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While a Jeremy Paxman might inspire a gasp of gosh-he's-clever-and-he's-also-quite-sexy the response to a Thierry Henry or a Sol Campbell is more often

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While a Jeremy Paxman might inspire a gasp of gosh-he's-clever-and-he's-also-quite-sexy, the response to a Thierry Henry or a Sol Campbell is more often along the lines of get-a-load-of-that. Black men, it seems, inspire an unusual level of sexual frankness. At a poetry event I once organised in the city, for example, the female lawyers commented frequently, and extremely loudly, on the evident charms of a young poet from Brixton. But when the object of desire is a handsome black man, things get a little more complicated.It would be nice to think that all those clich?about sexual potency and large penises died with slavery Sadly, their legacy lives on. Our society's attitude to beautiful black men is still - nearly 60 years after the Windrush brought the first wave of Jamaican immigrants to a cold and unwelcoming Britain - about as sophisticated as a wolf whistle from a builder.

While British news has, over the past 15 years, offered us the likes of Trevor McDonald, Moira Stuart, George Alagiah and Rageh Omaah, our TV screens are hardly teeming with black pundits Nor, for that matter, are our newspapers. In most media organisations in this country, and publishing houses, and businesses, and indeed in our Parliament, the black faces are still to be found largely in the canteen Or the post room Or the toilets. Things may be changing, but they are changing very, very slowly.Clearly, you have to start somewhere. An intelligent new black face in the front rooms of France can only be a good thing. It's the instant elevation to national pin-up that's just a little bit troubling. Physically attractive people who are also famous will, of course, always trigger a frisson among a fair tranche of the population, and sometimes a flurry of fantasies Just ask Anna Ford Or David Beckham Or (except you can't) Jill Dando. After the riots in November, President Chirac tried to pour water on the literal and metaphorical flames - stoked by his less than sensitive Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy - by urging the French media to hire journalists from ethnic minorities Et voil?Eight months on, here's Harry.

So France can rest easy in the comforting knowledge that all's fair in love, war and French society, that all can rise to the top in this brave new multicultural monde and that the fruits of merit can extend beyond the cable ghettos even to prime-time telly. It's easy to sneer, of course. Just over a week into the job, he is, in fact, well on his way to the hallowed territory already colonised by Zinedine Zidane, one somewhere between mascot and national heart-throb. He is Harry Rosselmack, star recruit of France's most popular TV channel, TF1 He can present his stories with pizzazz - and he's gorgeous. It can walk, it can talk, it can even read the news. Yes, France has finally discovered there are black men in the world who can do something other than burn a banlieue or kick a football At least, they've discovered there's one. But I ask you to entertain this possibility: not knowing what we believe, owning up to doubts, trusting to what is not clear - this negative capability (which, note well, does not render us incapable) is kinder on our tempers, on our hearts, and therefore on our well-being. More from Howard Jacobson. So what happened to uncertainty? Where did still making your mind up go, or not knowing what you believe, or, even better, not wanting to believe anything? Keats's negative capability - "That is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." I take "irritable" to be the surprising word there, implying that striving after certain knowledge is against our better interests, not only as poets but as men Uncertain, we are more creative, that goes without saying The new thought is that, uncertain, we are calmer, too I do not, of course, offer that as a certitude.

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