ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: Excellence
by Maurice Ulrich’s Daily Ticket
Translated Wednesday 21 October 2009, by Isabelle Métral
and reviewed by
Somebody had to think of it. And a jury did so. Rachida Dati inaugurated yesterday, at the Musée Grévin [1], the statue of Rachida Dati.
Her entry in the pantheon of wax was voted unanimously by a jury of television show hosts and journalists, on which one swears one will never serve, and which retains two criteria: popularity and excellence.
Presided over by Bernard Pivot, perhaps not in the best of shape, it decided to celebrate a "media icon" and "a symbol of political diversity". "Ready to help, and determined, Rachida Dati is resolutely an emblematic figure on the new French political scene. She wins the respect of her peers thanks to her combative and audacious spirit." One senses a confusion between wax figures and waxing high shoes.
The portrait is nevertheless a bit out of phase with the souvenir she left behind her in the world of the judiciary.
Or the souvenirs she left with her closest collaborators, who quit, one after another. It’s true that in the museum, no one will refuse her company.
But after all, other wax figures are already in place. Nicolas Sarkozy, and soon his son Jean, the genius of the Hauts-de-Seine? "There’s always the same journalistic tradition in the choice of entries," explains Bernard Pivot. "We never take ourselves seriously. We’re not the Nobel Prize jury." Ah then, it was meant to be a joke — we’d guessed as much! And Rachida Dati fell for it, in her naive way.
[1] the wax museum in Paris