The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Fire

The Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, and its divisiveness, will not be leaving the national community anytime soon. To put it bluntly, it will have the force of a modern tragedy. May this traumatic public event spare charring public opinion. One can see a flood of harsh introspection burgeoning. Hence the protests of French women against the arrogant discourse of self-assured machismo and domination; hence the discovery, in American justice, of the cultural weight of our two countries on their institutions; and hence the popular and populist case brought against elite plotting, in politics and in the press.

There are two sides to this story: the sign of underground profound changes in a society and of a revolution of desire and devotion coming together.

Tragedy still feeds on the fall of a “giant.” And this blow is landed by sex, the champion of the human unconsciousness, prowler of the underground to which social taboos are confined. Dominique Strauss-Kahn certainly was a “giant” — because of brilliant direction of the supreme technocracy, the IMF; because of his well-received candidacy for the French presidency; and because of the star power and immense fortune of Anne Sinclair, his fiancée, celebrity journalist, who is more famous than DSK.

No one knows yet what really happened at the Sofitel Hotel, but Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s disgrace spread his reputation as a ladies’ man far and wide. It does not make a “great, wicked lord” of this Don Juan, as Moliere would say, but the avid indulgence of DSK’s friends will be enough to stir the indignation of many women: they want compassion for the “presumed innocent” to accompany an equal compassion for the “presumed victim.” They denounce the refusal to hear the “ancillary” plea of women.

Outburst of militant feminism? No! More like a natural reaction of their emancipation! They have conquered the decision to have children, spoken out against conjugal submission and fought for equal treatment in business and politics. Like the Italians with Silvio Berlusconi, French women have had enough of the men behaving like cocks in a poultry-yard. Women live with an uneasiness supported by the idea of a “lord and master.” The astounding omission of the Sofitel employee in the tearful babbling of the dominant males saddens them. Their protest is not but the mark of an evolution which, well beyond the boudoir, occupies households.

Fruit of a culture and of customs strange to us, American justice imposes upon all a demeaning course upon all those who are accused, be they powerful or wretched. These handcuffs put on a man not yet determined guilty have shocked France. I delight that here in France, we have forbidden the practice of photographing the accused in handcuffs before he or she is determined guilty, even if we know that a famous defendant — let’s hope that he is indicted here in France — has certainly escaped to a secret passageway, but not at all to the surge of media coverage. The same American procedure will shock us again since the wealth of this defense will bust out, against the plaintiff, a huge inquisition to demolish her testimony.

Conclusion? There isn’t one yet. Justice and truth do not make a perfect couple. No justice is perfect. American justice has its issues, as does ours.

A censor of compliance among journalists and politicians? The media universe defies all generalization. First audiovisual media, then the net — with its crowds of gossipers, but also its good, professional sites — have exploded the “written.” No code of ethics governs this pandemonium. Each medium tackles the private life according to its own criteria. Some have made money off of it, others refuse to touch it. French law protects it much more strictly than Anglo-Saxon law. For press news, following what politicians do between the sheets is scorned. The shackled canard, hardly a stranger to dealing with media figures, repeats that he will mess around. Thank god, he won’t be the only one!

It will be said that, with a man who is a public figure, an alcohol, drug or sex addiction would threaten the dignity of his charge and, thus, deserve to be reported. It is up to each journalist to decide it according to his or her own conscience. Books and journals have, in these past few months, mentioned DSK’s shown taste for the ladies. But, without complaint or offense, neither French law nor French ethics allow denunciations based on what goes on behind closed doors and, moreover, criminal defamations.

It is possible that the turmoil (backlash) of the DSK affair, the proliferation of the image and of the stolen images and the increasing personalization of powerful men brings American customs to France, little by little. What is there to do? The media pander to their readers, and the democracies to their citizens.