A randy Frenchman takes a mighty fall
 
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
 
Seduction is for sissies, as every politician knows. A real man must have his rape. This is a design for living not just for politicians, but for professional athletes, movie stars and assorted other celebrities, too.

Nevertheless, even a politician is innocent until proved guilty. Politicians’ wives, on the other hand, do not necessarily hold to this uniquely American standard. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was probably not a flight risk.

The judge’s decision to keep him in a spare, dark jail cell, considerably less luxurious than his $3,000-a-night digs at a French hotel in Manhattan, probably reflects an excess of caution. Why would Mr. Strauss-Kahn, or “DSK”, as the Paris papers call him, flee the protection of the American courts, even if the cuisine runs to pinto beans and Wonder Bread, to fly into the embrace of an angry wife?

The director, or former director, or acting former director, or whatever, of the International Monetary Fund, who was pulled out of a Harlem police station lineup and charged with the attempted rape of a hotel chambermaid, has already fallen far. He probably has not hit the floor yet. His American-born third wife, a French television journalist, offered the ritual loyal wife’s defense (“I do not believe for one second the accusations brought against my husband”) and urged everyone to “exercise decency and restraint.” She is ready to deal with him herself in the wifely court from which there is no appeal.

The arrest has thrown French politics into a real pot-au-feu, with DSK the boiled plump chicken. Everyone’s searching for the appropriate metaphor. The leader of DSK’s Socialist Party says the news of the arrest hit Paris “like a thunderbolt.” The Socialist militants, he says, are in “disarray,” which is what a thunderbolt of lightning will do to almost anything. This is unusual because the French traditionally don’t care what you do as long as you pronounce it correctly.

But this time looks to be different. The French politicians and pundits who took such delight in sneering at Americans for their innocent shock at Bill Clinton’s excellent randy adventures are reprising much of the American outrage of two decades ago. “It’s a disaster for our country and for France’s image,” says a member of Parliament. President Nicolas Sarkozy, heeding the ancient folk wisdom that “when your enemy is destroying himself it’s important to get out of his way,” reprised the wounded wife’s reminder that her husband is, after all, innocent until proved guilty. This is rich, however, because in France there is no such legal protection; the accused is guilty until proved innocent.

The only measurable damage to the image of France is the revelation that “the Great Seducer,” as he is known to Paris gossips, had to resort to the “maid service” celebrities should expect in a luxury hotel. How humiliating. Don Juan, after all, did not make his reputation seducing truck-stop waitresses and hotel chambermaids.

When great men fall from high places, the oft-expressed puzzlement is why, with great wealth and unquestioned power available to him, would such a man behave like a vagrant with a libido inflamed by the mere sight of female flesh. How could Bill Clinton be credibly accused of rape in a Little Rock hotel room? Kobe Bryant escaped reproach after an encounter with a hotel chambermaid that would have ruined a visiting Rotarian (and because nobody expects much of professional basketball players, anyway).

This is precisely why such men think they can get away with it. The culture has taught them that they can. Nobody expects much of celebrities. Once upon a time rape was regarded as a very serious offense in America, just short of first-degree murder. Conviction occasionally meant the electric chair or the gas chamber. Now rape is often reduced to shoplifting. The courts will decide what happened in DSK’s hotel suite, unless his expensive lawyers can plea-bargain it down to something manageable, like indecent exposure (and indeed the chambermaid might well have been traumatized by the sight of his naked jowls, champagne belly and some things that should be covered at all times). The moral in the instant case, if there is one, is that foreclosure occasionally comes even to bankers.