The Guardian on the fall from grace of Rachida Dati, France Sarkozy's justice minister who, no so long ago, was celebrated as a successful example of integration à la française only to be dismissed from the Sun king's court for her exuberance and luxurious taste:
Once she was Sarkozy's handpicked symbol of change, hugely popular with the public as the first Muslim woman to hold a major government post. Now, after a spectacular fall from grace, Dati is using the European election campaign to fight back.
Despite trying to prove her commitment by returning to work five days after giving birth by caesarian section, Sarkozy ordered her to run in order to sack her after the 7 June vote. She felt "humiliated", according to the former prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.(....) Dati wants to repair her own personal standing in order to be able to pursue her ambitions to become Paris mayor at a later date.
But even her symbolism as a hero of France's new ethnic minorities has taken a dent. "With her tenacity, she's a total inspiration," said Madad Zineb, 25, a student at the meeting. "But I think after Dati it now might be even harder for the young generation of ethnic minorities to break through in politics. There is now so much focus on personal history and all the tiny details of your private life. France has gained new hunger for that."
The problem for Dati is that she is no longer useful to Sarkozy precisely because she was solely a symbol. In politics, as anywhere else in life, it is always possible to replace symbols where they are no able to become gain some substance and gravitas by proving that they are about more than their gender, their beauty, their race or their religion . In Dati's case, she remained the glamorous and ambitious woman of Algerian and Moroccan origin, with a admirable life story, but never became fully a political woman with ideas and indispensable skills. In other words, she is just a celebrity and people don't take her seriously because she is perceived as one of Sarkozy's creatures who needs to accept her bannishment because she didn't seize the chance of a lifetime. Most people want her, especially her peers who are competing with her for the king's attention, to fade in the background or to just die of boredom in Strasbourg. The saddest thing about Dati is that she is worth more than her caricature even though she was content with being fluffy because she thought probably that her status as a symbol would protect her from political and public attacks and would stop the French from viewing her as a cold calculating woman who did everything to succeed except studying her craft to become competent. Rachida Dati suffers from the same ill that plagues Sarah Palin, the airhead syndrome except that in her case her minority status and the fact that she does have a compelling rise from poverty to riches immigrant story makes her more sympathetic and less contemptible because some fills that she had/has no control over her political fate and that she had/had few choices in life.
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