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.”
Holy fucking shit.
Uh. Wow.
What. The. Fuck. Stein is just fucking lying at this point.
Well done, but Ben Stein, or indeed anyone at the American Spectator, counts as fruit hanging very low indeed.
Thank you Lindy.
Brain asplode! Thank god it’s almost quittin time. Thanks, Lindy!
Something about the whole situation doesn’t ring true. I’m thinking set-up.
Spot on, Lindy!
this dude is insane.
So, any woman who is capable of reporting a rape can’t possibly have been raped? Is that what I’m reading?
No one should be shocked by this. Stein has always been an old fool shooting his mouth off.
There’s no fool like an old fool.
Points 1) and 2) are surely the stupidest arguments ever put forward in the history of mankind.
I only have one point in my argument.
1) Fuck you, Ben Stein, and your “Bueller, Bueller” repeating, intelligent design-believing ass. You are a misogynistic asshole, who deserves to have dry, itchy eyes forever.
Why is Ben Stein defending a Socialist?
As far as maids stealing goes, that’s the most low-rent accusation in the book, and one of the oldest. If I had a dime for every time some hack tried to say that when I was a desk clerk, I’d be a millionaire, and anyone who has worked in a hotel will tell you the same. Most of the time, it’s some ridiculous amount of jewelry or cash that they never had in the first place or, if they did have it, they would have put it in a safety deposit box.
Assaults against maids are not uncommon, and probably happen more frequently than they are reported to management, because a lot of the women who clean rooms come from bad situations: Refugees, or victims of domestic abuse, who may be hesitant to report stuff like this.
Stein is an odious person.
I’m never watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off again. fuck that movie for launching this guy into popular culture. he should have just faded into irrelevancy after the Nixon administration exploded.
So is he running for president also?
A close friend of mine was married to an economist (Ph.D.) who is now a registered sex offender. Stein. What a shithead.
“stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me.”
Also, they break into my apartment when I’m asleep and move stuff, then put it back exactly where it’s supposed to be.
Ben Stein is a morally-bankrupt, senile, sad old man. It’s like when my grandparents-in-law would go off on semi-coherent racist tirades about the Mexicans in Wenatchee. You give them a pat on the head, refill their bowl of Wheateena, and slowly back out of the room.
Though maybe Stein’s pat on the head should be delivered with a baseball bat.
I still want to win Ben Stein’s money.
Thanks, Lindy.
I know this is a hateful, horrible thing to say, but what if the maid IS lying? Has there never been a false accusation of rape before? Other than Tawana Brawley and the woman who accused those Duke students, which are just two who pop into mind. Stein is indeed an asshole, but he’s indisputably right about one thing: this man has not been convicted of any crime, and we do assume innocence until someone is proven guilty. So why don’t you all just relax and see how this plays out?
Well, of course the guy’s innocent. That’s why he was in such a hurry to get out of there he left his cell phone behind.
@catsnbanjos
I agree with you, but he sure is not acting innocent.
Hello, I’m not Ben Stein.
What a small, small man.
Well, I’m not saying he’s right that the maid steals stuff from his room, but to be fair, he DOES appear to be missing his medication.
“No Intelligence Allowed” sure describes his way of thinking.
“A man pays $3,000 a night for a hotel room? He’s got to be guilty of something. Bring out the guillotine.”
I completely agree.
Maybe I’m just cynical and jaded, but I can see lots of reasons why someone would want to take the head of the IMF out of power. The fact that he was a known womanizer doesn’t help much either. It could be entirely possible it was rape and he was set up.
I can’t believe that monotonous old twat is claiming that Strauss-Kahn is “one of the most recognizable people on the planet”. He’s been all over the news for the last three days & francophile, politically aware, good-with-faces me couldn’t pick him out of a line up of rich white old men with good tailors. So to the US border patrol he’d be like Where’s Wally at blending in.
@14 – Ben Stein isn’t defending a socialist. He’s defending the head of the IMF. That’s the institution that forces privatisation on destitute countries. The PS, the French “Socialist Party”, does not stand on a socialist platform.
Stein must be seriously off his meds. Just yesterday, he dumped an op-ed into the paper about how the Arab Spring is a Bad Thing because the US is losing all its favorite despots in the region. Nice people, if occasionally brutal.
And by the way, Lindy, the vic in the hotel incident is African, not Mexican.
@27 FTW.
Ben Stein is an asshole.
Stein forgot this classic rape apoligist point
a la slog commenter aardvark—
9.) the hotel maid totally deserved it ‘ cause she was like a laptop or expensive car stereo left in plain view in your car under the viaduct….
What’s great is that now that two other people have come forward with specific documented complaints about previous sexual assault/harassment, Ben Stein now has to concede that the IMF bastard is guilty.
I am in love with Lindy West.
You’re a maid in NYC.
You get offered 1 million francs to shut up.
What do you do?
Thank you Lindy. You have saved so much of this science geek fag’s furniture. I would fucking pay to have someone 3D comp Jerry Orbach into a scene where he and Jesse L. Martin walk into a meeting and arrest stein. And I would love you to cameo as the secretary who gets to yell ‘You Can’t Go In There!’ (It’s capitalized because it’s that line now.)
Adi, you realize that the next episode of “Law & Order SVU” is already writing itself, with Det. Munch grilling the Strauss-Kahn stand-in about the IMF and its links to the Illuminati.
We need Jack McCoy.
@37 If someone offered me 1 million francs I’d party like it’s 1999. Mainly because you can’t spend them in the present day.
@22, Reading between the lines from stories generated by various news sources, including CNN & Abc News, I think it’s all but certain that there’s enough medical evidence to definitely say that SOMEONE traumatically throat-pumped this poor maid. Sure, she could be lying, or much more likely, honestly mistaken about who did the throat-pumping. The real NYPD’s SVU would be taking this so seriously without ample evidence that a vicious criminal assault had been perpetrated against her.
I thought the American Spectator quotes were made up by Lindy. Until I went to the American Spectator site and remembered that THINGS ARE SO MUCH WORSE THAN I COULD EVER IMAGINE. Lindy, thank you for helping to keep my brain inside my skull, because after reading the AS article and comments it was in danger of leaking.
And just when I thought the suck of Ben Stein’s anti-intellectual baggage could drag him down no further. What a fuckslave for pure evil.
31, I was being facetious about the whole Socialist thing. I know there’s no way on God’s green Earth a real Socialist would be allowed within 1000 meters of the IMF. But wasn’t it just yesterday that the Slog was reporting that the right-wing was trying to blame this on the guy’s Socialist nature?
And, for the record, hardly anyone pays $3000 a night for ANY hotel room, especially at a Swissotel (yes, that was catty of me. What’s more, I don’t retract it). When they actually do charge the “rack rate”, you can be sure an expense account is picking it up.
Mostly, those suites go for free, either because the reservation is affiliated with a company or group that has booked a lot of business, or the cache of the “VIP” booking it makes it somehow worthwhile to the house.
@37 If they’re Swiss Francs, I’d take ’em. They’re worth double what they were just a few years ago, well over a buck each now. French francs are gone. They joined the Euro.
Oh, and Ben Stein has been an asshole for a long time now.
I believe Mr. Stein, if his arguments are sound, has just exonerated the Unabomber.
I love Lindy and loathe Ben Stein.
“Wow.”
@41
No, you’d party like it was next year.
Plus since he’s head of the IMF, he’s probably got the plates for old European currency stashed in his basement.
This is reverse racism!