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French Should Feel Shame, But We're No Puritans
Townhall.com ^ | May 20, 2011 | Jonah Goldberg

Posted on 05/20/2011 4:47:45 AM PDT by Kaslin

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned as the head of the International Monetary Fund. He would like to spend more time with his family.

But that's not why he resigned. He'd like to spend more time with his family because he's in jail, charged with the sexual assault and attempted rape of an African-immigrant hotel maid.

"DSK," as he's known in France, is socialist royalty and was the presumed shoo-in to beat Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's presidential race.

I had planned on taking the easy route and mocking the debauched and depraved (im)morality of the French, the arrogant and asinine sophistry of DSK's defenders, and the probability of his guilt.

For instance, Bernard-Henri Levy, the open-shirted "philosopher-activist," came out swinging, writing a defense of his friend for Tina Brown's website, The Daily Beast (of course). His case for DSK was the sort of thing a French villain might say in a screwball comedy, it was so incandescently stupid and offensive.

The gist of his brief: Who is this lowly woman to accuse a great man of such base acts? And how dare America's courts take her accusations seriously when it's her word against the great Strauss-Kahn's? According to Levy, the New York judge should be ashamed because he "pretended to take (DSK) for a subject of justice like any other." Translation: Do you Americans know who he is?

I hadn't realized there was an escape clause at the end of the French motto: "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (for the little people)!"

"If I try transposing the situation in New York on Sunday to France, I just can't do it," A French diversity expert tells Time magazine. "Not only because the woman is black and apparently an immigrant. But also because she's a housekeeper. Perhaps even more than her race, her station in society would probably prevent authorities (in France) from taking her accusations against a rich and powerful man seriously. Racism is on the rise here again, but class discrimination has never gone away."

And while I count myself blessed to live in a country where a poor maid from Guinea can have the head of the IMF dragged off a plane "simply" because she offered credible evidence she was sexually assaulted, I am not sure Americans should be congratulating themselves as much they are.

Yes, the French deserve to be mocked. A clear majority of French citizens believe this is all a conspiracy. Yet every day, it becomes ever more clear that the French -- particularly the French socialists who counted DSK as their leader -- turned a blind eye to the man's ever more risky and appalling behavior. According to mounting accounts, they wrote off assault as playful "seduction" or forgave it out of some kind of solidarity. (In one case an alleged DSK victim was talked out of pressing charges by her socialist-politician mother.)

And yes, the French left's attempt to turn this into a story of "American Puritanism" run amok is beyond absurd. Strauss-Kahn was arrested after fleeing his Times Square hotel, not a mega-church in Alabama. And, last I checked, the NYPD Special Victims Unit was not a hotbed of Amish and Mennonites.

But America is hardly so righteous. As blogger Will Collier notes, if you replaced "socialist" with "Democrat" in many of these stories, and "Dominique Strauss-Kahn" with "Ted Kennedy," the results would be pretty illuminating.

After Chappaquiddick, the liberal establishment did its best to cover up a potential homicide by the "liberal lion." It offered something close to a Gallic shrug when Sens. Kennedy and Chris Dodd made a "waitress sandwich" out of an unsuspecting restaurant server. And as Christopher Hitchens recalls in Slate, Teddy's priapic brother John was such a "seducer" he imported "a Mafia gun-moll into the White House sleeping quarters."

If memory serves, Bill Clinton had to deal with a large number of "bimbo eruptions," as one of his aides put it. He was accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment. And the same feminists who once insisted that women never make such things up suddenly responded by calling the president's accusers liars or by simply abandoning the very standards they had established.

Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon and founder of Ms. Magazine, took to the pages of the New York Times to establish what has become known as the "one free grope" rule. Susan Faludi, author of the feminist bible "Backlash," suddenly took a more laissez-faire attitude toward sexual aggression, requiring "nuanced" responses "in scale to the offense." A reporter for Time magazine insisted she'd be happy to pleasure the president just for keeping abortion legal.

So yes, the French should be ashamed. But they're not the only ones.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: imf; strausskahn
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To: yldstrk

Figures being that little girls are about all that Frenchmen can overpower. Anyone else they immediately surrender.


21 posted on 05/20/2011 6:03:10 AM PDT by GrandJediMasterYoda (Talk to me Hudson!)
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To: SMARTY

This may be the only country where she could seek and receive justice.


22 posted on 05/20/2011 6:05:08 AM PDT by Mercat (BHO Betrayer of Israel)
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To: wideawake
Along with a disturbingly large minority of FReepers.

Sadly, you are right.

23 posted on 05/20/2011 6:25:47 AM PDT by Graybeard58 (Eccl 10:19 A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.)
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To: Kaslin

What do you mean “we” white man?

Conservatives reject and repudiate any embarrassing perverts that may turn up from their ranks.

The RATs celebrate and elevate them.


24 posted on 05/20/2011 6:31:25 AM PDT by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate Republicans Freed the Slaves Month...April.)
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To: Kaslin

“The gist of his brief: Who is this lowly woman to accuse a great man of such base acts? And how dare America’s courts take her accusations seriously when it’s her word against the great Strauss-Kahn’s? According to Levy, the New York judge should be ashamed because he “pretended to take (DSK) for a subject of justice like any other.” Translation: Do you Americans know who he is?”

The mantra of the Liberals, RINO’s and most politicians that think we are just there to serve them. Noblesse oblige my arse.


25 posted on 05/20/2011 6:34:52 AM PDT by A Strict Constructionist (Oligarchy...My theory is, college student body presidents become DEMS orRINO's.)
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To: Kaslin

What would one expect from a country that persecutes a poor, helpless artiste like Roman Polanski?

(that there’s sarcasm, folks)


26 posted on 05/20/2011 7:16:18 AM PDT by Stosh
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To: Kaslin
"Perhaps even more than her race, her station in society would probably prevent authorities (in France) from taking her accusations against a rich and powerful man seriously."

And for this reason, it's hard to take French opinions seriously.

27 posted on 05/20/2011 8:11:47 AM PDT by Savage Beast (Truth is the first casualty of American journalism.)
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To: Recovering Ex-hippie
Jonah Goldberg is indeed brilliant.

The French Left and the American Left are in bed together. Among other consequences of their sleazy immorality and untruth are the doctrines that oral sex is not sex (willingly accepted by children as young as grammar school et al.); sexual assault, rape, the indimidation of witnesses, murder, and purjury are not crimes, at least if committed by Leftists, especially powerful Leftists; Leftists, especially if they are powerful and influential, are free to prey upon and parasitize the lowly; and the U.S.--and apparently France also--are nations of men and not of laws.

This is the sleazy, deceitful, truthless "New Morality" of the Left. It's nothing more than the old immorality given a new label to serve their propaganda.

28 posted on 05/20/2011 8:54:13 AM PDT by Savage Beast (Truth is the first casualty of American journalism.)
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To: Savage Beast

good points.


29 posted on 05/20/2011 9:22:00 AM PDT by Recovering Ex-hippie (where is the Great Santini when we need him??)
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