Hello, friends! In case you’re having trouble deciphering Ben Stein’s extremely erudite American Spectator editorial defending Dominique Strauss-Kahn, allow me to interpret his words for you:
1.) If he is such a womanizer and violent guy with women, why didn’t he ever get charged until now? If he has a long history of sexual abuse, how can it have remained no more than gossip this long? France is a nation of vicious political rivalries. Why didn’t his opponents get him years ago?
“He never got caught before! That means he is definitely innocent. Real criminals always get caught for crimes at least once before the first time they are caught for a crime. It’s logic! I went to college.”
2.) In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category? Maybe Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty but if so, he is one of a kind, and criminals are not usually one of a kind.
“But…but he’s a rich white man! We can’t start putting THOSE in prison—where would we keep all the blacks? Think, people. Think of the blacks.”
3.) The prosecutors say that Mr. Strauss-Kahn “forced” the complainant to have oral and other sex with him. How? Did he have a gun? Did he have a knife? He’s a short fat old man. They were in a hotel with people passing by the room constantly, if it’s anything like the many hotels I am in. How did he intimidate her in that situation? And if he was so intimidating, why did she immediately feel un-intimidated enough to alert the authorities as to her story?
“Now, I wasn’t there in that hotel room, but I know from experience that every time I try to rape a woman, she immediately overpowers me and runs off like a rascally barn cat. Curse these flabby, withered chicken wings of mine!”
4.) Did the prosecutors really convince a judge that he was a flight risk when he was getting on a flight he had booked long beforehand? What kind of high-pressure escape plan is that? How is it a sudden flight move to get on a flight booked maybe months ago?
“So you expect me to believe that this guy booked this flight maybe months ago, then with laser precision executed his alleged rape, then made it to said flight with plenty of time to stow his baggage in the overhead compartment!? Hoookay! Whatever you say, prosecutors! But that would be like the Ocean’s 11 of raping. Maybe he faked the moon landing too!”
5.) Mr. Strauss-Kahn had surrendered his passport. He had offered to stay in New York City. He is one of the most recognizable people on the planet. Did he really have to be put in Riker’s Island? Couldn’t he have been given home detention with a guard? This is a man with a lifetime of public service, on a distinguished level, to put it mildly. Was Riker’s Island really the place to put him on the allegations of one human being? Hadn’t he earned slightly better treatment than that? Any why compare him with a certain pedophile from France long ago? That man had confessed to his crime. Mr. Strauss-Kahn has not confessed to anything.
“Some people are whiter richer better than other people! You should not put these people in bad places like prison. Prison is for shitty people. Like dirty, dishonest women who run away when upstanding white economists are just trying to masturbate into their purse.”
6.) People accuse other people of crimes all of the time. What do we know about the complainant besides that she is a hotel maid? I love and admire hotel maids. They have incredibly hard jobs and they do them uncomplainingly. I am sure she is a fine woman. On the other hand, I have had hotel maids that were complete lunatics, stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me. How do we know that this woman’s word was good enough to put Mr. Strauss-Kahn straight into a horrific jail? Putting a man in Riker’s is serious business. Maybe more than a few minutes of investigation is merited before it’s done.
“All you Mexicans who clean up after me have been on top for too long (except for you, Inez, you’re one of the good ones)! I’m so sick and tired of minorities keeping rich, white international diplomats and businessmen down and imprisoning them unjustly. Except for you, Inez. (Inez lets me masturbate wherever!)”
7.) In this country, we have the presumption of innocence for the accused. Yet there’s my old pal from the Ron Ziegler/ Richard Nixon days, Diane Sawyer, anchor of the ABC Nightly News, assuming that Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty. Right off the bat she leads the Monday news by saying that Mr. Strauss-Kahn is in Riker’s… “because one woman stood her ground…” That assumes she’s telling the truth and he’s guilty. No such thing has been proved and it’s unfortunate for ABC to simply assume that an accusation is the same as a conviction. Maybe he’s in jail because one person didn’t tell the truth. I don’t know one way or the other, but I sure know that there has been no conviction yet.
