Savoring A Summer's Scandal.(allegations of political corruption in France)

Scandals are as important to summer in France as, say, bare breasts on the beach and chilled rose with lunch. Strikes are important, too, as a way to get the summer going. (A few extra days off before the usual five or six weeks of vacation, why not?) But there's no estival diversion quite like a juicy brew of crime and passion: a bouillabaisse of murder, sex and politics, perhaps with a hint of the milieu mixed in.

Actually, France has been starving for just this over the past few years. High-level government corruption trials don't cut it. They're so common and tiresomely complicated, after all. So what if the president of the constitutional court who used to be the foreign minister allegedly put his mistress (or one of his mistresses) on the payroll of an oil company where she supposedly got kickbacks on defense contracts? The French shrug: "That's politics." Then the whole thing gets thrown out of court? Well, that's entertainment.

But this summer all the ingredients are on hand for a delightful break. The strikes that have disrupted public transport aggravate only those commuters who persist in commuting at all. And these are gentle protests; nothing like 1992, when farmers and truckers blockaded France's cities and many vacations had to be postponed! (The Army broke the siege at last, and a grateful nation hastened to the shore.) Best of all, this summer there's a scandal worthy of the name. When talking about it over that glass of rose or while contemplating the clouds above the topless beach, one hardly knows where to begin.

Most of the French first took notice last month when Dominique Baudis, head of the government agency that sets the rules for television and radio programming, took to the air himself. The allegations that he'd attended sadomasochistic orgies along with other officials were patently untrue, he said. It was all a plot. He'd tried to ban ...