﻿ French president's hearing aid makes noisy headlines - Taipei
Times Sun, Nov 23, 2003 - Page 6　News List  French president's
hearing aid makes noisy headlines   Is the president of France
hard of hearing? And does he wear a hearing aid?  The French
want to know.  "The affair of the presidential ears reaches
astonishing proportions without gaining in clarity," Le Monde
declares in a front-page article in Friday's issue.  What
President Jacques Chirac does and does not hear has been a
matter of speculation (private of course, this is France) for a
decade. Some of his closest aides have whispered that Chirac,
who turns 71 later this month, has been challenged auditorily in
noisy rooms for as long as they can remember.  The rumors
surfaced publicly this month when the newsweekly L'Express cited
a senior French official as saying that Chirac wore a discreet
plastic hearing device in his left ear.  But it took Roselyne
Bachelot, the ecology minister, who is well known for her
political tin ear, to break the silen