Step 1: An artist is targeted by sexual assault allegations.
Step 2: The President of the Republic defends the presumption of innocence of the artist in question.
Step 3: Feminists accuse the president of being a dirty “masculinist” who perpetuates “rape culture.”
• Read also: “Dangerous” remarks: Macron’s defense of Depardieu dismays feminists
• Read also: Macron denounces a “manhunt” against Depardieu
French President Emmanuel Macron simply recalled that Gérard Depardieu had not been accused (or found guilty) of rape by the French justice system.
But in 2023, the simple act of recalling basic principles in a rule of law will earn you the worst slander. It really is the world turned upside down.
THE PEOPLE’S COURT
On French television, Wednesday evening, President Macron was asked about Gérard Depardieu.
He replied: “You can accuse someone, there may be victims, but there is also a presumption of innocence that exists.” Otherwise, we fall into “the era of suspicion”, he concluded.
Green MP Sandrine Rousseau said it was “an insult to the movement to free the voices of victims of sexual violence”.
Maëlle Noir, from the “Nous tous” collective, affirmed that “this sends a signal which is to continue not to believe the victims, to trample on their words with complete impunity”.
The president of the Women’s Foundation Anne-Cécile Mailfert declared: “We are clearly in the culture of rape.”
But what do these feminists want? No more need for police investigations, no more need for “just and equitable” trials, no more need for “full defense”?
Wham! Bam! All it takes is for a woman to allege any crime and we take her word for it and send the targeted man straight to prison?
Regarding the possible withdrawal of the Legion of Honor from Gérard Depardieu (whom we discovered in a report that he loved to call women big sluts), the president replied that the Legion of Honor “is not not here to preach.
Thank you for reminding me, Mr. President. But in 2023, moral lesson-givers are everywhere.
“And so, it is not on the basis of a report or this or that thing that we take away the Legion of Honor from an artist, because at that price, we would have taken away the Legion of “honor to many artists,” Macron also added.
Indeed. If we put all the recipients of the Legion of Honor under the magnifying glass of “morality”, there wouldn’t be many people left.
I give you an example. Actress Isabelle Adjani was promoted to Knight of the Legion of Honor in 2010.
However, last week, according to the France-Presse agency, Isabelle Adjani was sentenced Thursday in Paris in her absence to two years’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 euros (approximately CA$365,000) for tax evasion and whitening. The court underlined the “seriousness of the facts”, which led to the evasion of 236,000 euros in income tax and 1.2 million euros in transfer taxes.
“These facts demonstrate the desire for concealment vis-à-vis Isabelle Adjani’s tax administration” and “seriously undermine the equality of citizens before taxes, and therefore the Republican pact,” declared the president.
WHAT HONOR?
I remind you that Adjani had a trial and was found guilty.
Depardieu has not, to date, faced any charges in court…