of a respected
family from Normandy. Schueller had actively encouraged the marriage, but it
was far from a perfect match for Liliane. A closet homosexual, and a mediocre
man with no diplomas of any kind, André busied himself with a political career
funded by his wife’s money. Meanwhile, Liliane had a difficult relationship
with her introverted daughter, Françoise, more interested in her books and her
piano than the active social life Liliane wanted her to lead. For all her
wealth, Liliane was bored, lonely, and depressed. When Banier entered her life
in 1987, he opened the doors to a whole new, exciting world of art exhibits,
theater, museums, witty conversation, glittering company. She fell in love with
him—though it was a platonic affair given Banier’s sexual orientation and the
25-year age gap between them. As their relationship developed, she began to
shower him with artworks, cash, real estate, life insurance policies totaling,
on paper at least, nearly a billion euros. She justified all this as patronage
meant to fund Banier’s artistic career as a photographer, writer, and painter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">François-Marie Banier and Liliane Bettencourt </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Banier encouraged and accepted her extraordinary
largesse, but he also had a genuine affection for her. Theirs was a complex
relationship, but it would be mistake to reduce the whole thing to a cynical
manipulation by a self-serving gigolo. Did Banier take advantage of their
relationship for material gain? Undoubtedly. But I’m convinced that Liliane was
a willing and knowing benefactor. The amounts involved seem mind-boggling to
ordinary folk—myself included. But bear in mind that what she gave Banier was a
tiny fraction of her overall fortune, and a fraction of the company stock she
has already willed to her daughter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TG:
At the end of the day, although the alleged witness tampering by Françoise is
yet to be adjudicated, what is the impact of L’Affaire Bettencourt? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">TS: The scandal has definitely tarnished the image of
the Bettencourt family in public opinion. </span><span style="font-family: "times";">Before it erupted, the Bettencourts
lived discreetly, scrupulously avoiding the media spotlight. The suit launched
by Liliane’s daughter in 2007 suddenly exposed the whole family to the harsh
glare of public scrutiny. All the dirty laundry came out in the press—Liliane’s
father’s murky past as a suspected Nazi collaborator, L’Oréal’s postwar
infiltration by ex-Nazi sympathizers, André Bettencourt’s anti-Semitic wartime
articles, Liliane’s health problems and creeping dementia, Françoise’s jealousy
of Banier and resentment of her mother, secret Swiss bank accounts and tax
evasion schemes, and of course the torrent of L’Oréal dividends that Liliane showered
on Banier. Today, André is dead, Liliane lives in the fog of senility, and
Françoise is under investigation for allegedly bribing a witness. Not much
glory in all that for the once proud Bettencourts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">As for Banier, it is true that he will face no prison
time and, on appeal, managed to avoid a ruinous fine. But he must live with the
fact that he was found guilty in court of abusing the weakness of Liliane
Bettencourt—he is a convicted felon. The case poisoned ten years of his life,
cost him millions in legal fees, and gravely damaged his reputation. Today, 70
years old, he continues to work and enjoy a comfortable material life, thanks
to Liliane’s millions. But he is in many ways a wounded, disgraced, and broken
man. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RZ-ohcp253o/WY3HkpncrEI/AAAAAAAABW4/FmEiQ-3mrsAJlXCDWwdqQEku3UYKAsinQCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Nicolas%2BSarkozy.AFP.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="145" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RZ-ohcp253o/WY3HkpncrEI/AAAAAAAABW4/FmEiQ-3mrsAJlXCDWwdqQEku3UYKAsinQCK4BGAYYCw/s200/Nicolas%2BSarkozy.AFP.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ex-Presdent Nicolas Sarkozy</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Another victim of the Bettencourt Affair, at least
indirectly, is Nicolas Sarkozy. At one point, he was put under formal
investigation for allegedly accepting illegal campaign funds from the
Bettencourts. Though those charges were dropped, the former president remains
under investigation in a related case. Along with numerous other legal and
political embroilments, the Bettencourt Affair contributed to his failed
re-election bid in 2012 and his unsuccessful comeback attempt this year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">If there is a lesson in all this, perhaps it’s that we
should not envy the super-wealthy. Their riches often bring more problems than
they solve. This affair always reminds me of the opening line to Tolstoy’s Anna
