| That takes some doing, to shock the sophisticated French. |
[THEGUARDIAN] It is a saga of money, fame and destitute women ferried to luxury locations for sex with powerful men, against a backdrop of economic deprivation and social misery. France has been shaken this week by harrowing testimony from a trial in Lille that not only put in the dock Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief and one-time French presidential hopeful, but also examined a much wider, depressing picture of poverty, women submitted to sex acts against their will and alleged pimps who referred to them as “livestock”.At this point you're probably asking yourself: "What do his sexual depredations have to do with the way he did his job?" To which my reply is: "He wasn't arrested for the way he did his job." Even once the women had been reduced to the status of "livestock," if somebody rents you his cow you have an obligation to return it in as good condition as you got it. To complete the train of thought, the fact that he's able to regard other human being as "livestock" should really tell you what he thinks about all human beings who aren't him and (perhaps!) aren't in his personal circle. The way we think guides our decision-making.
In court, Strauss-Kahn, 65, the one-time hero of the French left,
Does the French left still acknowledge that he was once their standard-bearer, or have they now rearranged historical records such that they never knew him?
flatly denied the accusation he aided and abetted the prostitution of seven women – a charge of “aggravated pimping” that carries a 10-year prison sentence. He said he never knew or suspected there were any prostitutes among the many women brought to him by regional French businessmen friends for group sex, at what he termed “festive afternoons” in Europe and the US while he was head of the IMF.
Ah, yes. A string of many women are brought to you at the old chateau, among which you can pick and choose like a sultan, and you never, no never, not once, suspect they might be hookers. And you're supposed to be smart enough to run the world bank, telling entire nations where to spend their remaining money.
But after three days of distressing testimony at a court in Lille – during which two prostitutes said Strauss-Kahn had subjected them to a sex act they did not want, and he self-assuredly explained his appetite for group sex and how his sexual style was “rougher than the average man” – France began considering the wider implications of the vast trial known as the “Carlton Affair”, after the luxury hotel in Lille in which Strauss-Kahn has never set foot, but which was at the centre of the first investigation...
There's more. It's just as grimy.