Ooh-La-La: Sarkozy Takes Cheese Off Menu

In an otherwise innocuous interview with AFP, the presidential chef in France let slip that that the health-conscious Nicolas Sarkozy has done away with cheese after meals. Which explains why Britain's Telegraph is trumpeting a "Sarkozy bans cheese from Elysée Palace" headline and trying to stir up an election-year kerfuffle in the cheese-loving nation. "The French had already found it hard to swallow the fact that their leader drinks no wine, a source of great national pride," it writes.

Overkill? Maybe so, but the paper also notes that Sarkozy—in a close race with Socialist François Hollande—kicked off his election campaign with a tour of a cheese factory in the French Alps. All of which prompts MSNBC to weigh in with some context on the origins of the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." (Thank the Simpsons.)