Interview with Édouard Philippe in Quotidien: politics sometimes holds on to a hair

Bruno Donnet 09:47, March 28, 2023

Every day, Bruno Donnet observes the media postures. This morning, he chose to return to the interview that Édouard Philippe gave last night to the program Quotidien.

The former Prime Minister of Emmanuel Macron makes no secret of his ambitions.

He intends to be a candidate in the next presidential election and he also confided last night, in a rather clever formula, to Yann Barthès: "A guy who creates a political party and who thinks about the future of his country, in general, to use a classic expression, he is not here to butter, you know the rest what. "

He is not here to butter sandwiches, nor to paraphrase Michel Audiard, but to become president.

But before that, for that, Édouard Philippe has a small problem to solve.

A physical problem. A problem of appearance that the journalist Maïa Mazaurette, specialist in questions of sexuality and identity, summed up perfectly: "Your political action is sometimes parasitized by your appearance which changes quickly and which arouses a lot of curiosity on the part of the French"

Édouard Philippe is ill. He suffers from two pathologies. And last night he came to do a great transparency operation on this issue: "And so I say yes, I have vitiligo and alopecia (...) That's how it is, I tell you, you do what you want with it. If you think it makes me a dirty mouth and bah I can do nothing about it. »

Vitiligo depigments his skin and alopecia has caused his beard, eyebrows and almost all his hair to fall out and this is what forces him to these media confessions: "It's obvious, it shows. It shows. Well, I'm not going to hide it, I'm not going to put on a wig! »

Bruno Donnet was very interested in this little sentence about the wig. Because to fully understand what is at stake today, politically, with the physique of Édouard Philippe, we must remember where we come from.

And while rummaging through his large archive closet this morning, he found you a document that was quite symptomatic.

The scene takes place in 1988. On the set of the late La Cinq, Antoine Waechter, who is a candidate in the presidential election under the ecologist banner, is questioned by the political journalist Pierre-Luc Séguillon who begins by asking a cautious preamble: "So politics is also a spectacle, from the moment you enter politics, you put yourself on stage. "

And if the journalist begins with this oratorical precaution, it is because he has a question that is not easy to ask the candidate. And the question is so difficult for him that he stammers: "Indiscreet question: why do you wear hairpiece?"

He asks her why he wears "hairpiece", that is to say a wig! And he did well to sugarcoat his question with precautions because Antoine Waechter will be extremely shocked: "Well, listen, this should first be demonstrated. Uh. Huh! »

And faced with the impossibility of the demonstration, he will refuse, categorically, to answer her: "You have no answer? No, I have no answer to this question which seems absurd to say the least! »

That's it, so we could believe this scene of the wig, which dates from 35 years ago, from another time, he does not care!

Édouard Philippe knows it, he also confided yesterday to Yann Barthès, his job is a job in which symbols still count a lot: "It's a job of image and then it's a job of seduction. "

François Mitterrand had hidden his cancer from the French. François Hollande had lost 10 kilos before entering the campaign. Nicolas Sarkozy staged his physical fitness, jogging or cycling, in front of the cameras. As for Emmanuel Macron, he surfs, since his beginnings, on his image of energetic forty-year-old.

Édouard Philippe's transparency operation is therefore not a cosmetic step, it is an absolutely obligatory passage, a political step, essential to his conquest of power: "Do appearance and body play a role in political life? Bah the answer is yes! »

Last night, if the former Prime Minister, whose media appearances are as rare as they are strategically millimetered, spent long minutes talking about the evolution of his appearance... Physically, it is because he knows that by settling this question, now, far from the presidential deadline that concerns him, he will be able to avoid returning to it later, and focus on strictly political subjects.

He also concluded with a formula whose laughter that accompanied him testified to the success of his operation: "And then after, if you think you have to be a playboy in France to be elected, I still have some counter-examples eh! "

Communication must be hairy, simply because politics sometimes holds a hair!