The French Correction: “Le Grand Séducteur,” IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Not So Grand.

by Michael Matheron · May 20, 2011

Monsieur Strauss-Kahn enjoys a bike ride
in Central Park today following his release on
bail from Rikers Island. Strauss-Kahn
indicated that his riding companion was his
“favorite round-the-clock armed guard.”

The Back Story. Sixty-two year old Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “retired” Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has not been managing very well lately. A man known not as much for his professional reputation as for his lively – yet often butterfingered -participation in the bataille des sexes. Last Saturday night, however, [Click “READ MORE]
the Grand Séducteur apparently took a wrong turn at his Manhattan hotel room’s bathroom door and, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not at all, grabbed the 32 year old African American femme de chambre who was cleaning his $3,000 per day suite.
[Here, poke the “Read More” nun]
Allegedly, he then forced her into his bedroom and attempted to rape her. When she managed to escape briefly, the gracious Mr. Strauss-Kahn ran her down and then, according to the maid, forced her into the bathroom where he demanded, and received, oral sex. She then successfully fled and called in the police.

State Supreme Court Justice Michael
Obus during a lighter moment in the
Strauss-Kahn bail hearing.

Strauss-Kahn also fled, and with high velocity, leaving behind his cellphone, and his job at IMF. The police rounded him up a short time later as he sat on an Air France flight waiting to take off for Paris, and his nation’s patriotic policy of “non-extradition” of French citizens. After the maid identified him in a lineup he spent the next 24 hours in the slammer. Presently indicted he has been granted bail, subject to 24/7 surveillance; $1 million cash bail; $5 million insurance bond secured by Strauss-Kahn family property; surrendering of all travel documents; 24-hour confinement in a Manhattan apartment rented by his wife, Anne Sinclair; wearing an electronic monitor; allowing video cameras in the apartment and building entrances; and be under around-the-clock supervision by at least one armed guard, and paying for it to boot.

J’accuse conspirateurs! Thus, in one fell swoop, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was downgraded from Grand Séducteur to Grand Défenderesse. The IMF, in haste, replaced him with his deputy, John Lipsky, now acting managing director. Strauss-Kahn subsequently resigned, setting off what is considered a crisis at IMF.

Also, in France, a political crisis ensued. Strauss-Kahn was heretofore considered the Socialist party’s front runner in their race to depose President Sarkozy in next year’s election. Some believe there is a conspiracy still flying beneath the radar, perhaps initiated by rivals of the IMF, or the Sarkozy camp, or his rivals in the Socialist party, or even the New York police and judicial system. Perhaps al-Qu’ida will take responsibility.

That’ll cost you 25 to life on oatmeal!

J’accuse les puritains américains! Gilles Savary, a Member of the European Parliament representing Île-de-France, blames the Puritans, and makes some other observations:

Indeed, everyone knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a libertine, and that he is distinguished from others by the fact that he doesn’t try and hide it.

In France, until further notice, the public wisely confines this kind of life to the realm of privacy when it does not involve indecent assault, nor [deny] the free consent of adults. Catholic heritage without doubt tolerates sin as long as we do regularly contrition.

In Puritan America, steeped in rigorous Protestantism, gambling is tolerated infinitely better than the pleasures of the flesh.

So, there, it is easy to trap a personality with as little resistance to the attractions of the fairer sex than Dominique Strauss-Kahn. For it would be hallucinatory that he [having endured a number of sex scandals, leaving him dubbed “the Great Seducer”] would rush after a maid.

Of course, as head of the IMF and a (heretofore) possible center-left Socialist party 2012 presidential candidate, Strauss-Kahn, has many competitors who benefit from his latest – and most serious – pratfall. Conspiracy theorists rise to arms on all sides, within Sarkozy supporters, to IMF rivals, to rivals in his own Socialist party.

J’accuse tout le monde!

The International Business Times reports:

Look into my eyes . . . Wait. Don’t you dare!

If Strauss-Kahn was indeed set up, the list of beneficiaries is large, including Sarkozy (who would have removed a huge obstacle to his own re-election) as well as other French Socialist politicians seeking to become the party’s presidential candidate.

Rivals and enemies within the IMF would also benefit by seeing the haughty Strauss-Kahn embarrassed and deposed.

The French weekly news magazine L’Express speculated: “[The conspiracy] could have come from anywhere. From the French left-wing, from the right-wing or from the IMF.”