Karenina: “All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way.”</span><span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">To buy the book:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bettencourt-Affair-Worlds-Richest-Scandal/dp/1101984473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502464722&sr=8-1&keywords=bettencourt+affair">Amazon</a></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.octaviabooks.com/book/9781101984475">Octavia Books</a><br />
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-44708058213972424012017-08-10T03:26:00.001-07:002017-08-10T03:26:55.898-07:00AMAZON NAMES BETTENCOURT AFFAIR #1 HISTORY PICK FOR AUGUST!<div>
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I never thought of myself as a historian, but I'll take it!<br />
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The Best History Books of August</h1>
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Chris Schluep</div>
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August 9, 2017</div>
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NUMBER 1</div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1101984473/ref=blogs_omni_link_20170809hiBOTMST" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; clear: left; color: #247bbd; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51SZCXll4PL._SY346_.jpg" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-height: 200px; max-width: 90%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a><div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Shop on Amazon<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1101984473/ref=blogs_omni_link_20170809hiBOTMST" style="border: 0px; color: #247bbd; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Print Book</a> | <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N8SL7FF/ref=blogs_omni_link_20170809hiBOTMST" style="border: 0px; color: #247bbd; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kindle Book</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1101984473/ref=blogs_omni_link_20170809hiBOTMST" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border: 0px; color: #247bbd; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"></a><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bettencourt Affair </em>could stand as fiction. But it's real. And this is not some faraway scandal from another time--it's a story and a trial that has kept the French public rapt. The affair involves 94-year-old Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the nearly forty-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune. She's the world’s richest woman and the fourteenth wealthiest person. And she has a past that involves an expensive infatuation with a man who is not her husband, a tangled web of hidden secrets, divided loyalties, frayed relationships, and fractured families. All set in Paris.</div>
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http://www.omnivoracious.com/2017/08/the-best-history-books-august-amazon-book-review.html?linkId=40783293</div>
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-7850834255556387772017-08-09T09:29:00.000-07:002017-08-09T09:29:20.071-07:00PRINCESS MEETS HEIRESS IN THIS PARADE.COM INTERVIEW<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NrgJKH26lUs/WYsyuzt0b4I/AAAAAAAABUs/O46Vy9msrCAtRCvZNIyoldhJdS0kZ-IYgCEwYBhgL/s1600/0405_Princess%2B2%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1068" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NrgJKH26lUs/WYsyuzt0b4I/AAAAAAAABUs/O46Vy9msrCAtRCvZNIyoldhJdS0kZ-IYgCEwYBhgL/s200/0405_Princess%2B2%2Bcopy.jpg" width="133" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">In Princess
Diana's Death and the Bettencourt Affair, Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction</span></span><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #c0504d; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;">By Becky Hughes</span></span></b></h3>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="color: #444444; font-size: x-small;">August 8, 2017</span></span></b></div>
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<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br />The Bettencourt affair may be one of the wildest high-society scandals of all time, but few Americans know it by name. Tom Sancton, author of new page-turner <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534585/the-bettencourt-affair-by-tom-sancton/9781101984475">The Bettencourt Affair</a> (Dutton), first broke the story in the U.S. for Vanity Fair in 2010, uncovering this Parisian intrigue involving Liliane Bettencourt, the world’s richest woman and heiress to the enormous L’Oréal fortune, and François-Marie Banier, a charismatic artist, and the legal battle that ensued after Banier received hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts from the aging heiress.</span><div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TpcCbmBR7zw/WYsy_f-R6kI/AAAAAAAABU0/m-MSgyn0onInx8iAJAC6Bx_XvQouS3CbACEwYBhgL/s1600/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TpcCbmBR7zw/WYsy_f-R6kI/AAAAAAAABU0/m-MSgyn0onInx8iAJAC6Bx_XvQouS3CbACEwYBhgL/s200/Bettencourt%2BAffair%2Bcover%2Bcopy.jpg" width="131" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">The Bettencourt Affair is not Sancton’s first foray into the world of celebrity scandal. After Princess Diana‘s tragic death in 1997, Sancton co-authored <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564187/death-of-a-princess-by-tom-sancton-and-scott-macleod/9781524742485">Death of a Princess</a>, a deep journalistic dive to find the true story behind the circumstances of Diana’s death. