Not since Jason Donovan sued the Face magazine in 1992 for calling him gay have public figures protested too much as the Macrons have just done. Both Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron have risen to the bait of right-wing influencer Candace Owens’s relentless tomcat-calling that Mme Mac was born male (and is actually her brother in disguise). It’s all wonderfully silly – and just what we need when everything seems so dismal.
It’s a foolishly vain decision on the part of the already Ruritanian-seeming first couple of France to sue Owens, let alone on 22 counts. Had they not heard of the Streisand effect? It’s defined by Wikipedia as ‘an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The term was coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick after Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, inadvertently drawing far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph.’
The Macrons have filed a lawsuit for defamation in the Delaware Superior Court, accusing the gorgeous if gaga Owens of a ‘relentless year-long campaign of defamation against them’. Owens has long been pushing a theory that the French president’s wife (with whom he already shared a scandalous back story, having first ‘come across’ her when she was his decades-senior married teacher) was born a boy. She has peddled the conspiracy theory on X as ‘the biggest scandal in political history’. Her more than four million YouTube subscribers have been treated to numerous videos on the subject. Admittedly, they’re fascinating to watch, as Owens’s beautiful resting bitch face becomes animated with spite. It’s Mean Girls recast with a black conservative conspiracy-lover as Regina George, only she has spurned the Burn Book in favour of selling t-shirts showing Brigitte on the cover of a sham Time magazine, pronouncing her ‘Man of the Year’.
It’s delish to imagine the Macrons getting their scanties in a twist with each new taunt from the increasingly gleeful and reckless Owens, until they finally crack and sue. One can’t help but feel that she is not completely averse to the attention it accrues. You can see this from her Instagram, where she recently posted a screenshot of a report referencing the Macrons’ lawsuit. Owens’s caption refers to what she judges to be Brigitte’s bad hair: ‘I will be coming for this wig. Stay tuned.’
It made me smirk that the Macrons are apparently suing for a very large sum partly because of allegedly suffering ‘substantial economic damages’ including ‘loss of future business opportunities’. Apparently, the smear has also spoiled ‘relationships with other members of the government, potential political allies and others’ and even undermined ‘confidence in the Macrons’ integrity and fitness as political and governmental leaders’.
Excusez-moi? Being a cross-dresser or a sex-changer is one of the surest ways for a talent-free individual to advance themselves in showbiz and politics in these dog days. Look at Paris Lees (BBC drama series) or Munroe Bergdorf (UK champion for UN Women). Once Manu has been evicted from the Élysée Palace, one doesn’t see a great future for the couple as motivational speakers, unlike the charming and attractive Obamas. The trans thing could be the making of the Macrons, if only they chilled out a tad.
‘Every time the Macrons leave their home, they do so knowing that countless people have heard, and many believe, these vile fabrications. It is invasive, dehumanising, and deeply unjust’, their legal complaint continues. ‘What people forget is these are human beings, these are a married couple. They have a social life, they have a private life together, they have the same feelings and the same hurt from these sorts of defamatory statements as anybody would. And it does have a material impact on them.’
Last year, Macron went so far as to say that the very worst part of being president was having to deal with ‘false information and fabricated stories… People end up believing them, and it disrupts your life, even in your most private moments.’ If that really is the worst thing he believes has happened to him during his chronic misrule of France, one can only surmise that he is every bit as removed from real life as he is perceived to be.
I know that the past lends a rosy glow to events, but I couldn’t help thinking of the good vulgar wit involved in previous similar name-calling occasions, such as when novelist Jacqueline Susann’s long-running feud with Truman Capote came to a head when he described her as resembling ‘a truck driver in drag’. When she threatened to sue, he apologised to truck drivers.
The Macrons have made a rod for their own backs when it comes to the issue of what makes a man a man or a woman a woman. Think back to the 2024 Paris Olympics. Not only were men allowed to compete against women – including beating them up in boxing rings. The opening ceremony was a ‘genderfluid’ parody of the Last Supper, too. You would think president who poses as a ‘trans ally’ wouldn’t take such offence at Owens’s jibes.
Yes, of course it’s childish. ‘You look like a bloke!’ was once only said by catty teenage schoolgirls, and I know because I was one such bitch. But it has been making a comeback in public and / or political discourse for some time. Transvestites say it about TERFs they don’t like and we TERFs say it back to them. But of course, we are in the right. They do look like men, because they are.
Owens is a fascinating woman. I used to like her before she went mad and started blaming the Jews for everything. She is clearly loving this spat with the Macrons and is growing more grandiose by the minute. ‘The life of Candace Owens, it works like this. I wake up, I stretch, I have a cup of coffee, and then I am served with a lawsuit’, she said on a recent podcast. ‘I am fully prepared to take on this battle, on behalf of the entire world. I will see you in court.’
Elsewhere, Owens has agitated against what she calls a ‘sadistic syndicate’ and ‘the perverts that run the world’. This has led her to believe that the only way she could lose against the Macrons is because the world is masterminded by an evil liberal elite: ‘I think Hunter Biden kind of notoriously implied that his family controls the courts in Delaware. Maybe that’s what [the Macrons] are banking on.’
It’s hard to summon up an iota of sympathy for either side. Owens seems deranged, the Macrons insufferably grand. Though it’s all sublimely silly, it also feels part and parcel of the way public contempt for politicians has risen – so much so that we will literally believe anything bad that’s said about them, whether it’s running international paedophile rings or being secretly trans. The Profumo Affair (married man has affair with beautiful girl and spends the rest of his life atoning for it) came at a time when even scandal was somehow dignified and decent. The Macrons are strange, to understate the case – a man married to a woman who taught him at school and who recently smacked him in public – even without adding an extra penis into the equation.
However, like I said, in these days when all the news is bad, surely I’m not alone in relishing the clash of these titanic egos on the world stage.
Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Follow her Substack, Notes from the Naughty Step, here.
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