What do you say to a naked lady?

It's time for Americans to admit that when it comes to sex scandals, France is the world's only superpower.

Check out this photo:



That's Prince Charles kissing the gloved hand of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy at the welcoming ceremony today at London's Heathrow Airport. The man gripping Mrs. Sarkozy's elbow is her husband Nicolas, the president of France.

If President Sarkozy looks a little tense, it might be because a nude full-body photo of his wife was published in all the British tabloids today. The portrait, taken fifteen years ago by Michel Comte, will be auctioned by Christie's in New York on April 10.

Here's a different photo from Mrs. Sarkozy's modeling career that ran this week in an Australian paper:



She's Italian and her husband is Hungarian, but those boots are pure Germany.

Anyway, the point is that the newlywed Mrs. Sarkozy, seen here at an official state dinner at the Elysee Palace in Paris earlier this month...



...and the sublimely happy, if exhausted, Nicolas Sarkozy...



...were welcomed in Britain by, speaking of sex scandals, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall...



...and everyone's perfectly happy. Completely calm. Utterly unfazed.

We just don't have anything to hold a candle to it. Look at the week we had in the sex scandal division:

-- New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was snagged by the Patriot Act and forced from office for overpaying an aspiring pop singer for unsafe sex with his socks on.

-- New York Governor David Paterson was forced by blackmailers to admit that the Quality Inn was his motel of choice for adulterous affairs.

-- Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey insisted that his wife was lying when she denied having a threesome with his gay lover.

-- Somebody mentioned Monica Lewinsky to Chelsea Clinton and every newspaper in America wrote a story about it.

Compare these pathetic attempts at scandal to the fabulous French achievement. Nicolas Sarkozy waited until he was elected president of France to divorce his wife Cecilia and marry supermodel Carla Bruni. And if you think we've heard the last of Cecilia, guess again: earlier this week she flew to New York and married public relations executive Richard Attias in what the New York Post called a "revenge wedding" in Manhattan's "glitzy" Rainbow Room.

My fellow Americans, it is time to face up to the truth. In the Grand Prix of sex scandals, the United States is a fleet of Pintos.

It is time to set aside narrow self-interest and take the action that's needed to make the United States competitive again.

America Wants to Know calls on all Democratic party superdelegates to do the right thing for the country this summer at the Democratic convention.

Nominate Warren Beatty for president.



Copyright 2008

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