“I am one million years old.”
8.) In what possible way is the price of the hotel room relevant except in every way: this is a case about the hatred of the have-nots for the haves, and that’s what it’s all about. A man pays $3,000 a night for a hotel room? He’s got to be guilty of something. Bring out the guillotine.
“Fuck the poor.”
Awesome piece Lindy! (I take back whatever I said about you last week)
Stein definitely appears to be protesting a little TOO vigorously here…
Stein is a disgusting asshole, pitting rich-n-white goodness vs dark-n-evil housekeeper. Something still stinks about this whole event, though.
Why did dear DSK contact the Sofitel from the airport “Hey, I’m on the 4:45 Air France flight, can you courier my forgotten mobile phone to me?” Not the behavior of a desperate fleeing perp. Is he that stupid?
@52: Because, like most rapists, he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.
I (heart) Lindy West!
well.. a hotel maid stole my vintage yellow flannel eeyore pajama bottoms. the ones with the raised blue glitter stars. i couldn’t replace em. i’ve worn nothing to bed since.
*weeps*
….*lifts head*…however..that prickstein needs to have his pie hole permanently sewn tight.
Reposted from the Slut Walk (aka handing aardvark his ass) thread:
Attention Seattle Sloggers:
I have been enlisted to organize a group of us to march in Seattle Slut Walk in June. Cienna Madrid will be putting up a post to that effect closer to the date, and we can coordinate in the comment section. I’ll also put in a facebook event like we did for the unofficial Slog Happy.
Cienna and Kelly O will be marching and would like to meet up with us as well! Squee!
I want to punch Ben Stein in the throat and give Lindy West a platinum medal. Burn the rich, canonize the feminists. WHAT.
I’m with Ben on this one. The man is innocent in my eyes until they PROVE he was guilty. Srsly!
Lots of your snark is funny, but your point number one is retarded.
The question isn’t why he wasn’t “caught” years ago, it’s why (and I’ll say this real slow for the slow bus brigade here) no one ever bothered to try to get charges against him. In other words, why didn’t someone complain? There was one investigation I’m aware of, and it wasn’t for a rape, and he was exonerated. Every other one of these allegations – and some are rather serious – well, lots of the reasons given for not trying to sic the law on this guy are of the “But it would hurt the socialist party” or some such.
Clarence
@43 Beat me to it. The quotes in the boxes sounded like classic West over the top satire. SPIT TAKE WHEN I REALIZED THOSE WERE ACTUAL QUOTES!!!
@22, If she’s lying and he’s not guilty that will (hopefully) come out in the trial and he will be released. Yes, we are innocent until proven guilty (unless you’re the president in which case we need no proof at all that you’re not American) but when any one of us is accused of a crime we are arrested and go to jail. If you’re in New York it’s likely you’re going to Rikers. If it’s a particularly nasty crime (rape) or if you’re a person who would have a particularly easy time skipping the country (rich international businessman) then they make the bail super high, or non-existent so you don’t disappear before the trial. Unfortunately, if you (or your victim) are famous for any reason the media makes a spectacle of it and presumes guilt or innocence in their reporting.
Maybe he’s guilty and maybe he’s not but so far I see nothing that makes me think law enforcement has handled this an an inappropriate way. He’ll get a trial, he’ll bring in an expensive team of lawyers and he will almost certainly get a fair trial in a court of law.
In the court of public opinion he will be judged by every idiot in the world who has strong and loosely connected personal opinions. There’s nothing that can be done about this and bitching about it is as stupid as pissing into the wind.
Saying economists don’t commit sex crimes is pretty dumb when a little googling by a guy who draws stick figures for a living can prove you wrong: http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/05/18/answerin…
Ben Stein stopped being entertaining the minute he stopped flirting with Jimmy Kimmel.