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fatal crash, Sancton and co-author Scott MacLeod have updated Death of a Princess with all the latest information on the tragedy and its effects on the royal family today.<br /><br />Parade caught up with Sancton to discuss the devastating loss of Princess Diana and the sensational story of the Bettencourt affair.<br /><br /><b>Twenty years after her death, what is Princess Diana’s legacy?</b><br /><br />She’s kept this amazing aura she had—the queen of hearts, this very special person who was beautiful and photogenic and cultivated the press, when it suited her, and was fascinating for a number of reasons. I think the fact that she died young under those circumstances has projected her into some kind of special status. People who die young, like John F. Kennedy and James Dean, we’ll always think of them as the exceptional, young, charismatic people that they were when they left us.<br /><br /><b>How has Diana’s death affected the royal family today?</b><br /><br />It was a terribly traumatic event. And the way that the royal family handled it, especially the queen, was very much criticized at the time. [The queen] didn’t really show, publicly anyway, the kind of grief and emotion and respect that people expected her to at the time, and I think she tried to make up for that, but it was an event that the royal family had a lot of trouble dealing with on many levels. It was certainly traumatic for the young princes, and for Prince Charles as well.<br /><br />It was an unexpected and devastating human event that exploded in the middle of this family. They’re human beings, but they’re much more than that. They’re symbols, they’re monarchs, they represent the state. But on the human level, they were very much affected, and to some extent destabilized by it.<br /><br /><b>There are so many rumors and conspiracy theories still out there today. What do you think really happened that night?</b><br /><br />Scott MacLeod and I examined every possible conspiracy theory that was written about or circulating on the internet or in any number of published books and articles. We came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a conspiracy. I think you can very easily explain, if you look at the circumstances, that a drugged and drunk driver, driving too fast to escape the pursuing paparazzi, just lost control of the car in the tunnel.<br /><br />It’s a traffic accident that took place under unusual circumstances—but, nonetheless, a traffic accident. You don’t have to look too far for an explanation when you look at the state the driver was in. In our book, we laid out many other scenarios, conspiracy scenarios, and analyzed them and pursued them as far as we could. Basically, at the end of the day, we didn’t really buy into any of them.<br /><br /><b>Has any new information come out since you first wrote the book?</b><br /><br />A lot has happened, because the book came out very quickly, just a few months after the accident. At that point the French investigation was still going on. And then it was followed by a very thorough British inquest. Both the French and the English concluded that there was no conspiracy. As far as the paparazzi goes, they were a contributing factor in the accident—but they were not held criminally responsible. In legal terms, the person held responsible was the driver who, unfortunately, was killed instantly in the accident.<br /><br />And then there were other things that came out in subsequent years. It appears from forensic evidence that there was a second car, presumed to be a Fiat Uno, considered by many to have collided with the Mercedes that was used to drive Dodi Fayed and Princess Diana. The French investigators looked at thousands and thousands of cars, and there was one Fiat Uno that appeared to have been in an accident, to have been repainted, that matched descriptions by certain eyewitnesses.<br /><br />And there were a number of different findings concerning different paparazzi who were in the tunnel or who were considered to have been part of that pursuit who were never actually apprehended or investigated, and so there was some speculation that some of them could have been involved in a conspiracy.<br /><br /><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Your new book, The Bettencourt Affair, is about a more recent French scandal involving the family behind L’Oréal. Can you explain it for people who are unfamiliar with the story?</b><br /><br />This legal case was an absolute obsession in France for years. What really got people’s attention was the characters involved—Liliane Bettencourt, the world’s richest woman, and this much younger, gay, kind of flamboyant, charming, boyish artist, François-Marie Banier, who received hundreds of millions of dollars from her over the years in gifts.