Marry me Sarkozy, says Chinese star

Nicolas Sarkozy did not just bring back billions of euros of contracts from his state visit to China. He also received a proposal of marriage. Namu, a well-known Chinese writer and singer, delivered her declaration of longstanding love for the recently divorced Sarko on a video that made the French media this morning.

"I want to say to the President of France: 'Choose me. I will be a perfect wife for you and I will love you like the way I love, my love'," she says. (The video here has French voicing over English and Chinese, but you can pick up enough of the English to get the idea).

"I know that he had a wife who did not help him at all. I think that I suit him much better," she says. "In diplomatic affairs, the wife is important. I find that he especially needs a girl like me to accompany him, who can bring him romance and sing and dance for him," explans Namu.

The 41-year-old singer, who has turned into a writer and television personality in China, also loves Sarko's skin and is "certain that he must be a great kisser", according to the French translation.    

Namu, whose full name is Yang Erche Namu comes from the region neighbouring Tibet. She is enitled to make the marriage proposal because she is of  the Himalayan Mosuo minority, a matriarchal and matrilinear people.  She wrote about them in a 2004 US-published book that reached the New York Times best-seller list: Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World.

Here's the book's description of "the place the Chinese call 'the country of daughters'...a society in which women rule men."

According to local tradition, marriage is considered a foreign practice; property is passed from mother to daughter; a matriarch oversees each family's customs, rituals, and economies. In this culture a young girl enjoys extraordinary freedoms—but the impulsive, restless Namu is driven to leave her mother's house, to venture out into the larger world, defying the tradition that holds Mosuo culture together.

The video has disappeared from the French Dailymotion site, so perhaps Sarko's people are not pleased by Namu's offer and her suggestion that "the private life of the French president needs innovation."

It is interesting to note that one of the smart moves that Sarko made on his trip to China was to take along Andrée, 81-year-old mother. After he presented Andrée to President Hu Jintao and he gave her a shawl, Chinese officials told the media that Sarko must be a good man, taking such care of his mother.

Since then, Nicolas Canteloup has a new running gag, in which Sarko is constantly interrupted by his mother asking if he's done his homework, cleaned his teeth and so on.   

Sarko did not meet Namu on the visit.

   

Comments

[eygh]

OK, Terry wants to marry Rachida and Namu just made a proposal to Nicolas.

What is this, get a French-in-office spouse week on the Net ?

[azloon]

i can imagine sarko doing a 'motorboat' between namu's magnificent breasts. perhaps, he can negotiate some sort of relationship short of marriage, with his mother acting as his agent.

[azloon]

p.s. i just noticed the book titled 'cigars' behind namu. is this woman as monica lewinsky wannabe?

[Daisy]

There is just no accounting for taste.

[Marguerite.]

Elle est bien votre video!
C'est une blague ou pas ?

[Lily]

Namu - l'amour (lol)

Sarko should seriously consider the option!

Together with Namu (i.e. China) he could form a real matriarchal super power that would leave Anglo-Saxony in agony...

From haremony through matrimony towards matriarchy.

Obstacle/objection: Option incompatible with banlieues!

[Bertrand T]

Marguerite asks if this is a joke. No it's not. It's what we have to get used to in France with our all singing all dancing Sarko

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Today's Times Literary Supplement quotes Nicholas Sakozy's promise on the day he became Mayor of Neuilly at the age of 28:
"Je les tous niques"
I translate this as:
"I'll SCREW THEM ALL!"
Go for it, Nicky: make old Chirac look like a celibate choir boy!!

[azloon]

CB -- nice try with this post.

it's left most regulars speechless (an accomplishment in itself).

i have more than a little experice with chinese women and this one's a doozy.

interesting that this daughter of a grand matriarchal tradition would throw herself at sarko with promises of being more subservient and pliable than ceci.

my experience tells me this woman may want nothing more that an exit visa.
[Maybe, Azloon, but she is a US citizen -- from a marriage with one of your compatriots. CB]

[Joan B]

This lady is obviously quite a number. We hear that Sarko has hooked up with Laurence Ferrari -- a pretty TV journalist. Who knows, but it's always fun to gossip about the king's favourites

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

A thought has just occurred to me:
NIQUE SARKOZY
(See above) Sorry I could not put the accent on lower-case "e".

