It turns out the IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was to face a more formidable threat than the foodie underground – the American justice system. He was arrested the other day in NYC on charges of attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment. He allegedly assaulted sexually a chamber maid sent to clean his hotel suit. The police said after she broke free DSK fled in a hurry, leaving behind his cell phone and other personal belongings. He boarded an Air France flight bound for Paris, but was taken away minutes before take-off. Though the French media and pundit class expressed much shock over the arrest, they did not seem particularly surprised by the kind of behavior which had allegedly provoked it.
In France, such unsavory advances by powerful politicians are often a public secret, but it seems DSK’s sexual aggression went beyond what was tacitly allowed even to French political heavyweights. An observer even noted that French female journalist had become weary of interviewing DSK in private. At least one young woman has come forward accusing him of a sexual assault during such an interview back in 2003. Apparently, DSK continued his sexual predation at the IMF headquarters in Washington, D.C., where a young staff economist claimed back in 2008 that he had used his position to subdue her psychologically into an extramarital affair (he claimed the relationship had been fully consensual, and the IMF governing board did not ask too many questions).
There is a lot written about the close relationship between power and promiscuity. Maybe a bit puzzled by the attention many pretty women lavished on his somewhat stodgy persona, Henry Kissinger once quipped that power was the strongest aphrodisiac. There is even some research indicating that the exercise of power itself can whet one’s sexual appetite. This should come as little surprise since such co-morbidity – one habitual intoxication creating a strong predisposition to others – is quite common. I am often reminded of these findings as I observe rows of young women sitting in front of the tiny stores they staff in Sofia, elegantly clutching a plastic cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other. And, of course, Bill Clinton's and Silvio Berlusconi's sexual escapades, among countless others, seem to corroborate the conventional wisdom. There is another aspect of DSK's probable downfall, though, which should be more shocking, and it is not related to sex. Here is a financier in charge of one of the pillars of global capitalism; who was reportedly fond of business suits worth their weight in gold; who was photographed in a Porsche in front of his $5 million Paris penthouse (one of several expensive properties owned by him); who was staying at a $3,000-a-night hotel suite at the time of the alleged incident; and who was France's great leftist hope for next year's presidential elections. Ill-wishers might say a tendency to pray on the week and vulnerable would have made DSK uniquely qualified to lead the IMF. And even under President Francois Mitterand (whose "second family" once drew on public funds and received police protection) the French Socialist Party was hardly an unqualified champion of the downtrodden and the exploited. Still, DSK's thwarted presidential bid would have taken the French political game to a whole new level.
