*****************************
A man with a past.
*****************************
“Thunderbolt”? Not quite the word.
*****************************
From The Economist:
Leave aside the details of the allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn, the head of the IMF (his lawyer indicates he will plead not guilty) Just note that the New York Times states that he was staying in a $3,000 a night suite and was taking a first class flight to Paris. This is the IMF, the body that imposes austerity on indebted countries and is funded by global taxpayers. And this was the likely leading socialist candidate for the French presidency.
You remember Fulvia Morgana, the rich sybaritic Italian Marxist in David Lodge’s Small World? She explains herself:
Of course I recognize the contradictions in our way of life, but those are the very contradictions characteristic of the last phase of bourgeois capitalism, which will eventually cause it to collapse. By renouncing our own little bit of privilege we should not accelerate by one minute the consummation of that process, which has its own inexorable rhythm and momentum, and is determined by the pressure of mass movements, not the puny actions of individuals. Since in terms of dialectical materialism it makes no difference to the ‘istorical process whether Ernesto and I, as individuals, are rich or poor, we might as well be rich, because it is a role which we know ‘ow to perform with a certain dignity.
***************************************
If true, this was the behavior of the pathologically entitled. Just imagine the effigies and rage from the Portuguese, Greeks and others who will receive IMF lectures about the “moral duty” of paying one’s debts. Lost authority, lost order.
A couple of somewhat similar observations – first, from Ann Althouse:
Let’s assume that the maid’s story is true. When things like this happen, I suspect that this is a man who has had sexual encounters like this before, many times. He’s gotten more cursory and abrupt over time, because he’s been successful in the past. Here is an illustrious man, staying in an extremely expensive hotel room — a room with many amenities. Seems you can get whatever you want. A woman appears. Is she beautiful? He imagines that the woman is another thing the hotel subtly offers to men who pay $3,000 a night for the hotel.
Second, Adam Gopnik, in the New Yorker:
[F]or lovers of France and French life, there is something deeply depressing not only in the apparent elimination of one of the more plausible alternatives [to Sarkozy], but by what many in Paris see as the “Italianization” of French life—the descent into what might become an unseemly round of Berlusconian squalor…
****************************
Strauss-Kahn is proving a sagacious leader.
Joseph Stiglitz writes the worst-timed op/ed of the year.
*****************************
The Socialist Party’s Strauss-Kahn
Is a rather bizarre sort of mahn
He takes fancy trips
At his hotels he strips
And tries to play cahtch as cahtch cahn.
May 15th, 2011 at 9:46AM
Citizen Kahn?
May 15th, 2011 at 9:52AM
Good one.
May 15th, 2011 at 10:58AM
Gather ye thunderbolts while ye may,
Strauss-Kahn is not a-flying.
May 15th, 2011 at 11:21AM
IMF: International Monetary Fertilization
May 15th, 2011 at 2:17PM
Why the comparison with a Marxist? DSK has never claimed to be one.
May 15th, 2011 at 2:23PM
DM: I recognize that there’s a significant difference between a Marxist and a Socialist; but the hypocrisy The Economist and I are noticing would apply in either political case, would it not?
May 15th, 2011 at 8:15PM
I was amused to read that Francophiles are blaming their shortcomings on the “Italianization” of French society. Is this a not-so-subtle dig at Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy?
As for DSK: He’s French. They’re famous for the Kahn can.
May 15th, 2011 at 8:17PM
I doubt it’s a dig at Bruni. I’d say it’s a straightforward dig at Berlusconi.
May 17th, 2011 at 3:32PM
@Margaret: The “Socialist” party in France has largely ceased to be socialist in any dictionary sense of the word. DSK and some others, in other European countries, would be considered “social-democrats” – people who advocate free markets with social services, but admit the existence of a wealthy class.
May 24th, 2011 at 11:28AM
Stiglitz’s title: “Strauss-Kahn puts a new face on IMF”
Now that we know, would that be a Gaga style, “Poker Face”?