[azloon]

CB --

re Namu's american passport

OMG, she was probably shopping herself on the same website that i used to peruse from time to time. it could have been me she deserted to pursue the french president (if i may be allowed a bit of grandiosity).

i did meet someone, very simpatico, and had a great holiday on tibetan plateau and at the panda reserve, and now have a friend in vancouver (she ended up marrying a candadian), but without having to sign up as someone's meal ticket for an unspecified period of time.

as for Namu, she has apparently gone the typical route, i.e. get your permanent u.s. visa by marrying an american, play the game for the requisite period time, then move on to bigger and better things. Namu should certainly get a prize for grandest ambition by a female chinese 'gold digger.' don't EVER say these folks don't think BIG.

for any interested men, be aware there are approximately 400 million chinese women who would like to marry you, no questions asked.

:)

[Blendi Progri]

Peter Kinsley` s translation of Sarko The Irresistible points out to a guy going places in life. LOL

I Think no one can accuse Sarko of lacking ambition even at an early age.

A more realistic line though, comes from Errol Flynn.

He was drinking with a friend outside on a nice day,with so many beautiful women passing by, then he suddenly starts to cry:

Why are you crying? – his friend asks.

I can` t have them all! Flynn replies.

[Daniel Strohl]

Peter,

"Je les tous niques" -

If one adds the accent (no problem with my AZERTY keyboard), one gets : "Je les tous niqués".

However, a grammar error has slipped in the transcription of the "Times LITERARY Supplement". In fact,

one should say : "Je les ai tous niqués" - i.e. I have screwed them all"

- or : "Je les nique tous" - I shall screw them all" or "I am in the process to screw them all"

No decent Frenchman, even of foreign descent (2.nd generation) would make a grammar error in a sentence like this one.

Basing on my remembrance of "analyse grammaticale" we practiced at school, I would say that the first corrected version would apply if the sentence had been uttered AFTER his election as mayor of Neuilly.

Conversely, the second version would apply if it had been pronounced DURING the election.

PS : the funny side of the quote is that the verb "niquer" is mostly used in the banlieues - well, Neuilly is also a banlieue, mais une banlieue chic! May be Sarko had already a premonition at the time ...

Azloon,

"it's left most regulars speechless (an accomplishment in itself)"

Yeah, but not all of them ...

[Dominique]

By the way, to our british friends,

I heard that some british teacher was under arrest in Sudan for blasphemy.

Do you need an Airbus and a french president to go and take her back? we would be very pleased to lend you one!

He said one day that every suffering woman in the world was french (!!!). Maybe, they could even get married.

[Dominique]

For those of you who understand french spocken by an english speaking stewardess arriving in Toulouse!

http://tinyurl.com/2sazya

[christopher muir]

I had never heard of Namu. Now I know her name and some details about her life. That means that her publicity-seeking actions are on the way to making her into yet another extremely wealthy international celebrity - she hopes.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Azloon : thanks
Daniel: Mea culpa. The Times Literary Supplement, out now, correctly prints: "Je les ai tous niques" with accent on the e. Monsieur Nique Sarkozy (my name for The Boss) said this on b e c o m i n g Mayor of Neuilly, at 28 and the article about him is by Sushir Hazareesingh who writes: "A desire to screw them all has since become a trademark of this hyperactive, pugnacious and tormented politician."
Blendi: Re. Errol Flynn, a friend of his told me in the steam room in Rome: "That s.o.b! I went drinking with him and when I woke up I was an inmate in a male brothel in Macau."
He never did find out how much Flynn had got for him,but David Niven who shared a house, named "Cirrhosis by the Sea" with Flynn, having been thrown from his yacht and having to swim half a mile to shore, said: "I like Errol. You always know where you are with him. He will always let you down."

