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Tag: dominique strauss kahn
On Arkansas’ Anti-Gay Law, And Other Ridiculous Headlines

On Arkansas’ Anti-Gay Law, And Other Ridiculous Headlines

Housebound in an ice storm, the columnist finds himself distracted by online trivia and tempted to yell at the TV:

• Washington Post headline: “Williams undone by his gift for storytelling/Anchor’s love of a good yarn played a role in his downfall.”

Gee, you think? The bottom line is that there’s a little Ted Baxter in every TV news personality. However, when everybody starts laughing, Brian, it’s over.

• That said, you can always count on the high-end press for a fancy alibi. According to The New Yorker, many of our strongest memories could in reality be emotionally resonant illusions.

So it may not be strictly factual that I was driven out of the Rolling Stones after my weight topped 240.

“There are no Clydesdales in the Stones, mate,” I recall Mick saying.

Maybe it was Herman’s Hermits.

• “Who Was on the Business End of Bob Dylan Disses?” USA Today asks. Somebody gave Dylan a lifetime achievement award, and he spent 40 minutes kvetching about rivals real and imagined. Merle Haggard, for example, insists he’s always been a big Dylan fan.

In the unlikely event I’m given a lifetime writing prize, I’m going to thank everybody, praise my wife and sit down, not rehash every slanging match I’ve ever had with an editor and read selections from my hate mail.

But if brutal honesty’s the order of the day, I heard a worshipful review of Dylan’s new album of Frank Sinatra ballads on NPR. The bad news is that they also played selections, which were uniformly awful — worse if you knew the originals. Dylan’s a genius, but Sinatra’s gift was of a different order entirely.

If Dylan wasn’t so touchy, somebody might have told him.

• Cherchez les femmes. From a New York Times article describing the trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF president once expected to become president of France:

“Mr. Strauss-Kahn testified during the trial that he was too busy trying to deal with the ailing global economy to join frequent orgies. He said he attended such affairs at most four times a year.”

• Meanwhile, here in darkest Arkansas, “Land of Paradox,” the two big news items last week were runaway sales for the ludicrous sex epic Fifty Shades of Grey and the state legislature passing a law saying bakery shops can refuse to sell wedding cakes to gay couples because it’s in the Bible.

Of course, the Bible also forbids serving barbecued pork ribs, fried shrimp and crawfish. It’s OK to sell your daughter into slavery, or to have your surly teenage son stoned to death, but two brides on a wedding cake?

Jehovah will smite you for that.

Is it also forbidden to sell gay people tires, or cut their hair? It’s best to take no chances. All homosexuals reading this column are hereby commanded to stop. My salvation could depend upon it.

But one abomination at a time. News accounts described a Perryville legislator who spoke in favor of the gay discrimination bill shaking with emotion as she enumerated each sin encapsulated in the dread acronym LGBT. So I naturally wondered if she was among the enraptured swarm of Arkansas women flocking to the softcore S&M film down in Little Rock.

It wouldn’t be a big surprise. One TV station reported that Arkansans bought more advance tickets than every state but one, which, given our small population, is really saying something. Exactly what, I’d rather not stipulate. Only that surveys show Bible Belt residents consume more pornography than other regions, and that Dave Barry’s review of Fifty Shades of Grey is the funniest thing he’s written.

(I’m free to share these opinions, incidentally, because my wife’s idea of must-see cinema involves admirable women stricken with incurable diseases.)

That said, I can’t muster outrage at Arkansas’ foolish law. To flourish here, a lively sense of humor is a necessity. The law’s purely symbolic and will have no practical effect. It exists not to hurt real people, but to appease the martyr complex of bumpkins frightened by too-fast social change they see on TV. Two days after the U.S. Supreme Court declares gay marriage a constitutional right, the panic will subside. Everybody will move on to the next damned thing as if all this had never happened.

• Finally, a correction: I apologize to readers for an erroneous Facebook post claiming to have played right field for the Boston Red Sox during the 70s and 80s under the pseudonym “Dwight Evans.” It was never my intention to misappropriate Evans’ fine legacy. The truth is that my throwing arm was never strong enough to patrol right field in Fenway Park. I actually played left field under the name “Jim Rice.”

I deeply regret any embarrassment my faulty memory has caused Mr. Evans. Out of respect for his family and the entire Red Sox organization, I will have nothing further to say on this matter.