<br /><br />Then Bettencourt’s daughter [Françoise] sued Banier for elder abuse. Françoise and her mother, Liliane, had a terrible relationship, and Francoise decided in 2007, after her father died, to launch this suit against Banier.<br /><br />Banier was not a household name by any means, but he had written three best-selling novels by the time he was 25. He was somebody who had had very close relationships with some very famous and accomplished, wealthy people, ranging from Salvador Dali to Vladimir Horowitz, Johnny Depp, dozens and dozens of very influential people. One of the intriguing things about the book and about his story is, who is this guy? How did he manage to charm and manipulate and fascinate so many important people?<br /><br /><b>You interviewed Banier in person. What did you learn about him? </b><br /><br />He’s self-interested, he’s very self-centered, he’s materialistic—there are sides of him that are not necessarily that admirable. But on the other hand, he is a fascinating conversationalist. He’s a workaholic, he goes out and does street photography every morning. In the afternoons, he works on his novels. He works 16, 18 hours a day.<br /><br />The thing that struck me most was how aggrieved he was at this whole thing. His take on it is, look, Liliane Bettencourt was lonely, she was bored, she was depressed, and I came along and opened the doors to this exciting worl<br /><br /> d of art galleries and auctions and travel and theater, and I introduced her to some fascinating people and saved her life.<br /><br />And she actually said this many times in writing, in letters to her lawyers. So Banier considers that his role was a very positive, almost altruistic role, and that it was normal that she gave him what she felt like giving him. If you total up what he got, it was just a tiny, tiny fraction of her fortune. She was in love with him, in a platonic way.<br /><br /><b>But Liliane and Banier are no longer in contact?</b><br /><br />In 2010, her lawyers and her family almost sequestered her away from him. Every time he tried to call her house or contact her, he’d be told by domestic servants that she wasn’t available, and finally he realized that he wouldn’t be able to see her anymore.<br /><br />And now Liliane’s daughter is under investigation for witness tampering. <br /><br />It would be a horrible irony, really, if the person who launched this whole legal battle wound up the final victim. This is the final act of this very complicated legal battle. What Françoise did, basically, was give 700,000 euros to her star witness, former accountant of the Bettencourt family.<br /><br />I think it’s very unlikely that she would be sent to jail, though that particular crime has a maximum three-year prison sentence and a 45,000-euro fine. The fine she could pay out of her pocket change, that’s no problem.<br /><br /><b>What do you want readers to take away from The Bettencourt Affair?</b><br /><br />The book is really a saga; it’s not just a legal battle. It’s about three generations of this very wealthy family and what’s become of them today. The lesson I come back to is very simple: Money doesn’t buy happiness. It’s not a guarantee of happiness, of personal success, or even invulnerability to things like this suit.</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22542221282592189.post-14379635601565260272017-08-08T08:20:00.000-07:002017-08-08T08:20:40.274-07:00DAY-ONE FOR THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR<br />
Today is the launch-date for <i>The Bettencourt Affair, </i>an exciting moment for me after two and a half years' work on the project. Pre-publication reviews have been positive, even enthusiastic, so I am optimistic about the book's life after birth. I am now in France casting about for a new book topic. I have a few ideas but have not settled on anything yet. It is not a choice to be taken lightly: researching and writing a book is a multi-year commitment. Erik Larson, one of my favorite nonfiction writers, says he spends two years on research and two years writing. That sounds about right, though I did Bettencourt in half that time and finished <i>Death of a Princess</i> in about eight weeks (granted I had a co-author, Scott MacLeod, but still). By those standards, four years sounds like a welcome luxury. Stay tuned...<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, I have been gratified by the attention a number of literary bloggers have given to my new book. One of them, Deborah Kalb, just published this Q&A today to mark the launch date. Enjoy:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cZm7PtoPDvE/WYnUCSOwCOI/AAAAAAAABUU/yVuFg3YLqRY53xvhKdyiRiWEa_vyp2gjgCEwYBhgL/s1600/2008263.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="301" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cZm7PtoPDvE/WYnUCSOwCOI/AAAAAAAABUU/yVuFg3YLqRY53xvhKdyiRiWEa_vyp2gjgCEwYBhgL/s200/2008263.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo © Sylvaine Sancton</td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><a href="http://tomsancton.com/"><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Tom Sancton</span></b></a></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> is the author of
