A week after making controversial remarks about alcohol consumption to comedian Artus, Léa Salamé decided to clarify things on Saturday evening at the start of her show “What a time!”. The journalist did not expect her little joke to be so “misinterpreted”.
Léa Salamé had not anticipated such a controversy… Last week, the France 2 journalist hit the headlines by telling Artus a little joke on the set of Quelle époque!. “You have become boring!”, she said to the comedian who had just announced that he had completely stopped drinking.
“It was in no way an apology for alcohol”
It was enough for Internet users to lash out against Léa Salamé, accusing her of denying the suffering of alcoholics while stigmatizing those who have stopped drinking. Others, like Pascal Praud and our columnist Philippe Val, found it astonishing that the journalist was lynched for a simple joke.
Faced with the scale of the controversy, the main party decided not to bury its head in the sand. Saturday May 4, from the start of her show, the journalist addressed the subject: “I made a resolution this week, I’m stopping the jokes. I’ll leave them to you!”, she first said launched in a tone of humor in front of its columnist Paul de Saint-Sernin. Léa Salamé then made a more serious point: “Precisely, I’m talking about the joke I made to Artus last week about alcohol: I received so many messages, there were so many reactions […] At first, I’ll tell you the truth, I was surprised. I was surprised because it really was a joke, we all felt it was a joke and Artus did too. And in no way was it an apology for alcohol.”
Artus would have called Léa Salamé
The journalist claimed to have been contacted by Artus following the controversy: “He was sorry for the extent of the criticism. He told me: ‘I don’t understand, it was a joke'”, she said. revealed on the set of What an era!. Léa Salamé then made a sort of mea culpa, admitting to having “reflected something French” with her remarks while we must certainly not “trivialize” the risks of alcohol. “We are the public service, we must be even more careful,” she assured before qualifying her remarks: “On the other side, I received a lot of messages saying: we all understood that you were playing “. Finally, Léa Salamé assured that she would no longer make jokes on this subject. The controversy is therefore closed!