Photo: British actor Jamie Dornan (R) and US actress Dakota Johnson pose for photographers ahead of the UK premiere of Fifty Shades of Grey in central London on February 12, 2015 (AFP/Leon Neal)

DSK Case Dismissal Leaves Few Satisfied

As the dramatic saga that was the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal reached its anticlimactic conclusion, people were left without a sense of justice — or definite answers.

Prosecutors filed court papers Monday recommending the case be dismissed, with Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon saying, “Our inability to believe the complainant beyond a reasonable doubt means, in good faith, that we could not ask a jury to do that.”

On Tuesday, an appeals court judge rejected Nafissatou Diallo’s request for a special prosecutor, thereby bringing a conclusion to the case and dismissing the charges of attempted rape and a criminal sexual act.

The charges might be going away, but they are poised to have a lasting impact on those involved. As Clyde Haberman wrote in The New York Times:

Fairly or not, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s career has unraveled. Fairly or not, Ms. Diallo has been labeled a woman of dubious integrity; for all anyone knows, she may yet face deportation. … Fairly or not, the justice system itself has been criticized by an assortment of groups, including representatives of women’s advocacy organizations who protested Monday evening outside the Criminal Courts Building in Manhattan.

The end of the months-long ordeal does not necessarily mean that Strauss-Kahn is innocent; rather, the case fell apart because prosecutors began to doubt Diallo’s testimony as several inconsistencies came to light.

Even with these concerns about Diallo’s testimony, many are left dissatisfied with the charges being dropped instead of proceeding with a trial. Diallo might have lied in the past, but that doesn’t mean that she was not sexually assaulted by Strauss-Kahn. The main inconsistencies with her testimony involved her description of the encounter itself, whether or not she had been previously raped in her native Guinea, a controversial phone call, and a failure to disclose bank transactions. But many of these perceived inconsistencies could have been the result of poor translations rather than outright dishonesty: The damning phone call in which Diallo supposedly said, “Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money” was incorrectly interpreted, and she actually did not bring up Strauss-Kahn’s wealth at all in the phone conversation. Even so, the original misquoted phone call was far more publicized than the retraction, so the damage to her reputation was done.

Additionally, the DA’s reasons for requesting that the charges be dropped are spurious. As William Saletan wrote in Slate, the DA’s office has made Diallo’s inconsistencies seem more egregious than they actually were: “Having exaggerated the case against Strauss-Kahn, prosecutors are now exaggerating the case against Diallo.”

No person is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to a fair trial. Whether or not Strauss-Kahn was falsely accused, his future political career has been ruined, and he will forever be stigmatized by the charges. Whether or not Diallo was sexually assaulted, she will not receive justice through a trial by jury. And whether or not the general public believes that the judge was correct in dismissing the charges, very few people are satisfied with the end result here.

DSK Maid Does Newsweek Tell-All

Worth the look:

The maid hovered in the suite’s large living room, just inside the entrance. The 32-year-old Guinean, an employee of the Sofitel hotel, had been told by a room-service waiter that room 2806 was now free for cleaning, “Hello? Housekeeping,” the maid called out again. No reply. The door to the bedroom, to her left, was open, and she could see part of the bed. She glanced around the living room for luggage, saw none. “Hello? Housekeeping.” Then a naked man with white hair suddenly appeared, as if out of nowhere.

That’s how Nafissatou Diallo describes the start of the explosive incident on Saturday, May 14, that would forever change her life—and that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and, until that moment, the man tipped to be the next president of France. Now the woman known universally as the “DSK maid” has broken her public silence for the first time, talking for more than three hours with NEWSWEEK at the office of her attorneys, Thompson Wigdor, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue.

DSK Victim Sues New York Post For Libel

Over the weekend, the New York Post published sensational allegations that the maid allegedly raped by Dominique Strauss-Kahn had “turned tricks on the taxpayers’ dime,” working as a prostitute while under the protective custody of the New York District Attorney’s office. Today, the AP reports that the victim has sued the Post for libel.

The New York City hotel maid at the center of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex assault case has filed a libel lawsuit against the New York Post after it called her a prostitute. The woman’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, filed the claim Tuesday in Bronx state Supreme Court. A series of Post articles over the weekend said the 32-year-old was a “prostitute,” and “hooker” and that she “traded sex for money.”