“the slap” according to Christine Angot

“In a system where respectability is indexed to wealth, strength, power, those who hold them can only receive admiration, smiles, medals, the Legion of Honor,” denounces Christine Angot in a column published in “Libération” .

The writer Christine Angot, who said she was humiliated several times on the set of Thierry Ardisson’s show “Everybody talks about it”, described it as “slap” Emmanuel Macron’s gesture of decorating the television host with the Legion of Honor.

“Humor-humiliation is the type of ‘public service’ that French TV has given back to society every Saturday evening for so many years, and which today finds itself honored by the hands of the President”wrote the author in a column published in the daily Release Saturday April 13.

“In a system where respectability is indexed to wealth, strength, power, those who hold them can only receive admiration, smiles, medals, the Legion of Honor. We have changed times. But they, they have not changed era“, she denounced again, remembering laughter at the incest she wrote about.

Chain reaction

Several other artists, such as actresses Judith Godrèche and Sara Forestier, spoke out against this decoration, which they described as “shame”recalling the controversial interviews conducted by Thierry Ardisson in his shows. “2006. I still live with my parents, in my teenage bedroom. I go on a TV set to promote my WORK. And then they ask me, giggling, if I have ever flirted with my father’s friends. Or if I ‘have already flirted with my father’wrote Sara Forestier on the social network Instagram.

During the decoration ceremony, which made Thierry Ardisson knight of the Legion of Honor, Thursday at the Elysée, Emmanuel Macron said he honored “50 years of television and creations”. “You are a character of total freedom, a provocateur and erudite (…) More than a television host, you are a pioneer of modernity with a thirst to create, a form of untimely anarchist who loves France” , declared the President.

The announcement of the upcoming award to Michel Sardou of the National Order of Merit by Emmanuel Macron also made certain feminist activists jump, such as the environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau or Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women’s Foundation.

In the context of the #MeToo movement, the President was also criticized for having described the actor Gérard Depardieu, indicted for rape and targeted by several complaints, as a “great actor” Who “makes France proud”.