French political scions exchange insulting jabs in Twitter feud
PARIS — Being a teenager is seldom easy, and all the more difficult, perhaps, if you are the son of a former president or first lady in the age of Twitter, and your every impolitic outburst or adolescent angst can play out in front of thousands in a single indiscreet click.
French tabloids and the Twittersphere have been riveted and amused in recent days by a continuing slinging match between Louis Sarkozy, the son of the former rightist president Nicolas Sarkozy, and Leonard Trierweiler, the son of Valerie Trierweiler, the onetime first lady and former partner of Sarkozy’s successor and Socialist rival, president Francois Hollande.
The heated exchange between the two political offspring, both 17, which has been bubbling for months, flared into a full-scale cyber skirmish after the senior Sarkozy, who is the target of corruption and influencepeddling investigations, announced plans in September to run for the leadership of his struggling party, the Union for a Popular Movement, as a likely prelude for a presidential run in 2017.
Leonard Trierweiler, who studies at an elite cooking school in Paris and has more than 9,000 followers on Twitter, mocked Nicolas Sarkozy, who was once nicknamed President “Bling Bling” in the French media because of his expensive tastes. Alluding to Sarkozy’s pledge to transform his party from the top down, Trierweiler asked, “Nicolas Sarkozy has changed . . . Rolex?”
Earlier, he chided the younger Sarkozy for being uncouth in calling Germany’s 7-1 victory over Brazil in the World Cup this past summer the “Brazilian genocide.”
Louis Sarkozy attends a military boarding school in Pennsylvania and has more than 17,000 Twitter followers. His tweets and retweets suggest a passion for Star Wars, U.S. football and historic battles. He has repeatedly goaded Trierweiler; in one post he suggested that Trierweiler’s mother was no stranger to arrogance and grammatical errors, apparently an allusion to Valerie Trierweiler’s book, Thank You for This Moment, which details her life as first lady, and her nervous breakdown after learning of Hollande’s affair with a well-known actress, Julie Gayet.
It was pilloried by some critics on social media for a number of syntactic errors.
At a time of economic gloom, the feud has captivated some in a nation in need of diversions, and all the more so because Nicolas Sarkozy and Trierweiler are two of the most polarizing figures in France.
The feud has underlined how, in the era of oversharing teenagers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it is increasingly difficult to protect the privacy of the sons and daughters of politicians, long seen as sacrosanct in France. While the sniping has been vicious at times, it appears to be rooted in the protective instincts of two teenagers toward their famous and oft-attacked parents. Neither parent appears to have publicly intervened.
Louis Sarkozy did not respond to a request for comment, but Trierweiler, in an interview via text message, said his exchanges with the younger Sarkozy had shown that he was a carbon copy of his father, the former president. Leonard Trierweiler had previously posted about the legal troubles of the former president, who faced the indignity in July of being taken into police custody for questioning.
The two offspring have clashed on Twitter over ev- erything from politics to soccer. Trierweiler has also accused the former president of saddling France with billions of euros in debt.
The clash was reignited in recent days after an unsubstantiated report in a French magazine suggesting that Léonard Trierweiler was still residing at the Elysee Palace, even though his mother had very publicly separated from Hollande at the beginning of the year. Trierweiler replied at the article on Twitter by noting, sardonically, that he was at the Elysee and had to go as “the president is coming to tuck me in.” Louis Sarkozy reacted by posting an image of the online article, adding “nice.” Trierweiler retorted by suggesting that Sarkozy was “arrogant” and criticizing his French.