the new book <a href="http://tomsancton.com/"><i><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The Bettencourt Affair: The World's
Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris</span></i></a>. His other books
include <a href="http://tomsancton.com/"><i><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Death of a Princess</span></i></a>
and <a href="http://tomsancton.com/"><i><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Song for My Fathers</span></i></a>. A
longtime Paris bureau chief for <i>Time</i> magazine, he also has written for
publications including <i>Fortune</i> and <i>Reader's Digest</i>. He is a
research professor at Tulane University.</span></b><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Q: You note that you've been intrigued by this story
since 2010. What first interested you about it, and at what point did you
realize you'd be writing a book about it?</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A: I spent the summer of 2010 in France, at a time
when the Bettencourt Affair exploded into the headlines. I became fascinated by
this story of the L’Oréal heiress and the fortune she gave to this photographer
and writer, Banier, whom I had never heard of at the time.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The daughter’s elder-abuse suit against Banier had
triggered a major legal battle whose repercussions went far beyond her original
intent, and eventually ensnared the then President Nicolas Sarkozy in what the
press was calling a “French Watergate.”</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When Liliane Bettencourt’s butler taped her secret
conversations with her financial advisers, the leaked recordings revealed a
Pandora’s box of secrets—illegal Swiss bank accounts, tax evasion schemes,
influence peddling by a French minister, the threat of a takeover of L’Oréal by
its Swiss minority shareholder Nestlé, and on and on.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Then there was the fascinating character of Banier,
this charming rogue of an artist who had written bestselling novels and
befriended the likes of Salvador Dalì, Johnny Depp, and Yves Saint Laurent
before linking up with Liliane.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I just said to myself, what a great yarn this is. I
proposed an article to Vanity Fair, which was published in the fall of 2010.
After that, I followed the mother-daughter legal battle from afar as it wended
its way through the courts.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When it finally went to trial in early 2015, my agent,
Katherine Flynn, suggested that I propose a book for the U.S. market. I thought
the subject might be too “French” for American readers, but Katherine’s
instincts were right on the money: she eventually had six publishers bidding on
it.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MUXSN1V4Mro/WYmwCxSDncI/AAAAAAAAXM4/2Yq93R3gQ0kWORiJGWjJ2NqX-FbMKMxWgCLcBGAs/s1600/9781101984475.jpg"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-no-proof: yes; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2"
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Q: How did you research the book, and was there
anything that particularly surprised you in the course of your research?</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A: The research was extensive and varied. There were
thousands of articles in the French press, and as of 2010 a half dozen French
books on the subject.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I delved into the French national archives for
documents on Eugène Schueller, Liliane’s father, and the founder of L’Oréal,
who had been investigated as a Nazi collaborator after World War II.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Thanks to his money and influence, Schueller escaped
conviction, but I found compromising documents showing he had actively
collaborated as an informant for the German security services.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I did more than 60 interviews with principals in the
case, their friends and associates, lawyers and judges, and fellow journalists
who covered the story.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">One of my greatest coups was getting my hands on the
entire investigative file, not a public source by any means, and thus gaining
access to literally thousands of depositions, documents, medical reports and
legal briefs related to the case.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Included in that trove was an extensive correspondence
between Liliane Bettencourt and François-Marie Banier, which gave me a
privileged insight into their unusual friendship.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Finally, I was able to do extensive interviews with
Banier and his close friends, which allowed me to see the “human face,” so to
speak, of the multi-faceted character that many simply dismissed as a
blood-sucking exploiter. There were many surprises along the way, but I was
