Word: mitterrand
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Score it as the first serious collateral damage stemming from the ongoing detention of film director Roman Polanski. Just two weeks after his impassioned protest of Polanski's Sept. 26 arrest, French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand finds himself under attack for his description of sex during trips to Thailand, which critics called sex tourism. Mitterrand, the nephew of late socialist President François Mitterrand, wrote about sex trips in a 2005 novel, detailing paying "boys" for sex. At the time the book was printed, the publisher's official description of La Mauvaise...
...tempest broke on Thursday, after video clips of a television debate broadcast three days earlier were posted on the Internet. In the clips, far-right politician Marine Le Pen reads truncated extracts from Mitterrand's novel, including passages in which Mitterrand describes visits to Thai clubs and brothels to procure sex from prostitutes he at times calls "boys" and "young boys." "The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide," Mitterrand writes. (See pictures of the French crackdown on migrants...
...broadcast, Le Pen - favored to succeed her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the far-right National Front party - voices her outrage at Mitterrand's accounts, and demands he resign from the culture portfolio. Le Pen has been critical of public figures in France who rushed to defend Polanski following his arrest in Switzerland on U.S. arrest warrants for his 1997 guilty plea to criminal charges of having sex with a minor...
...just the far right calling for Mitterrand's head. Socialist Party spokesman Benoît Hamon echoed Le Pen's criticism of the Culture Minister. Hamon said he was "violently shocked that a man could justify sexual tourism under the cover of literature." He also lamented that even as France and Thailand work together to halt Western exploitation of Asian sex workers, "here comes a government minister to explain how he himself is a consumer of it." Several other Socialist Party officials expressed concerns and demanded Mitterrand explain himself or resign...
...thrown to the lions and put in prison because of ancient history - and as he was traveling to an event honoring him - is absolutely horrifying," French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said after Polanski was arrested upon arrival in Switzerland to attend the Zurich Film Festival, where he was to receive a lifetime achievement award. "There's an America we love and an America that scares us, and it's that latter America that has just shown us its face." In comments that appeared to be directed at Swiss and American authorities to free Polanski, Mitterrand added...