Of course, I wasn’t in the hotel room and don’t REALLY know if Dominique is guilty or not. But some of the arguments I’ve seen from those who’d say he can’t be guilty make me heave:
1. He could afford an expensive prostitute, so why would he rape a maid? Excuse me, maybe you aren’t aware that rape is about humiliation and power, not sexual attraction. Duh! We know that there are rich people who shoplift, just because someone can afford one thing doesn’t mean they won’t take another from another motivation.
2. She wasn’t attractive, so why would he rape her? Hopefully, the person who made this comment to a yahoo article was being sarcastic, because it otherwise, it is just too idiotic to respond to.
3. Maids never enter hotel rooms when they are occupied, so it’s suspicious that she entered. Huh? Haven’t you ever had one of those embarrassing “having sex in the room and not yelling out when the maid knocks and she opens the door” moments? Even if it was the hotel’s policy not to have maids enter the rooms on the morning a guest is checking out, I can think of several reasons she might have been there. (A mistake. He was unclear about the checkout date. She was under pressure to clean a certain number of rooms before finishing her shift, and she had knocked and there was no response.)
4. She was younger than he was, and could have gotten away. This excuse reminds me of the case in Our Bodies Ourselves where a defense attorney argued that rape was impossible by trying to insert a pencil into a spinning bottle. Just because it might have been physically possible to escape a rape doesn’t mean that a terrified woman attacked by a naked man is going to have the presence of mind to assess the situation in a calm, detached manner. Besides, this woman was from Guinea. I have lived in that country and seriously doubt that she would instinctively kick the bastard in the balls like I would. Idiots are judging her behavior based on what an American man would/could do, not a West African woman afraid of losing her job/life in the US.
And to add to the idea that economists “aren’t violent”:
Ivory Coast’s new president, Alassane Ouattara, former IMF employee, has been torturing and murdering members of his predecessor’s cabinet. If you want to see photos in evidence, email me at bobunderhouse at gmail dot com. Meanwhile, Obama had made a fool of himself in this video saying that Mr. Ouattara was following the path of peace (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp5AV5ugW… was mislead by his US ambassador (who “coincidentally” was also an IMF employee!)
Still love you.
Right on Mrs. Norris!
@Karlheinz Arschbomber RE:
“Why did dear DSK contact the Sofitel from the airport “Hey, I’m on the 4:45 Air France flight, can you courier my forgotten mobile phone to me?” Not the behavior of a desperate fleeing perp. Is he that stupid? “
The question is what is there on his cell phone that was so valuable — or poterntially compromising — that he’d risk making that call rather than leaving it behind to be found by the authorities….hmmmm…..
does anyone else miss those halcyon days when Ben Stein was nothing but a cool geeky game-show host who was a hero to geeks and nerds everywhere because he was SMART?
what the HELL happened to his BRAIN?! i don’t even understand it – it’s like he’s a totally different person.
and he’s ignoring FACTS – like the fact that the NYPD had *evidence* that the crime was committed, and “reasonable suspicion” that this asshole was the one who committed it – without BOTH of those [and it takes MORE than just a woman saying “that person raped me” – have you ever TRIED to report a rape? it’s REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to be taken seriously unless there is VISIBLE physical evidence that it happened…] there would have been no arrest.
this doesn’t automatically mean he’s guilty – it just means that he MIGHT be, the current evidence suggests it, so we’re going to see. the presumption of innocence is still there, and it will STILL be the job of the DA to PROVE, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was indeed the perpetrator of the crime.
and i have seen NOTHING that makes me think that things are “fishy” – everything, so far as the case has gone thus far, is “clean”/
sigh. i miss the cool Ben Stein who was funny and didn’t talk about religion or politics…
PS: i’m here from “Alas, a Blog”, just so you know 🙂
Denelian
“Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? “
Sexual sadist serial killer Paul Bernardo for one. And these guys for two thru eight: http://jamesurbaniak.tumblr.com/post/558…
“Bring out the guillotine.”
The first smart thing he’s said. Too bad he’s using it sarcastically and doesn’t realize his ilk truly are scum.