Connecting 'Demagogue' Brigitte Bardot to Romney

Washington Post writer Annie Groer claims to be a big fan of French former sexpot/movie star Brigitte Bardot, who is being honored with a photo exhibit in Washington at the Sofitel Hotel near the White House.

Groer’s "She the People" blog post, headlined “Brigitte Bardot, from goddess to demagogue,” somehow goes from Bardot’s convictions for “inciting racial hatred” (she’s been repeatedly found “Islamophobic”) to mysteriously mixing in Mitt Romney and his Mormon mission to France, speculating on whether he saw (or probably not) some saucy Bardot films during his time there:

Known for her tousled hair, pouty lips,  heavy eyeliner, deep cleavage, adorable overbite and joie de vivre, Bardot “has first and foremost an intense and extraordinary charisma,” writes French journalist Henry-Jean Servat in the fulsome exhibition catalogue. “With her phenomenal physique and sparkling personality, Brigitte illuminated the becalmed and dreary postwar landscape like a dazzling dream on a mid-summer night.” 

But nowhere pictured or mentioned in this exhibition are the fines and criminal convictions Bardot racked up over the years for “inciting racial hatred”  by railing against Islam, Muslims and what she considers lax French immigration laws.

Just as we see no images of Bardot in the Arctic or South Africa trying to save the seals, there are no references to her anti-Muslim writings and rants that start with ritual Islamic slaughter of sheep that segue into diatribes against what she calls the Muslim-ization of France.

Rather, this is a carefully curated homage to the aspiring young ballerina and occasional model who was lured onto the silver screen after being spotted on the cover of  Elle magazine. 

She made some 40 films in her career, many of them during the 1960s when a young Mitt Romney was in France serving as a Mormon missionary. It’s unlikely he ever ducked into a local cinema to catch her in “Love on a Pillow” or “Agent 38-24-36.” The only  Brigtte and Barack reference I found was a 2009 request for his help saving Canadian seals a month after he took office.