A thousand years of Anglo-French antagonism made counterattack inevitable. “Mrs. Cresson has sought to insult the virility of the British male because the last time she was in London she did not get enough admiring glances,” said Anthony Marlow, a Tory member of the House of Commons. “I wanted to put down a motion saying, ‘This House does not fancy elderly Frenchwomen,’ but I was told this was out of order.” The Sun was rude, too. In an editorial on Cresson’s charge, it said, “That’s a bit rich coming from the leader of a nation where most men carry handbags and kiss each other in public. They don’t call Paris ‘Gay Paree’ for nothing.” The Daily Telegraph made the case in a more demure way: “We [cannot] explain what leads her to think that in the land of Proust, Gide, Verlaine, Cocteau…the love that dares not speak its name is uncommon.”
Cresson was hardly unmanned. She said she did not recall giving “this so-called interview that came out of a drawer.” In any case, said Cresson, publishing it was “not fair play.” At the time she had left one job as minister of external trade and not taken up her next official post as minister of European affairs. “If this conversation took place,” she said, “I was not only not prime minister, I was not even in the government.” But Cresson added defiantly that British men “surely are more reserved towards women than Frenchmen” - though she conceded that “it’s difficult to produce a statistic” on comparative homosexuality. (Evidence suggests that about 10 percent of any country’s men are homosexual.)
Look up the word controverse - controversy - in the French dictionary and you may soon find Cresson’s picture. President Francois Mitterrand named her prime minister barely a month ago to shake up his Socialist Party and invigorate the economy. Within days Cresson accused Japan of seeking world economic domination. Japanese reaction was so intense that police stepped up security at the offices of French companies in Tokyo. Spokespersons insist Mitterrand does not regret elevating Cresson, although a widely watched Muppet-like satirical TV show has begun caricaturing her as a slavish and sexmad domestic pet. She allegedly told Attallah that “women have exactly the same sexual appetites as men [and] also can have passing affairs in the same way.” Just so, a British reader wrote to the Telegraph. He recalled a Frenchwoman who dallied with both Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington and said later that Monsieur le duc was much more vigorous. Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but there’s no level to which the French and British won’t stoop to continue the battle.
