Strauss-Khan stressed / thetimes.co.uk
News from New York suggests that the former Director of the IMF may not have tried to rape a hotel employee. It adds that M. Strauss-Khan may have fallen victim to a hoax orchestrated in France, to prevent the ex-Director from standing in next year’s French presidential elections. This is not precisely a surprise.
The strange case of the IMF Director and the hotel employee he allegedly tried to rape in New York aroused the usual knee-jerk reactions in the international press. The fact that he is a socialist meant that socialists across the world shouted CONSPIRACY! But of course! There were interesting details however: (a) If S-K wanted female companionship of the sort he obviously needed, all he had to do was to lift the phone and ask the hotel’s bell captain to provide it. (b) Given that S-K’s position as Director of the IMF is usually awarded ‘Head of State’ status, how was it that someone with the necessary clout in Washington did not instantly prevent such a public arrest, even if elite-protection like this is immoral and politically incorrect? (c) If Mr S-K had been a homosexual, which he obviously isn’t, and had tried to rape a male hotel employee, would there have been any fuss at all? I doubt it; the homosexual lobby that is so immensely powerful across the world would have prevented any of this appearing in as much as a tiny note at the bottom of the sports page. (c) A person in S-K’s position always goes everywhere accompanied by at least one bodyguard; in a hotel, one guard would be in a shared adjacent room on asleep; the other on duty in the corridor. This is normal practice, especially for the Director of the International Monetary Fund – always in danger of kidnap – because of his job. But where were the bodyguards? Were there none? Is the world disposed to accept that Dominique Strauss-Khan was unguarded in an expensive hotel in Manhattan? And (d) anyone who had ever spent the night in any hotel, anywhere, knows that cleaning staff, usually female, enter the room to clean it after the guest has left the room and removed the ‘do not disturb’ flyer which all hotels provide. How is it that in a hotel where the room costs $800 per night, a hotel employee entered the room while the guest was in the shower? And (d), where are the videos from the CCTV cameras inevitably placed in the hotel corridor. Are there none?
Not that it matters now. The case against Strauss-Khan may be open, but the damage is done, his career and his family ruined. Certain persons in France and their colleagues in the USA must be content. Dean Swift
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