Obamas host French president
WASHINGTON — It was the talk of the town that no one seemed to want to talk about, French President Francois Hollande’s very public breakup from his first lady just weeks before President Barack Obama raised a glass to him at an elegant White House state dinner.
“I don’t get involved in those things,” demurred actress Cicely Tyson, who, at age 80, said she’s been to plenty such affairs.
But it was another kind of affair, “l’affaire Hollande,” that Tyson and her fellow celebrities, Democratic donors, politicians and business types who made up the 350-person guest list Tuesday evening avoided mentioning.
The president and first lady Michelle Obama found just the right seat for the Frenchman who came to dinner without his “plus one.” They seated him between them, and put the kibosh to all the drama about his stag visit to the U.S.
Former NAACP president Ben Jealous was nothing but admiring of the French intrigue.
“I think the French are way cooler than we are on a whole lot of fronts,” he said, including “way better gossip.”
The Obamas greeted Hollande on the front steps of the White House, the first lady clad in a black and liberty blue silk gown by Carolina Herrera.
Obama, in his dinner toast, was deliberately sparing with his French.
He welcomed the guests with a hearty “bonsoir,” then confessed that “I have now officially exhausted my French.”
Hollande delivered a good portion of his reciprocal toast in respectable English before switching to French.
“We love Americans, although we don’t always say so,” he told the crowd.
