On Friday morning, I woke up as my usual French self. Then, from under the duvet, I reached for my smartphone and learned from Twitter that the French edition of Closer magazine had published pictures purportedly revealing an affair between President Francois Hollande and actress Julie Gayet. There had been rumors for months, as there inevitably are in the higher echelons of power. Gossip is like the background noise of a Parisian cafe: the little music of our lives, familiar and inconsequential.
At 7:18 a.m., an angry Hollande made a statement to the AFP news agency deploring the attack on his privacy and declaring he might seek legal action. Good for him, I thought. His office stressed that this was the citizen, not the president, speaking.
End of story. I shrugged my shoulders and thought little more about it, much more concerned by the legal wrangles of French Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who was trying to ban the comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala from performing his anti-Semitic routine in theaters and clubs around France.