[Daniel Strohl]

Dot King,

"I don't believe Sarko invented it - it smacks too strongly of Gaino."

I believe that Sarkozy is perfectly capable of "inventing" the word "voyoucratie" - he is a lawyer, and I think also a good one. As some of us may have noticed already on this blog, these gentlemen are most of the time very fast minded and witty and do not usually need external assistance to find their words ...

Of course, a president does not have the time to write his speeches - it is Gaino's job. But Gaino (spelled Guaino, if I believe Google) does not speak at TV in behalf of Sarkozy. Yesterday evening, the president himself made a very good job. The general tonality « en filigrane » (in watermark ?) was « no cure, no pay » - this is refreshingly new for a French president.
(MARRY ME, SAYS CHINESE STAR 30.11.2007)

Peter,

« Mea culpa » - Errare humanum est ...

The French accents are indeed annoying when one is using a QWERTY keyboard. However, there are solutions.

The first which comes to mind (if one uses a word processor to compose the post prior to transferring it into the blog) is to go to the menu « Insertion », and then click on « Special characters » - there one finds in a table all possible special characters, for instance the German character ß, which is not available either in the QWERTY nor in the AZERTY keyboard.

Hereafter a few special characters typed with this method : è é ê ç

Another possibilty (which may be applied directly in the blog software) is to strike the key ALT, keep it activated and then type 2 or 3 numerals – for instance, to get the character !, one should type ALT33. This is a bit faster than the first method, provided one knows by heart the codes (the relevant code for the selected character appears in brackets in the lower right corner of the above mentioned table). I hope that the above is about understandable ...

[June]

She an artist? Sounds more like a prostitute to me. She's a disgrace to all Asian women and certainly doesn't represent them. And of all people...Sarkozy? Doesn't she know about his murderous past and present day crimes on humanity? Obviously not a woman of any intelligence or class.

[June]

She seems more like a prostitute than an artist. Namu is a disgrace to all Asian woman with intelligence. And Sarkozy of all people...does she not know of his murderous past and present day crimes on humanity (Africa's children being killed or organs). Don't believe it? Do the research.

[dot king]

Daniel: you are an incorrigible Sarkozist!:) I watched him for a little while last night, flicked to Canal where there was Joeystarr who inspires me with the same . . . je ne sais quoi . . . as Sarkozy.
BTW (assuming you don't care for Joeystarr either) his initial group was called "Nique ta Mère" - so they're obviously two souls fashioned from the same clay.(Teehee) You're quite right about the Guaino spelling, mea culpa également.
Azloon, please help me extend my American - what's exactly is a "doozy"?
Dominique: great clip, she's been taking (or maybe giving) lessons from (to) Fred of SAV, all it lacked was "vérifiez les toboggans"!

[azloon]

Dee --

doozy, or doozie= 'piece of work' (another americanism, perhaps british too) or more clearly:

"doo·zy or doo·zie (dz)
n. pl. doo·zies Slang

Something extraordinary or bizarre: "

[dot king]

June: "She seems more like a prostitute than an artist. Namu is a disgrace to all Asian woman with intelligence"

also a disgrace to any self-respecting prostitute

Azloon: "doozy" thanks - very clear now - don't think it's british, at least not come across it before,
will now try to work it into a coversation, see how it goes :)

[Blendi Progri]

Lol @ Peter K. Errol was quite a character.
I read D. Niven was an amazing story teller and a great guy.

... the stars of today don`t compare well with the ones of yester-year; the stories and adventures they had sound much better than anything we hear today from Tom, Brad... or the others.

[Daniel Strohl]

Dot King,

"Daniel: you are an incorrigible Sarkozist!:)

Yes, perfectly true ! But I am however not interested in Joeystarr, since I heard a long time ago that he is very brutal with ladies (or may be I mix him up with somebody else - the type of "music" these guys "play" n'est pas ma tasse de thé).

June,

"Doesn't she know about his murderous past"

??

