According to the latest polls, a majority of the French think Mr. Strauss-Kahn is innocent, stitched up by some sort of elaborate conspiracy. That's ironic, since under French law, the arrested do not get the assumption of innocence. However, and noting that this is still only an alleged series of crimes, it doesn't look good for someone once one of the ten most powerful men in the world. As more emerges about his victim, a widowed mother apparently with AIDS or HIV, an immigrant to America from Africa without any sense of who her attacker was, a brave but scared woman, it is hard not to side with her David to his Goliath.
It is true that the crimes are not those usually associated with busy serious people on the verge of running for office - though politicians are known to have large sexual appetites from time to time - but the accused has, unfortunately, a track record of allegedly aggressive dealings with numerous women previously. The term sexual predator comes to mind. It is likely that what happened in the luxury hotel room was either a) the breaking of a dam, the cracking of a barely-controlled sexual mania, and hence a crime of insanity; or b) more chillingly, a calculated expression of a ruthless, perhaps even casual (and regular) disregard for others except as a means to an end, not an end in themselves; it may be that Mr. Strauss-Kahn practiced the satanic injunction to do what he willed, as the whole of the law.
The law is bigger than the individual penis or ego of any rapist, however, and seems to be bearing down with sure and brutal directness on this most abruptly revelatory of cases. France may have been saved from having a deranged and evil president. The other possibilities, that c) this was a romantic misunderstanding, are not supported by the facts; and d) that it is a set-up, again, seems hard to work out. If so, why did he flee?
It is true that the crimes are not those usually associated with busy serious people on the verge of running for office - though politicians are known to have large sexual appetites from time to time - but the accused has, unfortunately, a track record of allegedly aggressive dealings with numerous women previously. The term sexual predator comes to mind. It is likely that what happened in the luxury hotel room was either a) the breaking of a dam, the cracking of a barely-controlled sexual mania, and hence a crime of insanity; or b) more chillingly, a calculated expression of a ruthless, perhaps even casual (and regular) disregard for others except as a means to an end, not an end in themselves; it may be that Mr. Strauss-Kahn practiced the satanic injunction to do what he willed, as the whole of the law.
The law is bigger than the individual penis or ego of any rapist, however, and seems to be bearing down with sure and brutal directness on this most abruptly revelatory of cases. France may have been saved from having a deranged and evil president. The other possibilities, that c) this was a romantic misunderstanding, are not supported by the facts; and d) that it is a set-up, again, seems hard to work out. If so, why did he flee?
Comments
On Newsnight the other night, two French female journalists were both defending Strauss-Kahn. The French have always had a sneaking admiration for their 'grands seducteurs'. Personally I have very little sympathy for him. He is one of the richest men in France and would have made a terrible president.
Best wishes from Simon