Why The Hell Is Strauss-Kahn Wearing A Halo All Of A Sudden?

The words in every story I read about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case seem to trill at the thought that he may go free. I am seriously convinced that we really should think about closing all of our journalism schools down. How does Strauss-Kahn, a man with a long sordid history of abusive behavior towards women whose sperm was found on the uniform of accuser Nafissatou Diallo, get to wear a halo all of a sudden?    

Murder is always murder. Assault is always assault. It would seem to follow that rape is always rape. But rape is often seen by the public and the press as situational, although the number of variables involved in determining whether a person has been raped are very similar to the number of variables involved in determining whether a person has been assaulted.

The number of women who have been willing to go on record about Strauss Kahn’s tendency of sexual harassment and violent sexual behavior towards women suggest very, very strongly that the number of women he is likely to have sexually terrorized in his lifetime is up into the triple digits. Because for every woman who is willing to talk about this to the press, you can believe that there are dozens who will not. For those of you whose minds can’t fathom this level of licentiousness, you need to think about the hundreds upon hundreds of hotel rooms Strauss Kahn has stayed in over his career.    

For me, the ludicrousness of the assertion that the sex between Strauss-Kahn and Nafissatou Diallo was consensual practically jumps off the page every time I read the phrase “the maid, an immigrant from Guinea”, as if malignant narcissists wealthy IMF leaders routinely find themselves engaged in romantic sexual encounters with the minority women who can often be found cleaning their luxury rooms. I substituted “the student, a resident of an Atlanta suburb” for “the maid, an immigrant from Guinea” and immediately gagged as I saw in the DNA identification of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sperm recovered from Ms. Diallo’s uniform the naked supremacy of white male privilege run amok.

I will say the same thing about Strauss-Kahn that I said to friends about Bill Clinton back when the Monica Lewinsky scandal was revealed. “These are the kind of allegations that would have your local high school principal fired before sundown.”