Charlene and Albert of Monaco

Which brings me to yet another shady person, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a man I have never met. Duly associating Frenchness with class privilege, it is no secret that groping the lower classes has been a French—as well as British—habit since time immemorial. The French elite are unabashed about double standards. Strauss-Kahn has been accused of groping women throughout his life, first as a professor at the elite École Supérieure, then as a top civil servant and head of the IMF. The details of Strauss-Kahn and the African hotel maid in New York are well-known. His semen was found on her clothes and on his hotel room’s carpet. There were also bruises in her vaginal area which she claimed Strauss-Kahn had inflicted. Bernard-Henri Lévy—a so-called French philosopher who is instead merely a publicity-seeking showoff with lots of inherited money—has defended Strauss-Kahn by calling the case an American-style lynching. Lévy, who is the lover of Daphne Guinness (who happens to be one of Strauss-Kahn’s wife’s friends) blamed anti-Semitism—DSK being Jewish—which shows the length that phonies such as Lévy will go to exonerate fellow elites. New York is a Jewish city run by a disproportionately Jewish justice system.

What is certain is that the victim has lied about her background. She was not gang-raped in Guinea, she most likely exaggerated her distress after Strauss-Kahn propositioned her, and she telephoned a friend of hers who is in jail and was heard to remark that the man she accused of having raped her was rich and powerful. End of story, according to DSK’s French friends, but not quite. Did you by any chance, dear readers, know that merely because a woman is a prostitute, the legal penalty for raping her is the same as if she were a virgin? The hotel maid is most likely a liar and out for a payday, but DNA tests confirmed Strauss-Kahn’s semen, and hospital photos showed vaginal-area bruising. The rich and powerful cry bloody murder when they’re judged under everyman’s rules. Albert of Monaco is threatening to sue every newspaper in France for writing about Charlene’s abduction. Strauss-Kahn will sue the city of New York if and when he walks free.

I think their denial stinks to high heaven. Strauss-Kahn seems to think anything goes because his patrician standing renders him untouchable. Prince Albert, ditto. Strauss-Kahn will never be president of France because even the French realize that this man does not have the gravitas to lead a once-great nation. Monaco is a joke, although an extremely rich joke, and the Monegasques deserve better than a ruler who acts like an underage rock star. A plague on both their houses.