PARIS — In a time of economic crisis, and in the absence of effective political opposition, there is derision — of those in power, especially the king. That is not to say that revolution is around the corner, but simply that humor punctures power and helps to cure a sense of powerlessness.

This elected king, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his aggressive personality, is a seemingly endless fount of material for the satirists, whose increasing boldness is a sign of deeper unhappiness with the government as it struggles with rising unemployment and worker anger.

“We comedians are lucky to have someone colorful and easy to caricature, a little like American comedians with George Bush,” said Stéphane Guillon, one of the fiercest satirists now working in France. “Sarkozy is a godsend for comedians, and if I exaggerate I should say that Sarko is a treasure chest of blunders all by himself. I really don’t know how to thank him.”

In the past year, he said, “political humor has come back into fashion,” even if the tone can be upsetting. “Humor in times of crisis is like a valve; it allows people to decompress,” he said. “We live in times that are favorable for laughter.”

Mr. Guillon, 45, appears three times a week at 7:55 a.m. on the public radio station France Inter, attracting an audience of two million people. Mr. Sarkozy has brought an unrestrained crassness to the presidency that has unleashed comedians, Mr. Guillon said.

He mentioned one incident last year at an agricultural fair at which Mr. Sarkozy responded to a heckler in a vulgar way. “A president of the republic could never have said this before,” Mr. Guillon said. “It shattered his image; the presidential position is no longer sacred. Sarkozy no longer embodies it.”

On his radio show, Mr. Guillon called the president “a Lilliputian politician married 6 months out of 12,” and said that “Sarkozy making a speech is like Jean-Claude Van Damme doing politics.”

Mr. Guillon tried to explain what he portrayed as Mr. Sarkozy’s obsession with President Obama this way: “It’s kind of understandable. For months, Sarkozy was the leader of Europe. Of the world even. And now he’s forced to be just the president of France. I hope we’ll be good enough for him.” After six months of dealing with the Middle East and the Caucasus, “now he has to try to resolve our little problems of losers, unemployment, social security.

“You get the feeling we’re annoying him sometimes.”

Mr. Guillon certainly is. Mr. Sarkozy called him “unacceptable and mean,” and the newspaper Le Figaro, which supports the president, called Mr. Guillon’s style “provocation au bazooka.” The weekly magazine Le Point said, “This era loves blood and Guillon provides nice spurts of it.”

There is competition from others, including two impersonators, Laurent Gerra, with 1.8 million listeners on RTL, and Nicolas Canteloup, with 1.5 million listeners on Europe 1. Mr. Canteloup once described a visit by Mr. Sarkozy to a shoe store to buy higher platform heels — “the Everest model” — before meeting Mr. Obama.

Mr. Guillon sees the new satire as a welcome return to the intellectual jesters of the past, like Coluche (Michel Colucci, who died in a crash in 1986) and Pierre Desproges, who died in 1988. But the tone is coarser now, perhaps because politics are.

With France troubled by strikes, “bossnappings,” scattered acts of industrial sabotage, worries over jobs, and university demonstrations that last weeks, Mr. Sarkozy’s ratings have dropped, with some 55 percent of the French viewing him unfavorably, according to an Ipsos survey. At the same time, the popularity of his dull predecessor, Jacques Chirac, under investigation for allegations of embezzling public money, has been soaring.

The sense of political spectacle and absurdity extends to the Socialist Party. The Socialists are divided, with feuding between the new party leader, Martine Aubry, and the former presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, who has been mocked by many in her own party for apologizing to foreigners in the name of France for Mr. Sarkozy’s words. The Socialists also have no clear answer to the economic crisis.

In this strange setting, satirists like Mr. Guillon are having a field day. He has called Ms. Aubry “a fat tobacco jar,” while Ms. Royal considers Mr. Canteloup, who imitates and mocks her, a prime reason she lost the presidential election.

Mr. Guillon became infamous in February for his attack on another Socialist with presidential ambitions, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who had an affair with an employee. To prepare for Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s entry into the building at Radio France, Mr. Guillon said, “exceptional measures have been taken in order not to awaken the beast,” including the banning of high heels and leather pants. The head of publicity would greet him in a burqa, and “at the sound of a siren, Stage 5 of the alert system, all female workers must be evacuated.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn was not amused, saying, “Humor is not funny when it is essentially nastiness.”

Mr. Guillon likes to compare himself to Lenny Bruce. “I say out loud what a million people think in secret” in a country where “few people are willing to take risks,” he said.

But unlike the most prominent political comedian in the United States, Jon Stewart, Mr. Guillon has no interest in meeting the politicians he skewers. “When you start socializing with politicians, you lose your independence,” he said. “I want to keep my freedom of tone.”

Maïa de la Baume and Jeanette Coombs contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/world/europe/06sarkozy.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company