Give Me The News In French, Mademoiselle

Esquire magazine was quite right. French journalist, Melissa Theuriau, most definitely belongs in their Women We Love issue. I can't say it any better than they did so I'll just share their words and link to her newscasts on YouTube.

MÉLISSA THEURIAU, 28
This is how you reverse the steady twenty-five-year decline of the American network evening news: You don't hire for the gravitas of Walter Cronkite. You don't hire for the courage it takes to report from Tikrit. And you don't hire Katie Couric. You hire for exquisite beauty.

Theuriau can be seen on French network M6 (or on YouTube, which is where we found her). She is, by any reasonable global standard, jaw-droppingly beautiful and almost certainly the most attractive person ever to use the term "G-8 Summit" ("le Sommet du G-8"). Or "remote-controlled bomb" ("la bombe télécommandée"). Or "good evening" ("bonsoir").

And she is a bright face that a troubled nation desperately needs.

A woman this beautiful would do for American television viewers the same thing she would do if she walked into a dimly lit bar: She would heighten our awareness. She would focus us. And more important, even as she was delivering a laundry list of really bad news (in French if necessary—we don't mind subtitles), she'd make us feel better about being alive. A Senate speech wouldn't be any less nane for her having told us about it. A tornado wouldn't be any less destructive. A brood of ducklings wouldn't be any less motherless. But described by such a mouth, softened by such eyes, set against such skin, our world would seem a little less doomed. —ROSS McCAMMON