The liberated woman; Soros turns on Facebook and Google

A friend once told me that a woman can be said to be “liberated” if she can have a fling without guilt. That is the superiority of men.

I do not agree with him. Women have a different way of looking at sex. If there is anything that the Macron marriage has done it has yes, “liberated” women at whatever age. The Macrons have come out with a novel written by Macron which is described as racy. It is fictional but between the lines it was their story when their romance began.

Macron wanted to be a writer and it was Brigitte as his teacher who guided him to express his thoughts in a written form. Words often lead to action. That was what the book implies.

Women, especially when they are older become the object of ridicule and spite, but not men even if they marry women half their age.

The Macron story has changed such misconceptions or at least done well for women in their search for equality. She has carried her being 24 years older than Emmanuel with style and aplomb. She says they were ridiculed but as the First Lady of France the age difference has become a source of wonder. How do they do it?

She tells all about it indirectly with the release of a new biography that reveals that her husband wrote the racy novel inspired by their early romance – when he was still a teenager and she, his married drama teacher.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who turned 40 last month, fell for Brigitte during rehearsals for a school play at the Providence high school in Amiens, and defied his parents’ disapproval to pursue the relationship with a woman 24 years his senior.

The book aptly entitled The Liberated Woman, will be published next week. Neighbors from her hometown say that Brigitte typed up the 300-page manuscript herself.

On Emmanuel’s book as a teenager, she says “It was a daring novel, a little bit smutty. Of course, the names were not the same but I think he needed to express what he was feeling at the time,” says a neighbor in excerpts published by Closer magazine.

Brigitte Macron reveals they were shunned by friends when they eventually formed a relationship, the first unofficial biography of the First Lady has revealed.

Even before its release this week, Brigitte Macron, l’affranchie (Brigitte Macron, the Unfettered Woman) has already drawn such interest. How was the teenager able to write an erotic novel? If he was taught by his drama teacher then you can expect what could happen.

Brigitte Auzière met her future husband via her daughter Laurence who was in the same class as her daughter at La Providence Lycée in Amiens.

Other French ministers have written similar erotic novels among them, the prime minister, Edouard Philippe, co-authored ‘Dans l‘ombre’ (In the shadows), a political thriller laced with steamy encounters. The finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has written a novel entitled ‘Le Ministre’ (The Minister), which includes a steamy scene between the minister and his wife in Venice.

Interestingly, Macron had more literary ambition than to become the prime minister of France. He has had written two earlier unpublished but he wrote a book entitled Revolution.

Asked by French author Philippe Besson if he regretted not becoming a writer himself, Macron replied: “My life isn’t finished yet.”

He told the weekly magazine Le Point last year that he had not sought a publisher for the earlier works “but I was not happy with them.” 

George Soros says Facebook and Google have become “obstacles to innovation” and are a “menace” to society whose “days are numbered.” He was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment,” said the Hungarian-American businessman, according to a transcript of his speech.

“This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”

In addition to skewing democracy, social media companies “deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it toward their own commercial purposes” and “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide.” The latter, he said, “can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents.”

“The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called ‘the freedom of mind’. There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it. This may have far-reaching political consequences.”

Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines. I wonder why he has singled out the Philippines?

 “This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said.

The companies, which he described as “ever more powerful monopolies” are unlikely to change their behavior without regulation.

“The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against them,” he said.

He said Davos was a good place to announce: “Their days are numbered.”

He also echoed the words of world wide web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee when he said the tech giants had become “obstacles to innovation” that need to be regulated as public utilities “aimed at preserving competition, innovation and fair and open universal access”.

Soros is the latest high-profile business person to speak out about these internet platforms at Davos.

It is curious for a man with Soros’ wealth and influence to attack Facebook and Google. He has met his match.