Paris Match Performs Virtual Liposuction On French President
By Daryl Lang
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on the Paris Match diet.
The weekly French picture magazine recently helped Sarkozy shed some unsightly flab with a slimming photo alteration.
Match recently published a Reuters photo by Neal Hamberg showing a shirtless Sarkozy paddling a canoe on Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, N.H., while on vacation earlier this month.
A rival magazine published comparison photos showing how Paris Match slimmed down President Sarkozy. Click for more images.
The picture ran in other publications unaltered, but in the version published in Match, Sarkozy is missing a roll of fat around his waistline. Match competitor L'Express published the two versions of the photo on its Web site Thursday.
Match declined to comment on Sarkozy's tighter tummy, according to Agence France Presse and Reuters.
Sarkozy spokesman David Martinon told reporters that the president had not asked for the change. "Obviously there was no instruction or demand of any sort from here," he said, according to Reuters.
But the alteration carries a strong whiff of favoritism. Match is owned by Lagardère, a large publishing company run by Arnaud Lagardère - a powerful businessman who is a friend of Sarkozy's.
Another Lagardère publication, Le Journal du Dimanche, recently killed a story revealing that Sarkozy's wife had not voted for him, according to Reuters. And last year's dismissal of Match editor Alain Genestar was also seen as being related to politics, coming after the magazine published a photo of Sarkozy's wife Cecilia with another man on the front page, according to various news reports.
Sarkozy's summer vacation in New Hampshire was remarkable mainly for an incident in which he shouted down two news photographers who were following him. The president reportedly jumped into the photographers' boat and shouted at them in French. A picture by Associated Press photographer Jim Cole showing an angry Sarkozy pointing was widely published earlier this month.