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Blendi: Flynn used to carry a very smart steel box with "Errol Flynn Enterprises" stencilled on the side. When he opened it it had rows of miniatures: vodka, whisky, green and yellow chartreuse, cognac, gin, etc., like a little cocktail bar!
Right on about today's stars: where are Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson?
How do you imitate Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Robert Redford?

[Blendi]

I agree Peter, maybe it was the time (most of the men been in the war) upbringing and few other factors that made these guys real men and full of character, certainly memorable folks!
Lack of Real Star quality today seem most noticeable on the women.
When Howard Hughes was relentlessly pursuing Ava Gardner and she wasn’t giving in to his demands, one day he asked: What do you want, anything for you.
` Down to earth` Ava replied: I want lemon ice-cream!
The trouble was that only Little Italy on New York made this, and they were on Los Angeles. Of course he sent a plane and got it for her.

I can not imagine any of today` s famous girls getting away with lines like this. Lol.

Nowadays actors are called legends only because they show up to work.

Always I like stories about past stars, one could rely on them for entertainment in movie theatres and outside it. So much so, that even exaggerations weren’t that unbelievable at times.

Peter, found your website yesterday (lucky that today was Saturday, and read till late at night) your anecdotes are extr. funny. Have some more to read about famous personages, lol, the story about your drunken colleague that left his wife (that drove to collect him from office and stopped for a call of nature at midnight) still makes me smile.

Others maybe have seen your website earlier ( who hasn’t wont regret it if they pay a visit – it must come with a warning, LOL as Peter had a very interesting life, full of amazing encounters and with very funny real life stories) but I just seen it yesterday for the first time.
I have to say Peter you have one more fan on this side of the monitor. ;)

When CB, or everyone who writes in this blog, includes a real life story, a memory or simply something about themselves, it makes all of us - I think - feel less ` virtual ` and more Real. I love little snippets and everything that illustrates a good conversation. Most of us do.

To all you guys, have a great w/end!

[azloon]

[When CB, or everyone who writes in this blog, includes a real life story, a memory or simply something about themselves, it makes all of us - I think - feel less ` virtual ` and more Real.]

exactly, Blendi

and it shouldn't be threatening since one may remain anonymous if they wish.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Blendi: try www.gentlemenranters.com for classic Journalists' off-beat stories. Pity is, a lot of their books are out of print, including my own memoirs, which takes its title from: Old Saying of American journalists: Don't Tell My Mother I'm a Newspaperman (tell her I play piano in a whore house), and with quote from Old British Journalists:
Ring a ring a roses
coronary thrombosis
seizure, seizure,
We'll all drop dead!

[azloon]

FYI for english speakers and the numerous european/french bloggers who are fluent in english, a interesting development in this era of reduced funding for schools:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/underfunded_schools_forced_to_cut

(the french may want to try someting similar, particularly in the banlieues where it probably won't make much difference anyway.

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

Blendi: When Ava Gardner fired her secretry, in Rome, he came to work for me a for a while. David Hannah had been a pinch-hitter for Herb Stein and was a tipster for Louella Parsons in Hollywood** and wrote a book about Ava to pay her back for almost turning him into an alcoholic (she made him drink all night with her as she could not sleep). Sinatra never got over her ditching him, but she did pay him a compliment. Scornful (and no doubt jealous; she was a great beauty) Pressmen asked her, when the affair started: "Why do you go out with that little shrimp? He only weighs a hundred and ten pounds. "Sure, fellers, I know. But ten pounds of that is cock."
** She preferred Rome, Madrid and London to Hollywood. As Antonioni said: "When you are there, you feel you are nowhere, talking to no-one, about nothing."

[Blendi]

Ava left some memorable anecdotes and the last one from you Peter shows that she gave as good as she got ;)

Many thanks for the other website link- gentlemenranters- really enjoyed it. Especially the part titled Dr. Syntax, where one can see the difficulties faced by journalists, newspaper editors, subs and proofreaders; as they haven’t got enough problems they have to be aware of so many words that can spoil an article ( i.e. therapy, manslaughter etc) it was educational also. Liked the part about the complains the editors have to put up with, as everyone writing in thinks they know everything. One is entertained and at the same time learns quite a lot on that site- without realising it.

