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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: Back in 1977 a group lavishly named Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, recorded a peppy little number called "Cherchez la femme". Its lilt and lyrics are perfect accompaniment to this article. You can find it in any search engine. Then sit back and enjoy a story you'll find yourself shaking your head about... as you tap your toes to the music, ready to jump up and dance...
Dans la nuit...
As a acute student of French history and politics, no doubt Dominique Strauss- Kahn (universally known in France as "DSK" for his initials knows the anecdote about Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, Regent of France (1715-1723). His mother, the dowager duchess, exasperated by his mind-blowing promiscuity (prodigious even by ancien regime standards) asked him why.... His shoulder-shrugging response? "Dans la nuit touts les chats son gris." ("In the night, all cats are gray").
Now DSK has given the French such a rollicking sexual scandal it's outraged even the most insouciant Parisian boulevadier... affronted by the crudity of the alleged event and the charges, appalling to the most style-conscious people on earth. After all, as Professor Henry Higgins noted in "My Fair Lady" "The French don't care what you do, as long as you pronounce it correctly." It seems, judging from the outrage throughout France this week, that in fact there are limits and enough is enough even in the land of ou la la. Here are the facts...
May 14, 2011 Dominique Strauss-Kahn, leader of the International Monetary Fund, was just inches away from becoming president of France, with every public opinion poll showing him trouncing little loved incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and taking up residence in the Elysee Palace. What happened that night has changed everything -- for himself, for France, and for Europe.
Since the event in question took place in Manhattan (doesn't everything?) it seems appropriate to quote some lyrics from local lad Stephen Sondheim written for "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" .(1966).
"Everybody ought to have a maid. Everybody ought to have a working girl. Everybody ought to have a lurking girl... Everybody ought to have a menial consistently congenial."
DSK took the suggestion literally... though Sondheim no doubt meant "a" maid, not "the" maid, a nuance perhaps lost in translation. And Sondheim most assuredly did not mean the 32 year-old chamber maid (from Senegal) who was fluffing DSK's pillows in the luxury Sofitel hotel. Close to Times Square (always the epicenter of sexual squalor and never-tell-your-wife adventures), the cost of this eye-popping suite was either $1300 per night or $3000 per night, both figures reported by Associated Press. What matter? It had more amenities than Hotel 6 and perhaps the pampered and deferred to DSK thought the maid merely one of them... Moreover, when she declined his advances, he may have thought that was part of the service for stimulating a tired 62-year-old to improved performance. He lunged... she resisted... he lunged again. Kinky.
What happened in that luxury suite is (for the moment) only surely known to just the 2 people who were there. However, the maid (who had worked to the hotel's satisfaction for three years), immediately went to the management to report the incident. She may have told DSK as much... and there was perhaps something in her eyes and manner that suggested she would do so indeed.
In any event, DSK decamped (without even stuffing his travel bag with either the high class toilette amenities beloved of hotel guests or his cell phone, which helped track him down) ... racing to the airport for a flight to Paris... and the usual limelight and deference. The doors were being closed when...
... New York law enforcement officials entered the plane, arresting DSK, and charging him (just 4 hours after the incident was reported) with a criminal sex act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment. Then they returned him to the city where, in the police lineup (so unchic) the maid selected him as her attacker, the man from whom she had to break free and escape. It was sordid... it was outrageous... and it broke the code of "do it if you must, but never, ever get caught", something every successful politician with a roving eye needs to remember.... particularly Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose relations with women were frequent, flagrant, and always feckless.
In 2007, for instance, Tristane Banon, a French journalist and writer, accused DSK of attempting to rape her in 2002, but she did not press charges. In 2008, an independent investigator was appointed following allegations he had had an affair with a married subordinate, Piroska Nagy. She was later made redundant and DSK helped her get another job. DSK issued a public apology for the affair. Le Journal du Dimanche dubbed him "le grand seducteur" (the Great Seducer). It was a sobriquet of distinction, not obloquy, perhaps more useful with voters than his Legion d'Honneur.
Perhaps more importantly, DSK's employer, the International Monetary Fund's board found that his relationship with Nagy was "consensual", doing nothing more than calling his actions "regrettable" and saying they "reflected a serious error of judgement." DSK (this mere hand slapping suggested) was too intelligent, too well connected, too valuable to lose for mere sexual peccadillos.
However, when the current allegations surfaced, the IMF acted at once and decisively, appointing an acting leader, distancing themselves from their man-of-the-hour only hours before. They knew the charges were serious... and high speed exoneration wasn't going to happen. After all, DSK stood accused of jumping out of the bathroom, naked, jarring but hugely appreciated (I'm told) from an aging lothario. The alleged victim, unimpressed, had tried to fight him off as he dragged her into the salle de bain and humiliation.
All this, and the rest, outraged his IMF colleagues... as it outraged the French nation, used to sexual scandals in the highest places, but drawing the line at such behavior with servants.
As the news reached Paris, the talk was wild, often bawdy, and, given the national character, conspiratorial. What's more, given the fact he's Jewish, there were echoes of the nation's most corrosive scandal, the 19th century Dreyfus Affair when the right-wing went out of its way to cover themselves for incompetence by destroying an innocent (Jewish) army officer. Why had two right-wing media sources been the first to release the news; how had they known so fast? DSK, his loyal adherents asserted, was framed. Maybe so. It will all come out in the wash in what promises to be one of the most lurid of trials, one every exultant conservative and every disgruntled,chagrined French socialist will scrutinize with care, the nation having lost a president but gained a steamy reality show.
Whilst he's being held at Rikers Island prison in protective custody (being deemed a flight risk), DSK has time to work on his very expensive defence and connive at his release. Maybe the music and words of "Cherchez La Femme" will cheer him.... but I doubt it:
"This man has learned his lesson, oh hey Now he's alone He's got no woman and no home. For misery, oh, oh Cherchez la femme."
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. He is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
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