Almost everyone who has written about Strauss-Kahn has, quite correctly, used the adjective “allegedly” in relation to the charges against him, which are as yet unproven in a court of law.
But most of that earlier critique — prior to these new, equally unproven allegations about his accuser — was not predicated just on the factual question of whether sexual congress (and I do not think there has been any new evidence on the alleged finding of physical evidence to that fact) had been achieved through force. It had at least as much to do with the sordid spectacle of an IMF grandee and self-avowed socialist engaging in sexual acts with an immigrant maid in a $3,000-a-night New York luxury hotel room, the defendant already tagged with an apparent reputation for past sexual indiscretions.
Whether she proves to be a prostitute with a sordid past and a slick modus operandi, whether the mess hinges on arguments over money, whether Strauss-Kahn is released from all criminal liability due to proof of consent, or an absence of money exchanging hands, whether he is let go, Spitzer-style, with the finding that the end of a career trumps the trouble of filing misdemeanor charges of solicitation — what bothered most observers still remains:
First, we were given a rare glimpse of the otherwise discreet lifestyle of an aristocratic socialist, and we learned that the life he practices in no way approximates the ideology of equality of result that he embraces.
Second, European lectures about power imbalances, the corrupting influence of money and privilege, etc., do not exactly square with quickie sexual acts — even if mutually consensual, or paid for — in a luxury hotel room with a randomly met West African immigrant maid.
