In her first interview since marrying French president Nicolas Sarkozy, former model Carla Bruni vented to L'Express about rival French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur. Here's what the mag did to upset the Sarkozys:

Last week, the magazine's website published a copy of what it claimed was a text message from M. Sarkozy to his divorced wife, Cécilia, eight days before M.Sarkozy was to marry Mme Bruni.

Le Nouvel Observateur said M. Sarkozy had offered to "drop everything" if his former wife returned to him. M. Sarkozy has since denounced the story as false and started a legal action against the magazine for "forgery" and, puzzlingly, "receiving stolen goods".

Le Nouvel Observateur is an "intelligent" news magazine, but Bruni accused it of stooping to the level of something like Us Weekly. And then she made the mistake of adding, "If these types of website had existed during the war, how many denunciations of Jews would there have been?" Ouch, Carla. The editor of the Observateur said the comparison was unfair and called Bruni "perfectly stupid." But Bruni kept it classy with an immediate apologetic statement on L'Express' Website. "If I upset anyone, I am extremely sorry … I just wanted to say how badly I view these personal attacks, which degrade reporting," she said.

So what did we learn, Carla? Don't bandy about with the references to Jewish persecution. Your text-messaging kerfuffle probably isn't in the same ballpark.

Bruni 'sorry' for comparing critics to anti-Semitic collaborators [Independent]