Peter, my dad was very pedantic about the language, semantics and syntax (he used to say : if you write how you talk it looks vulgar, and if you talk how you write it sounds pompous ) typing mistakes, or any mistake concerning not just morphology but everything, including presentation, spelling mistakes etc.
People who write in a second language are most of the time self-aware that if they aren’t making a simple typing mistake, then some structural blunder can slip unnoticed.

Any link you`ll send will be thoroughly checked, only please make sure you sends them during w/ends, lol, so I can keep intact my sleeping quota during w/days.

[He had no dislike of people. He just thought of conflict as a manly pastime.]

[He was, I gathered, a former major in a combative unit, and I had a horror of those. I had been in 6 Airiborne Division, not because I was combative in any way, but because I thought I needed to be surrounded by competent fighters in case I was threatened. My insignificant role in 6 Airborne pleased him no end, but he was cautious.]

[I was quickly told that when, as deputy editor, he asked for a wage increase which did not come, he picked up the editor and held him out of a second floor window. The rise duly appeared. I stayed well away from windows in his presence.]

The above are among descriptions from a young journalist about his tough Editor.
Peter, is hard to read on site like this and keep a straight face.

Azloon your link is very entertaining, and certainly if someone stumbles at The Onion without warning, it may take a while to realise that this is ` for real` ;)

The Times few years back recommended The Onion and since then it has been in my Favourite folder, generally I look at it once a month. One article that brings tears of laughter was about the prostitutes in Chicago during winter, very deadpan and although some pieces sound like student humour, others are really cleverly presented. Now they are even publishing videos and pod-casts and maybe are in danger of becoming the same thing as those they are mocking. But success has a price always.

Take a look at this link:

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/ maybe you know it already, its about Steve Jobs.
------------------
-------

Now to relate to the OP, I think Sarko needs a wife, not this gal from China though.

If anyone needs a wife in this planet – it is Him. A good, presentable, down-to-earth wife.

But not someone that he`ll continually devote time to impress, just a `normal ` woman ( not from the media, government, or any other famous face) and with her feet firmly on the ground.

Getting back with Cecile- shows that basically, deep down he`s a good guy, willing to give family life a chance. It`s was another thing that her motives were a bit dubious. She wanted to treat him with contempt and it was a tad painful to watch. It was calculated to hurt. It will take sometime for N. Sarkozy to fully recover.
As she displayed her disdain privately and in public for all to stare at, Sarko failed into a trap that many men fail to see it coming, mainly trying to impress a scorned woman.

Here`s a lesson for all of us, it is impossible- you cant, if a woman isn`t impressed by the President of France then there`s little anyone can do in a similar situation.
Once you get apart, don’t try to get together, ever again!
Despite his tough exterior –Sarko- is a sentimentalist and in my book one of the good guys.

He may need to visit some hospitals and schools in order to find what he needs, a teacher or a nurse, a stable lady who won`t wake up thinking what time is my next photo-shoot, or where to plant the next intrigue; she`ll be ready to care for him, will stay in the background and make Sarko`s life a bit more relaxing.
Poor guy, by now he longs for a break – all his life running around, he /needs/deserves a secure family life and on the other hand has an attraction towards the opposite, confusing; one day he may be lucky, as only a good woman can make him complete.

It will be for the good of France too. A woman on his arm will make him look more pleasant (this is the 2-nd reason) and then he will be your average President on numerous world summits. The 3-rd reason will be that, it will stop any attention seeker, be it from China or Russia, from pretending to fill a vacancy and marry the President of France. There are other reasons too, but can`t possibly inlude `em all… ;)

[badaude]

funny - I've been dreaming about Sarko too (involutarily). He certainly seems to exert a strange fascination. See www.badaude.typepad.com

[Gao]

Oh She is such a joke!
I actually think she is far worse than Fu Rong Jiejie.

