Political allies with impressively hyphenated surnames anticipate the fallout from rape accusations against IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn!
Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet lamented the shadow the incident could cast on all of France. […] In addition to the hotel maid, Koscuisko-Morizet said there is another “clear victim, which is France.”
In related news, Strauss-Kahn said the only “real crime” that occurred at Manhattan’s Sofitel Hotel was the theft of the drapes and their repurposing into neckties by NYPD detectives:
The French are also pissed about that photo of the perp walk you posted, calling our justice system “degrading” and “violent.”
I guess if I ever feel like raping someone, I should go to France to do it.
Wow, those are some horrible neckties. Like something you’d see on the Larry Sanders Show. There was a time in the early 90s when it was really hard to find a tie that didn’t look like that, but surely NYPD dicks have been shopping since then.
For an insightful profile of DS-K and his place in the world-system, see The Meaning of Strauss-Kahn by Steve Clemons in his Washington Note.
5280: Citations? I want to hate the French too but am having trouble Googling up any damning press calling this perp walk degrading. I’d love to have the links.
@2 – It’s OK … those dicks are from the SFVU.
Honestly, I wish we all had names like those. Honestly, it’s like people stepping out of Tolkien, Martin or who-knows-what.
@4, sorry, man. It showed up in my RSS reader four or five hours ago. There have probably been a thousand other entries since then. I’ll never find it.
When French people say something incredibly out of touch with the situation at hand, it reminds me why most people hate the French.
@4 look at:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05…
@Our government (and most of our politicians) is made of assholes, so you hate us? I guess most of the world must be right to hate American since you elected Bush. Twice.
Some people quite reasonably denigrate the “perp walk” as a form of extrajudicial punishment of the accused (i.e. unconvicted, presumed innocent) and as a form of jury tampering by police and prosecutors in high-profile cases (nobody looks innocent in handcuffs.)
Others note that NOT disclosing the identity of the arrested or allowing their transfer to take place in public view would provide an opportunity for police to simply “disappear” people in custody. I am sympathetic to these concerns as well, but note that police generally get away with murder already.
I’m guessing Jerry Garcia ties. I own one, and only one, for nostalgia’s sake. (I also have a pair of chunky-heeled shoes and an akua-ba necklace, ca. 1978, among other treasures.)
The detective on the right is carrying a case file, I now realize, but at first I thought it was the big old moldy leather-bound book they plan to throw at him.
actually, i don’t get the purpose of the perp walk. if it really is “innocent until proven guilty” then why do the perp walk before the suspect is actually convicted?
what purpose does it serve? it just makes a guy look guilty. and we do not know for sure that he is guilty. yet. but we have a court system for that.
Onion, until recently, there was simply no other way to get the suspect from the jail to the courthouse. Modern courthouses have solved this problem with video conferencing, at least for arraignments, hearings, and so forth – the defendant is simply taken to a room in the jail with conferencing capabilities. You’ll still see this even today in older courthouses/jails and for trials (where the defendant needs to be physically present), though.