Some are scandalised that Brigitte Macron was seen to slap her husband in the face as they prepared to disembark from the presidential Airbus, Cotam Unité, in Hanoi this week. Unité? Not so much. The Elysée is asking us to ignore the evidence and pretend it didn’t happen. Still others may say, someone had to.
The slap was seen around the world or was it a shove, a roundhouse punch or just horsing around, disinformation spread by crazy people, as the president himself claims? The detail hardly matters.
Denial notwithstanding, we saw what we saw and lovie-dovey it wasn’t. So what does it tell us about the relationship between the president and his wife, his former drama teacher, who is old enough to be his mother? Cherchez la femme is a rule of thumb in examining the lives of famous men.
One should never advocate an act of violence against anyone but there are many in France who think that Macron had it coming, as his presidency sputters into its final chapters.
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