[azloon]

Blendi --

you probably realize that the onion started as the campus humor magazine at the university of wisconsin in madison. it evolved, as did the harvard lampoon, the harvard humor paper, into a national publication, and now is what it is, with professional staff. (the harvard lampoon split off the national lampoon while the harvard lampoon continues as an amatuer operation. the national lampoon, which has a magazine, produced a number of buffoonish comdedy movies such as animal house with john belushi.

my mother was the pedant in my family, endlessly correcting my use of the future conditional tense, subjects and objects, 'i' and 'me,' centered 'on,' not 'around,' nauseous and nauseated, and so much more i have no doubt repressed. my father was a journalist and a good writer, but he never forced his knowledge on us. i guess he knew his wife was more than adequate to the task of producing something resembling literacy in his three sons. :)

[San Yin]

Sarko would do France a great service by marrying the Chinese woman. Just think of the billions and billions in trade that would result between France and China!

[delia]

it sounds stupid,really.

[James]

Sarko should consider the offer, she is famous and she is interested in him. She is beautiful and used to all the attention, I think she would make a good accompany. At least he should go out with her before he turning her down. It is good for the image, and good for his bachelor and lonely life. Chinese women are much different that European and American women, they treat their men like caring for an egg.

[blendi]

Azloon
Its great that many funny sites originate from students, it shows their humour, anarchic streak and their tendency to laugh at anyone and everything. What these guys lampoon Today – it may seem hilariously silly, but it’s a great precursor for tomorrow’s writers and opinion formers. What`s life without irony? Also they expose in their movies and in writing that only boring people take life extremely seriously.

As for the grammar rules, (I think at times is hereditary) I always try to make sure that my kids have some basic rules when they write, my six year old runs around the house proclaiming loudly (mocking me) ` careful how you spell a word, presentation is important, leave space, open a new paragraph, we need one more comma in here.`

Sometimes, I think it takes self-discipline not to reflect some amount of resentment when one receives e-mails of the type: hey dude, hows ya?. I speak only for myself, of course. On the other hand you see that you are not alone trying to preserve some kind of harmony of the written word.

Not long ago an English journalist Lynne Truss (she contributes to The Times and S. Times) wrote a book called `Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation` then no one thought that such a book may become a bestseller, yet it did. It wasn’t that her tone was didactic and people went to buy the book simply to learn the rules; but the way she wrote, with simplicity and her sense of humor made her work more endearing to the public. You may have heard about this book. Some folks took issue and started to challenge, criticize etc ( there are people who always do) for me a very important point was illustrated, mainly that so Many people cared about language, its presentation and the way it works.

[dot king]

A friend of mine who organises conferences around the world on linguistics and language teaching asked me yesterday whether in French there is an order in which you should use adjectives if you have a list of them in a sentence, discounting the fact that some precede and others follow the noun, and that some adjectives change meaning depending on where you place them - eg "un vieux copain" is different from "un copain vieux".
I had never heard of rule this applied to either French or English, but it seems that some languages do apply an express grammatical rule on adjective order.
It is true that we would say "a big, round, yellow ball" rather than " a round, yellow, big, ball" - our instinct tells us the first is right and the second, whilst not being wrong, is "less right". Buddy Holly sang of "a brown-eyed handsome man", but he could equally have sung of "a handsome, brown-eyed man". If we wanted to add "tall" to our description, then we would quite instinctively put it at the beginning of the list rather than: "a handsome, tall, brown-eyed man" or "a brown-eyed, handsome, tall man".
Riveting stuff, non?
Any comments, or has that knocked the discussion on the head? ;)

[Valentin]

lol I say it's about the fluidity of the phrase, and maybe adjectives' length !

(but then I'm no experte linguiste, and arrogance is my only erudition :)

[dot king]

"arrogance is my only erudition :)" Valentin, well, who else?
Ye Gods!