weighing in on DSK - Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Just back from my neighbour Monique's regular Francophone salon, where an eclectic group gathers on Friday night to drink wine and converse about interesting things in French. Tonight we talked about the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York, which is horrifying the French, who think it was a plot - and for Monique, a tragedy for the left in France and for all of Europe, which needs the brilliance this economist brought to managing European finances.

We discussed whether the event of which he's accused is even credible. Would one of the most important men in the world, a wealthy man who, yes, is something of a sex machine, but who could buy the most beautiful prostitutes in New York if he so desired, leap out of the bathroom, throw his towel to the wind and jump upon an African maid? Not long before he was lunching with his daughter and heading to the airport? With the presidency of France hanging in the balance?

And a big question for me - a man can obviously rape a woman, but can a man really force a woman to fellate him? Doesn't a woman have a jaw and teeth with which she can instantly inflict so much incapacitating damage and pain that she could escape?

And as someone else said in the group, for many years, this man has stayed in hundreds of hotels around the world. Why suddenly at this hotel did he go mad? Is he mad? That would seem to be the only explanation, if the story is proven to be true.

What was also discussed is the fact that the man is Jewish, and that this fact has never once been brought up in France. It was not an issue when he was elected to his current prestigious position, and it is not an issue in the press there now. The Americans, however, are enjoying just a little too much humiliating an arrogant Frenchman.

It's not impossible that this was an entrapment, like, for example, Christine Keeler, who was planted by the KGB to steal secrets from the hapless Profumo. Or it's possible that it's true, that the man sees every woman in his path as a sex object to be violated. But it just does not seem credible. When Monique took a poll at the table, two thought he was guilty and five of us, me included, said we could not judge until the facts are heard. Arrogant and sexoholic as he may be, he is still innocent of this crime until proven guilty. Let's not forget that.