Tuesday, June 7, 2011

CASE DSK - The indulgence of the French elites

Since that May 14, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York for sexual assault, French politicians are continuing to say horrified by the "violence" of the treatment meted to the accused by U.S. justice. It must be a shock to them: the spectacle of a major French political figure treated as an ordinary criminal is nearly as rare as a photo of the Queen of England in a bikini.

But they not only express their concern for a colleague said. Many also think: "Thank God (or rather by the fact that I live in France and not the U.S.), it has not fallen on me." France is convinced she made the revolution, when she was just given a new elite, even more powerful. Its members believe themselves so indispensable to the smooth running of the country trying to bring down one of them is tantamount to threatening to kill a horse race because he has tasted your lawn.


You're supposed to shut up and let it graze. That is why the French ruling class sees Strauss-Kahn as a victim rather than the maid who traumatized, according to police, was attacked. In Paris, never such a case would have been brought to the attention of the public. We would quietly asked the woman if she thought it was worth risking his work and residence permits.

He recalled that this would be his word against the accused and, frankly, that she thought that people would believe? The famous and brilliant with friends in high places, or less than nothing? French politicians are deemed to be seductive in series and, in general, nobody bothers with that.

The idea that in the politician, the working efficiency is associated with a tendency to sleep with as many people as possible, is widespread. And maybe it's true: the French, with their diet, have lots of energy. The danger, however, is that their reputation for hot bunnies * can give them a sense of impunity.

Between thinking that because you're famous and powerful, everyone will succumb to your charms, and you believe that those who resist are unreasonable, there must be a not very easy to cross. According to this logic, force an unwilling person to have sex only submit to the inevitable. All this is very Louis XIV.

Impunity for sexual judicial impunity, there is also a step. In 2004, Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, was convicted of corruption. He was sentenced to 18 months suspended sentence and 10 years ineligibility because in the words of the judge he had "betrayed the trust of the French people." But he appealed and is now Minister of Foreign Affairs, representative of France on the world stage.

Jacques Chirac, involved in the same scandal, it has benefited from presidential immunity until 2007. All attempts since to bring him to justice have failed, so that the case is now a subject of endless jokes. The parallel with the most eloquent case Strauss-Kahn is where Polanski. Despite his talents as a filmmaker, he fled the United States in 1978 and took refuge in France and avoid a conviction for statutory rape (he had had sex with a girl 13 years).

When he was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 at the request of U.S. authorities, while the French cultural establishment was mounted to the plate to take his defense. At the ceremony of this year's Cesars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), Polanski was awarded for The Ghost Writer. According to Le Monde, the most respected French daily, the film marked "return to family after his legal troubles.

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