The Other French Sexual Double-Standard
Many in the French and European elite have expressed surprising sympathy for IMF president Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now under arrest for attempted rape.
They were not nearly so forgiving toward Paul Wolfowitz, when he got into trouble in 2007 a block away at the World Bank.
Wolfowitz was accused of arranging a tax-free pay rise for a companion who worked alongside him at the Bank. Strauss-Kahn is accused of at least two rapes, and acknowledges an affair with a subordinate, whose contract was later bought out.
About Wolfowitz, we heard this:
“[The Bank’s] governance and ethics must obviously be impeccable. I fully trust the governing board to draw the consequences it must draw.” – French finance minister Thierry Breton
“This whole business has damaged the Bank and should not have happened.” - UK development minister Hilary Benn
“It is not the World Bank’s credibility but Mr. Wolfowitz’s credibility that is on the line.” Swiss economics minister Doris Leuthard
And Germany’s development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, questioned “whether [Wolfowitz] still has the credibility to represent the position of the World Bank?”
Now on Strauss-Kahn:
“Everyone knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a libertine, and that he is distinguished from others by the fact that he doesn’t try and hide it… In puritanical American, infiltrated by rigorous Protestantism, financial misdeeds are far more tolerated than pleasures of the flesh.” – European Parliament member Gilles Savary
"We cannot rule out the thought of a trap." French minister for overseas cooperation Henri de Raincourt
"Imagine that we discover that it's a maid who has only been a maid for two days. ...The investigation will tell whether it's true or not true." – French businessman and former Adidas owner Bernard Tapie
“That he could be taken in like that seems astounding, so he must have been trapped.” – Head of Christian Democratic Party Christine Boutin, in an interview with French television.
“Too insistent, he often comes close to harassment. A weakness known by the media, but which nobody mentions. (We are in France.) The I.M.F., however, is an international institution with Anglo-Saxon morals. A misplaced gesture, a too specific allusion, and it will be a media scramble.” – correspondent for Libération, Jean Quatremer
Strauss-Kahn’s defense is attempting to build a case upon the maid seducing him, but according to French media: “when the young woman arrived, the lawyers were surprised at her very unattractive appearance.”
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