French President Nicolas Sarkozy Yells At Staff Before TV Appearance (VIDEO)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has become an internet sensation in France after this video of him snapping angrily at his staff while preparing for a television appearance went viral (from The Guardian):

Within 24 hours, almost 400,000 people had tuned in to watch the film of the French President as he snapped at staff at public TV channel France 3 before explaining how he intended to save the EU from implosion during his six-month presidency.

Clearly ruffled after just driving past staff protesting his plan to personally nominate public television's head, Mr Sarkozy hit out at a technician who failed to reply when he said "hello" when placing his microphone.

"It's a matter of upbringing," he told the man. "When you're a guest you have the right to expect a hello... Or we're not in the public service here, we are at a demonstration ... incredible... and serious..."

...Full of nervous ticks, the impatient president tapped his fingers and played with his Patek Philippe watch - a present from his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy - asking whether the studio clock is working.

The unedited pictures of Mr Sarkozy were clearly released by irate France 3 staff, although unions denied this.

Sarkozy en off sur France 3
by rue89

Comments

[innerealm]

HP is starting to look more and more like those 24 hour cable news networks...just because you have the space you feel the need to fill it with anything. It seems HP's intelligence level goes down with each new section they offer. These silly little things belong on GAWKER where you expect this stuff.

[wm1066]

I saw him this morning on France 24 standing behind the children of the FARC hostage Betoncourt­.(spelling­?)
Boy was he fidgety, looked nervous, and he was chewing his lip.

[JonSmiley]

Where was the meltdown?

[jmundstuk]

Education, not upbringing.

[land]

I like HP and I want to keep liking it, but lately I've been running into a lot of BS. This post is ridiculous. The Huffington Post brand is getting muddy. I appreciate Huffpo's blogger and topic diversity. I appreciate it's youth. But there is such a mixture of quality, and i keep biting into mealy apples. I get visions of young huffpo bloggers telling their buddies on the phone how awesome their job is. I wanna poke in and tell them yes it's awesome they get to consume culture all day and then craft a little half hearted presentation about it. I want to tell them they should thank their stars that they have a chance to be relevant and then give them sass about how they aren't. The living section which could be so fun and interesting is filled with the most obvious, uninsightful "advice." The "what's my logo" blogger is excruciatingly inauthentic on video, lacks charm, and guides her interviewees nowhere interesting. ugh.

[liberalsrheros]

is the makeup artist passing him her phone number? well anyway a complete waste of time. i hope when mccain losses it durring the debates it'll be better than this.

[MariaHopeful]

Meltdown? I just wasted 8 minutes. Disgusting!

[Lazslo]

I've never understood why people don't answer back when a person says hello to that person. That shows a very poor upbringing and education. I don't blame Sarkozy for reacting to that.

[larry278]

In the unlikely event that HP is still seeking to become the web's 1st newspaper of record, it would be a good idea to devote more attention to making its headlines accurate. Misleading headlines can drive users away when they discover the headline doesn't relate to a blog or articles content &/or both the blog & the headline is incorrect. The man didn't go into a meltdown phase on the clip.
Newspapers of record don't use tabloid headlines.
Hire new headline writers. Teach monitors/editors to recognize & demand accurate headlines before posting anything on HP.

[nolalily]

Amen. I am actually mad about this because the damned clip was so long as well. Bait and switch is for slick used car salesmen, not, as you so aptly put it, newspapers of record don't use tabloid headlines.

[larry278]

Thank you.

[BriGuy1961]

Amen! Days ago I sent an e-mail to Huffington Post asking that they review the video themselves and see if they still believed the headline was appropriate or misleading. No response, no change.

If all HP was doing was repeating what the Guardian had written, you could excuse it a merely linking to another news source, but the original headline from the Guardian was, "Nicolas Sarkozy secretly filmed getting angry at TV staff." That headline is "only" a gross misrepresentation, while the HP's "Yelling" headline is simply a total fabrication.

It does grab your interest - sort of like "LOWEST PRCIES IN TOWN!" I guess HP applies a similar standard to the "truthiness" of its headlines.
You totally bum me out, HP!

[snowhusseincat]

okay , i speak french..pe­rfectly...­I listened to this several times and he NEVER yelled. He was mildly annoyed when a staffer ignored his greeting. I'm nop Sarkozy fan but this yet another another sensationalized headline from huffpo.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

You don't even have to speak french to observe he wasn't yelling.

Nervous arrogant prima donna? Mais Oui.

[snowhusseincat]

i think most people got my meaning. no meltdown, no yelling

I can also usually edit better than I did above but considering the totally inaccurate description of the conversation in the article description and headline, I figured tant pis, je m'en fou!

[drec1500Madrid]

Man, he was INSANE in that video. What, was he off his meds or something...the way he just went on and on in that threatening manner...redder and madder than Bill Clinton at an Obama rally.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Good job with than canned punchline.
Now watch the video.

[miquelon]

I agree with all - this is just some typical labour union's idea of embarrassing Sarkozy with some pre-broadcast banter. Big whop, trust me, even in French the exchange is hardly a meltdown, it’s just interesting to see how the man behaves off camera and how knowledgeable he is about internal journalistic squabbles (“so how long have you been out of favour?”).

Too bad HuffintonPost feelt the Matt Drudge wind on this item more than substance before posting.

[AurigaRa]

he has a right to be cranky
He almost got shot at Ben Gurion airport!

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

He has a right to performance anxiety. His wife's a total hottie.

As to getting shot? You mean a SUICIDE 200 yards (?) away ?

[BBR]

I just wasted a bunch of precious Australian bandwidth downloading this rubbish.

You might as well have uploaded a video of some cows in a field.

'Exclusive video: cows freak out, yell at grass and each other.'

[thundermummy]

Not so big a deal. Now if he had said:

FONT IL DE PHASE! BAISEZ-LE! FONT IL DE PHASE! LA CHOSE FOUTUE SUCE!

Then we'd have something. Gotta love Babelfish.

[thundermummy]

Well I put the French back into Babelfish and it seems to be nonsensical. My French stinks. Any Francophile care to translate Bill-O's Inside Edition tirade?

[gelfling545]

This is the problem with Babelfish and others of its ilk. It will give you the words you type in but no context. The phrase Mr./Ms. Thundermummy got is basically gibberish - an arrangement of French words but not in a fashion a French person would use them and not really conveying anything. For the nasty stuff you need to go to a book called "Street French" or another called "Merde!"

Too bad I recently retired from teaching French. I could have used this as an object lesson for my students on why Babelfish can't do your homework for you.