No prizes for spotting the adjective omitted by the prudish New York Times from the
French ambassador’s remark. For the full flavour of his insult, see other versions.

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added by this website]

It is a melodrama with a rich cast of
characters. There is a press baron, a
lord, a silken diplomat, a high- society
writer, one of the capital’s most
vivacious hostesses and the requisite
figure for any English farce — a
Continental caught unawares.

She didn’t identify the envoy further, but she didn’t have to. The Times
of London, always eager to out its principal rival, supplied the name
Tuesday. It was Daniel Bernard, 60, a close friend of French President
Jacques Chirac, ambassador to the
Court of St. James since 1998, and before that, his country’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

Lady Black devoted her column to arguing that anti-Semitic remarks were becoming all too fashionable in London parlors, and Mr. Bernard was not the only notable in her sights.

“At a private lunch last month,” she wrote, “the hostess — doyenne of London’s political salon scene — made a remark to the effect that she couldn’t stand Jews and everything happening to them was their own fault. When this was greeted with shocked silence, she chided her guests on what she assumed was their hypocrisy. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said, ‘you all feel like that.’ “

Once again no name was used, but the media figured the reference was to
Carla Powell, 56, the Italian-born wife of Charles Powell, a former adviser to Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher and now a member of the House of Lords. Lady Powell wrote a letter to
The Telegraph complaining that she had been “generally identified” as the ill-spoken socialite.

“Let me say that I have never
said anything remotely like the words
attributed to the ‘hostess’ and that
they do not by any stretch of the
imagination represent my views,” she
wrote.

Mr. Bernard, speaking through a spokesman, did not dispute the actual quotation about Israel nor seek to excuse it, but he complained about the lack of context and the manner in which it emerged.

“He does not deny the remarks, he just says first of all what he said was distorted,” said Yves Charpentier, press counselor to the French Embassy.
“Secondly, what he said was in a private dinner among friends and was not supposed to be put in the press the next day. He is absolutely surprised, to say the least, with the way this has been handled.”

The French press came to their man’s rescue Thursday, with Le Monde
saying on its front page that he had become “the latest victim of the indiscreet Lady Black” a woman its London correspondent Marc Roche described as “deceivingly alluring with her fine facial features, doe eyes and proud bearing.”

Le Monde, as far to the left as
The Daily Telegraph is to the right, noted that the offending article appeared in a paper it said was reactionary, paranoid, notoriously error-filled and unceasingly preachy about the sanctity of private comment. “Even in a country where the tabloids are king and journalists are voyeurs, this whole proceeding is shocking,” Mr. Roche wrote.

The Israeli government and most Jewish organizations gave the dispute a wide berth, but the parliamentary group “Labor
Friends of Israel” observed, “These comments are eerily familiar from the
French.”

Lord Black, a Canadian who renounced his citizenship this fall so he could become a member of the House of Lords, is the chairman of Hollinger International, which owns The Chicago Sun-Times as well as papers in Britain and Canada. He announced last month that he planned to open a new newspaper in New York, The
New York Sun, early next year.

His publications, which also include The
Jerusalem Post, take a very conservative line, and he and his wife are outspoken champions of Israel.

Lady Black was born in England and moved to Canada as a girl, later winning a scholarship to the University of Toronto and eventually rising to the editorship of of the Toronto Sun.

The dispute in fashionable West London and along embassy row, and the cross-channel hostilities it has caused, will not die out soon if the British press can help it. “Fortunately for fans of intrigue everywhere,” The Guardian said at week’s end, “the affair has plenty of life in it yet.”

Related items on thiswebsite:

The
society queen, the ambassador and the
careless whispers that stunned salon
set
Envoy
Can’t Remember Insult
Wall
Street Journal reports on the
furor