Wasn't Brigitte Bardot unforgettable, archetypal, Eve herself on the loose in France?

National Review, June 30, 2008

Wasn't Brigitte Bardot unforgettable, archetypal, Eve herself on the loose in France? Think of her in And God Created Woman. Once she decided to make no more movies, her transformation into angry matriarch was a bit of a shock. First she took up animal rights, and then she began to protest about Muslim immigration.

You have to be very careful what you say on that topic in France, and Bardot has been convicted several times for inciting racial hatred. She is, it seems, a fan of the far-right Front National, which until its recent change used to be openly anti-Muslim. In December 2006, her two causes came together. Bardot wrote a letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, at the time Interior Minister, to complain that the method of slaughtering sheep at the Muslim festival of Aid el-Kebir is cruel. France, she stated--and repeated on her website--was "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying our country by imposing its acts." A body called Movement Against Racism filed a suit, and she has to pay a fine of over $23,000 for again inciting racial hatred. Free speech has surely never had a defender quite like this before.