He was a unique force in American letters, and American cultural life, and his embrace of both his inner devil and his inner angel often overshadowed his talent. But many people noticed:

Joan Didion, reviewing [The Executioner's Song] for The New York Times Book Review, said: “It is ambitious to the point of vertigo. It is a largely unremarked fact about Mailer that he is a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story. His sentences do not get long or short by accident, or because he is in a hurry …”

A great writer, and a deeply flawed good man:

Farewell, NM.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy was in town this week. Did you hear? No? Me neither.

However, I did hear a few weeks ago that Sarkozy had walked out on a 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl in the first few minutes of taping. At the HuffPo, they thought his rudeness was stunning.

Watch French President Sarkozy walk out of a 60 Minutes interview he called “stupid” and a “big mistake.”

Steve Boriss has an altogether different view:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy walked-out of an interview with 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl when she asked about his troubled marriage. His last words were “If I had to say something about Cécilia, I would certainly not do so here.” Well, that certainly seems reasonable. So the question that must be asked is not why Sarkozy would act the way he did, but why a seasoned American reporter like CBS’ Stahl felt she could act the way she did, by asking such a personal, inappropriate, and disrespectful question.

I dunno. While I was in Europe earlier this fall, I watched the BBC when I had access to satellite TV. Its anchors ask very rude questions, and they are pitbulls—which I’ve complained about enough in the past. But I was reminded that this is also useful and necessary behavior when those same anchors are confronting apologists for, say, genocide in Darfur—and the anchors on the BBC World Service routinely do confront representatives of the world’s “bad actors” on television.

Their “evenhanded” approach to Israel (which is expressed in constant strong disapproval) buys them permission to criticize “other” bad actors, too, see? That kind of relativism is how we achieve “balance” on the scales of political correctness, which, in the early 21st century, seems to have replaced the political principle of human dignity as the thing we civilized Westerners are most committed to. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Rudeness goes with the territory of journalism, not to mention the territory of American democracy and French republicanism. No one forced Sarkozy to seek power and fame and fortune, or a place on the world stage. And he is not made of glass.

Of course the 60 Minutes incident upset the applecart for him, PR-wise. It was obviously meant to be the beginning of a rollout, leading up to Sarkozy’s visit with his buddy Bush and his speech to Congress. Instead, he managed to alienate the MSM so badly that TV coverage was scant. For those of you who blinked and missed it, here’s CNN’s coverage.

By contrast, here’s how the UK’s Guardian narrated the event:

Sarkozy gets rapturous welcome as he mends relations with US

The long years of animosity between the US and France formally ended just after 11am yesterday when the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, entered the House of Representatives to applause and yelps of approval. Congressmen gave him a standing ovation and queued to shake his hand.

What accounted for the “rapturous” welcome? Sarkozy’s rousing image of America the Good:

On behalf of my generation, which did not experience war but knows how much it owes to their courage and their sacrifice; on behalf of our children, who must never forget; to all the veterans who are here today and, notably the seven I had the honor to decorate yesterday evening, one of whom, Senator Inouye, belongs to your Congress, I want to express the deep, sincere gratitude of the French people. I want to tell you that whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France. I think of them and I am sad, as one is sad to lose a member of one’s family.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The men and women of my generation remember the Marshall Plan that allowed their fathers to rebuild a devastated Europe. They remember the Cold War, during which America again stood as the bulwark of the Free World against the threat of new tyranny.

I remember the Berlin crisis and Kennedy who unhesitatingly risked engaging the United States in the most destructive of wars so that Europe could preserve the freedom for which the American people had already sacrificed so much. No one has the right to forget. Forgetting, for a person of my generation, would be tantamount to self-denial.

But my generation did not love America only because she had defended freedom. We also loved her because for us, she embodied what was most audacious about the human adventure; for us, she embodied the spirit of conquest. We loved America because for us, America was a new frontier that was continuously pushed back—a constantly renewed challenge to the inventiveness of the human spirit.

My generation shared all the American dreams. Our imaginations were fueled by the winning of the West and Hollywood. By Elvis Presley, Duke Ellington, Hemingway. By John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth. And by Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, fulfilling mankind’s oldest dream.

What was so extraordinary for us was that through her literature, her cinema and her music, America always seemed to emerge from adversity even greater and stronger; that instead of causing America to doubt herself, such ordeals only strengthened her belief in her values.

What makes America strong is the strength of this ideal that is shared by all Americans and by all those who love her because they love freedom.

America’s strength is not only a material strength, it is first and foremost a spiritual and moral strength. No one expressed this better than a black pastor who asked just one thing of America: that she be true to the ideal in whose name he—the grandson of a slave—felt so deeply American. His name was Martin Luther King. He made America a universal role model.

The world still remembers his words—words of love, dignity and justice. America heard those words and America changed. And the men and women who had doubted America because they no longer recognized her began loving her again.

Fundamentally, what are those who love America asking of her, if not to remain forever true to her founding values? [e.a.]

Indeed. Politicians should take note of Sarkozy’s tone and vision. The one who can adapt it for today’s audience will capture the White House. That’s my bold prediction.

Also, Hollywood, which is still busy presenting an evil and redemption-free image of America to movie audiences—and paying the price—should pay attention.