Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, is on his way home. The InterContinental Hotel maid who accused him of rape had too sketchy of a past to be credible to a jury. So that's the end of that. All will be forgotten in a few months, and we'll see if DSK throws his hat in the ring to run for president of France.
Here's why I think Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a despicable piece of shit. He fucked the maid. That's not in question. He admitted it. Probably because there was DNA evidence showing that he did, so denying it was not an option. My question is, why did the maid fuck him? By her account, and his, the "encounter" took place within a minute of her walking into his hotel room. DSK is a shrively old-ish man, and it's hard to imagine that the maid walked into the room and was so instantly juiced up that she just had to have him. So what are the other possibilities? DSK is such a smooth operator that, in 30 seconds, he can talk the clothes off of any tired service industry worker that crosses his path? Maybe there were quick negotiations for some money to change hands? Or maybe it went down exactly as the maid said and she was just plain ol' raped.
I simply cannot believe option one - that this was just a spontaneous, spur of the moment, fully-consensual, good-time roll in the hay. If I'm wrong, then sorry DSK. I take it all back, and I'll buy you lunch next time you're in town. If any of the other options is the true one, then DSK is more horrible by a thousandfold than any typical John or rapist. Why? Because he was, at the time, the head of the IMF.
The IMF is one of the most powerful organizations in the world. From the perspective of a poor person in a third world country - really poor, like a $1 a day tax bracket type - the IMF may well be the single most powerful organization in the world. The IMF provides economic relief, and is the enforcer of austerity requirements designed to assure that the money loaned to the third world does what it's supposed to do - prop up national economies. The IMF is often in a position of having to make incomprehensibly wrenching decisions regarding what proportion of funds can be used literally to feed and vaccinate children versus how much must be used to service national debt. An organization like that sometimes has to do things that look horrific. The only possible way to justify withholding money from dire, imminent life or death situations is to believe unquestionably that the longer term benefits will outweigh the immediate horror. Not an easy calculation to make.
I would hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the people making decisions like this at the IMF truly care about their fellow human beings. All of them. I hope that they care not just about their friends and families and colleagues, but equally about the poorest, most powerless people in the most remote corners of the third world whose lives are quite literally in their hands. Because if they don't, and if they are in positions where they sometimes have to take actions that effectively sentence people to death, then we have created a system that is horrific beyond words.
For the reasons I talked about before, I believe that the maid at the InterContinental fucked Dominique Strauss-Kahn because he was exerting some kind of power over her - physical, monetary or coercive. Her background is what it is, and it's not relevant to what was going on in the mind of DSK. If the maid - a person with virtually zero power of any kind (and, incidentally, originally from a mud hut in Guinea, the very kind of country whose citizens are most thoroughly dependent on the IMF) - didn't really, truly want to have sex with DSK, and if DSK- one of the most powerful individuals in the world - had sex with her by asserting some variety of that power, then his opinion of this one fellow human being is starkly clear. And if he could treat one single person like that, then why should we believe that his opinion of the hundreds of millions of people over whose fate he presides would be any different. That is why I believe, with all due respect, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a despicable piece of shit.
Here's why I think Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a despicable piece of shit. He fucked the maid. That's not in question. He admitted it. Probably because there was DNA evidence showing that he did, so denying it was not an option. My question is, why did the maid fuck him? By her account, and his, the "encounter" took place within a minute of her walking into his hotel room. DSK is a shrively old-ish man, and it's hard to imagine that the maid walked into the room and was so instantly juiced up that she just had to have him. So what are the other possibilities? DSK is such a smooth operator that, in 30 seconds, he can talk the clothes off of any tired service industry worker that crosses his path? Maybe there were quick negotiations for some money to change hands? Or maybe it went down exactly as the maid said and she was just plain ol' raped.
I simply cannot believe option one - that this was just a spontaneous, spur of the moment, fully-consensual, good-time roll in the hay. If I'm wrong, then sorry DSK. I take it all back, and I'll buy you lunch next time you're in town. If any of the other options is the true one, then DSK is more horrible by a thousandfold than any typical John or rapist. Why? Because he was, at the time, the head of the IMF.
The IMF is one of the most powerful organizations in the world. From the perspective of a poor person in a third world country - really poor, like a $1 a day tax bracket type - the IMF may well be the single most powerful organization in the world. The IMF provides economic relief, and is the enforcer of austerity requirements designed to assure that the money loaned to the third world does what it's supposed to do - prop up national economies. The IMF is often in a position of having to make incomprehensibly wrenching decisions regarding what proportion of funds can be used literally to feed and vaccinate children versus how much must be used to service national debt. An organization like that sometimes has to do things that look horrific. The only possible way to justify withholding money from dire, imminent life or death situations is to believe unquestionably that the longer term benefits will outweigh the immediate horror. Not an easy calculation to make.
I would hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the people making decisions like this at the IMF truly care about their fellow human beings. All of them. I hope that they care not just about their friends and families and colleagues, but equally about the poorest, most powerless people in the most remote corners of the third world whose lives are quite literally in their hands. Because if they don't, and if they are in positions where they sometimes have to take actions that effectively sentence people to death, then we have created a system that is horrific beyond words.
For the reasons I talked about before, I believe that the maid at the InterContinental fucked Dominique Strauss-Kahn because he was exerting some kind of power over her - physical, monetary or coercive. Her background is what it is, and it's not relevant to what was going on in the mind of DSK. If the maid - a person with virtually zero power of any kind (and, incidentally, originally from a mud hut in Guinea, the very kind of country whose citizens are most thoroughly dependent on the IMF) - didn't really, truly want to have sex with DSK, and if DSK- one of the most powerful individuals in the world - had sex with her by asserting some variety of that power, then his opinion of this one fellow human being is starkly clear. And if he could treat one single person like that, then why should we believe that his opinion of the hundreds of millions of people over whose fate he presides would be any different. That is why I believe, with all due respect, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a despicable piece of shit.
