March of Le Pingouin: Carla Bruni’s avian allusion presents political opportunity

That penguins — the southern hemisphere’s flightless birds, not occidental homo sapiens in formal evening wear —are cute is a universal truism. While the serial monogamy of Emperor Penguins has been the subject of considerable debate in scholarly circles after the award-winning 2005 documentary March of the Penguins, the black-and-white bird has not been the target of any real opprobrium, except by the denizens of DC Comics’ Gotham City.

So, the satirical song Le Pingouin in Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s yet-to-be-released fourth album could well have alluded to any guest at an Élysée Palace banquet. But some key lines in her lyrics (released this week) make it impossible to waddle round the fact that this penguin is her husband Nicolas Sarkozy’s bête noire and successor, French President François Hollande.

With Hollande’s popularity rating rapidly heading Antarctica-wards, such an inference could have been parsed as a timely and politically prescient jibe by an unexpected new psephological star.

By sticking to the “clumsy buffoon” characterisation of the penguin in common French patois, Bruni-Sarkozy has thus lost a great opportunity to win over a new constituency. India has its own set of avian allusions and elections are usually boom time for political poetry; will the French penguin precedent inspire an Indian encore?