Nick and Tom

Visitors to this blog that might be worried that, with all the McGreevances, I had stopped covering Nicholas Sarkozy. Rest assured I’m still keeping my finger on the pulse of the Sarkozy news, so to speak.

Sarko’s agreed to leave his post as Finance Minister so he can run for president of the UMP party, just as (French president) Jacques Chirac had requested. However, he’s in full form, and yesterday was in the news pushing for inheritance tax reform, the day before he was holding center stage with rival Raffarin at the youth conference of the UMP (where Raffarin managed to endorse him without actually mentioning Sarko’s name — hardly surprising, considering how Le Monde’s saying Sarkozy’s triumph marginalizes Raffarin but [Prime Minister] Raffarin won’t let himself be smothered), and today the news has him in full photo-op with Tom Cruise.

So what?

So Sarko distances himself more from Jacques, in a visible and timely manner at that, that’s what.

Tom Cruise, a member of Scientology, was refused a request to meet Chirac and discuss Scientology, which is considered a sect in France. The French don’t have as much of a sporting spirit as us Americans when it comes to Religion. The French, however, are very big on symbolic gestures, and what more symbolic, in a Hollywood sort of way, than to meet with Tom while sticking a thumb on Jacques’s eye?

It almost feels like New Jersey, doesn’t it?