by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n The full story is not out on Dominique Strauss-Kahn and he is innocent of forcible sexual battery until proven guilty, but already the case has exposed an ancient abyss between European elite and American popular cultures \u2014 accentuated by the differences between New York\u2019s rough-and-tumble media and legal worlds on the one hand and IMF technocracy and French privilege on the other. There are also questions of race and asymmetrical power in play, as well as the notion that an IMF head should adopt at least a fa\u00e7ade of probity and sacrifice, given that his organization lectures tens of millions on fiscal sobriety and belt-tightening.<\/p>\n So far what confuses Americans the most, superficially at least, is that a man of the Left like socialist Strauss-Kahn should seem so comfortable with the elite tastes of the damnable aristocracy \u2014 the astronomically priced suits, the $3,000-a-night suite, the Air France privileges, and the medieval Norman baron\u2019s sense of entitlement regarding an immigrant housecleaner \u2014 while the supposedly neanderthal, right-wing Americans and their primitive \u201caccusatory\u201d legal system (read the French press on all that) so far are treating the rights of a maid as equal to a Eurocrat\u2019s.<\/p>\n The wonder about the French cultural furor over the incident is not that they consider us parochial and \u201chung up\u201d on sex, but that the press and its op-ed writers are so blatant in their expressions of class snobbery and national chauvinism. For all the Euro-lectures about Western imperialist colonialism, this story (fairly or unfairly) casts the Americans as the everyman and the French as the haughty technocrat furious that rules of equality under the law apply to him \u2014 not to mention modern notions of feminism, about which one would have expected a sophisticated Frenchman to be sensitive.<\/p>\n One also might have thought the French press would have taken more note of the angle that a foreign national accused of committing several felonies is drawing on considerable power, influence, and money in his legal contest with an immigrant maid from Africa. Instead, in French press accounts, one distills a veritable caricature: \u201cHow dare those backward Americans do this? Do they have any idea of who Strauss-Kahn is and what he represents, or how we civilized and sophisticated Europeans deal with these dime-a-dozen sort of low-rent sexual accusations against men of culture from mere chambermaids?\u201d<\/p>\n A book also needs to be written about the psychology that drives elites to push for socialism or statism for others even though it would eventually end the easy affluence that they assume as near birthrights for themselves. A Strauss-Kahn suit, a jaunt to Vail, Martha\u2019s Vineyard, or Costa del Sol \u2014 these are not only at odds with the notion of a state-mandated equality of result, they are themselves just dessert fruits of capitalism that would wither on the vine if socialism were fully enacted.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner The full story is not out on Dominique Strauss-Kahn and he is innocent of forcible sexual battery until proven guilty, but already the case has exposed an ancient abyss between European elite and American popular cultures \u2014 accentuated by the differences between New York\u2019s rough-and-tumble media and legal worlds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[508],"tags":[91,1015,332,728,231,1044,1024,594,729,9,58],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-NJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3068,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dsks-technocratic-socialism\/","url_meta":{"origin":3083,"position":0},"title":"DSK’s Technocratic Socialism","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0 The Corner The bizarre story of socialist IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was almost storybook: The socialist guardian, now facing sordid sexual-battery charges, we are told, was slumming in a $3,000 per night hotel, with an understanding that he can show up at any time at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Public Figures"","block_context":{"text":"Public Figures","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/public-figures\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2552,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/not-so-fast-on-strauss-khan\/","url_meta":{"origin":3083,"position":1},"title":"Not So Fast on Strauss-Khan","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Almost everyone who has written about Strauss-Kahn has, quite correctly, used the adjective \u201callegedly\u201d in relation to the charges against him, which are as yet unproven in a court of law. But most of that earlier critique \u2014 prior to these new, equally unproven\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Public Figures"","block_context":{"text":"Public Figures","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/public-figures\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2752,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/collapse-of-a-rotten-edifice\/","url_meta":{"origin":3083,"position":2},"title":"Collapse of a Rotten Edifice","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Nemesis is always hot on the trail of hubris, across time and space, and the goddess has been particularly busy in destroying the carefully crafted images of Bono, John Edwards, Timothy Geithner, Al Gore, Eliot Spitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Anthony Weiner, and a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2757,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/europe-is-warning-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":3083,"position":3},"title":"Europe is Warning Us","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Rome \u2014 If Americans think fuel and food prices are high, they should try Europe, where both can be nearly double those in the United States, while salaries are often lower. Italy, like most of the now-broke southern-European countries, is desperate to privatize\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/commentary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2560,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/an-exceptional-fourth-of-july\/","url_meta":{"origin":3083,"position":4},"title":"An Exceptional Fourth of July","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services For the last 235 years, on the Fourth of July, Americans have celebrated the birth of the United States, and the founding ideas that have made it the most powerful, wealthiest, and freest nation in the history of civilization. But as another Fourth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1830,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trouble-with-elitist-theories\/","url_meta":{"origin":3083,"position":5},"title":"The Trouble with Elitist Theories","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration? In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites. 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