particularly struck by the complexity of Liliane’s relationship with Banier.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Q: How would you describe Liliane Bettencourt, and how
would you characterize her relationships with her protege, Banier, and her
daughter, Francoise?</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A: Liliane was a woman whose childhood was shaped by her
mother’s death when she was five, and by the domination of her father, whom she
adored and admired to the point of obsession.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">At her father’s urging, she married a man she didn’t
love, André Bettencourt, a closet homosexual who devoted himself to a political
career funded by Liliane’s money.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">She had a fraught relationship with her only child,
Françoise, a timid introvert more interested in her books and her piano than in
the active social life Liliane wanted her to pursue.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As Liliane advanced in age, she was increasingly
lonely, unfulfilled, and depressed—until she met François-Marie Banier.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This exuberant and seductive artist opened the doors
onto a whole new life, charming her with his witty conversation, taking her to
art galleries, museums, the theater, introducing her to all kinds of
interesting people she never encountered in her conventional bourgeois world.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Liliane was smitten by him and by the exciting life he
offered her. She showed her gratitude by showering money on him—always
presented in terms of patronage to further his artistic career. There was
apparently no physical intimacy between them—given Banier’s homosexuality and
the 25-year age gap between them—but I would call their relationship a platonic
love affair.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Those who imagined that Banier was just a cynical
gigolo pumping money out of a batty old dame understand nothing about the
relationship. He was hardly devoid of greed and self-interest, but he also had
a genuine affection for Liliane.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">To some extent she was a replacement for his own
mother, who had neglected and mistreated him as a child. As I said, it was a
complicated relationship—but fascinating.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Q: What impact has this saga had on France?</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A: It certainly tarnished the image of the
Bettencourts. Before the affair erupted, they lived discreetly and avoided
publicity. The lawsuit exposed all their dirty laundry to the harsh glare of
public opinion—Schueller’s collaboration, André’s wartime anti-Semitic
articles, the family’s tax-evasion schemes, the illegal political payments,
Liliane’s declining physical and mental health, Françoise’s blind jealousy of
her mother.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And let’s not forget that Françoise herself is now
under investigation for witness tampering. Not much glory in that for the
once-proud Bettencourts.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The case also affected the political fortunes of
Nicolas Sarkozy, whose 2012 re-election bid was compromised by the Bettencourt
Affair and other legal embroilments.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Interestingly, though, the affair had no effect on
L’Oréal’s fortunes, despite the negative publicity and the fears of a Swiss
takeover. The company continued to post double-digit growth in spite of the
10-year legal battle that threatened to tear apart the founding family.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Q: What are you working on now?</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A: I’m still casting around for the subject of my next
book. I suspect it will be based on another scandalous French “affair.” French,
because I live in France now and have spend most of my adult life
here—including more than 10 years as a TIME correspondent. And the French are
so good at producing scandals.</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> I am currently delving into a long-unsolved
murder case, but I’d rather not say too much about the subject until I decide
whether or not to pursue it. Stay tuned…</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Q: Anything else we should know?</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 45.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A: Yes. I’m also a jazz clarinetist. But doing this
book was so much fun that I plan to spend more time writing than playing music
in the foreseeable future. </span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">--Interview with Deborah Kalb</span></b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="https://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.fr/2017/08/q-with-tom-sancton.html">8:37 AM</a>. </span></span></div>
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Tom Sanctonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02395391473598198626noreply@blogger.com0