FRENCH KISSING.(Fremch Pres. Jacques Chirac kisses Laura Bush's hand)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 13-OCT-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The other morning dawned for the bleary-eyed average New York newspaper reader with a somewhat startling pair of stop-motion photographs. The front page of the Post showed Laura Bush having her hand bussed by Jacques Chirac, the President of France, during her trip to Paris, and the look on her face--or, rather, the absence of any look on her face--was, as they used to say, a study. "laura braves weasel kiss!" ran the headline. On the front page of the Times was a photo taken just seconds later. Mrs. Bush's face was still a study, but this time it conveyed a certain goofy and winning bafflement, as if she were thinking, What's he doing down there? rather than, How dare he?

The weird thing about this is that hand kissing isn't really much of a French manner or affectation. A woman who...

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